Although the Orthodox may refer to what comes between death and the last judgement as purgatory, that is not a place, but an intermediate state of purification. This distinction alone marks the division between two different kinds of spirituality. St Anselm’s theology of redemption with its juridical notion of satisfaction has always been foreign to eastern thought, and likewise the penal and satisfactory aspect of the state of penitence (either in this life in the sacrament of confession or after death), and devotion to the Sacred Heart, which is similarly concerned with expiation. These entirely different notions of soteriology are clearly demonstrated in the theology of the Communion of Saints; in the West this concerns the Church and has provided it with the doctrine of merit–the merits of some contributing to the forgiveness of others and the good works of some being profitable to others. In the East, however, it concerns the Holy Spirit; it is the extension of the eucharistic communion, in which the Holy Spirit performs the particular work of uniting people and making that unity not merely an additional benefit, but something essential to the Body–the “naturally supernatural” expression of mutual and cosmic charity, holiness. We are companions of the saints, sanctorum socii, because we are in the society of the Holy Trinity. Christ is the mediator, the saints are intercessors and faithful co-operators, synergoi and fellow-worshippers, united with all for the ministry of salvation. Charity in heaven becomes more alive and the holy souls of the dead mingle with the congregation at the Liturgy. The saints in heaven join with the angels in the work of the living. The purpose of eastern ascesis is not expiation, but deifying spiritualization, and although the Greeks speak of purification through suffering, they never speak of penal satisfaction; even the term “purificatory expiation” is absolutely unheard of. While they may mention punishment, this is never allowed to have any propitiatory effect; there is no fire before the judgement and the ignis purgatorius and all Roman teaching about purgatory in its juridical form is formally condemned. But while eschewing penal satisfaction, the Orthodox teach purification after death, not in the sense of pain that purges, but as the working out of destiny through progressive purification and liberation, healing. The waiting between death and the Judgement is creative; the praying of the living, their offerings for the dead, the sacraments of the Church, take up and continue the work of the Lord’s salvation. The waiting has a pronounced communal and collegiate character; it is communion in the shared eschatological destiny, far from being reparation for a fault, it is the repairing of nature. The image often used is that as passing through customs, where we hand over to the demons what belongs to the and, thus freed of our burdens, go on our way with what belongs to the Lord. Eastern eschatology is always an integral part of the economy of the Mystery of God. Purgatory is not a subject of metaphysics or eschatological physiology, still less of any physical science of souls after death; the fate that awaits us between death and judgment is in no sense a place (souls are divested of their bodies, so neither space nor astronomical time applies to them) but a situation, a state. Torture or flames do not come into it, only a bringing to maturity by the stripping away of every impurity that weighs on the spirit. (Orthodoxy, pp. 333-334)
