Holy Thursday & Purgatory

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We’ve all had non-Catholics discuss purgatory with us. I was thinking of a recent discussion as I drove to Holy Thursday services.

This struck me from our reading as Jesus washed the disciples’ feet. Peter balked …

Jesus answered him,
“Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”
Simon Peter said to him,
“Master, then not only my feet, but my hands and head as well.”
Jesus said to him,
“Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed,
for he is clean all over;

Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed.

I just “heard” that in a cool way. As believers, we are washed clean all over by the blood of the Lamb; we have bathed.

Who is to say that as we exit this life and enter the next, Jesus doesn’t wash the last residue of this world from our feet?

Isn’t that, in essence, what purgatory is all about?
 
LPS said:
We’ve all had non-Catholics discuss purgatory with us. I was thinking of a recent discussion as I drove to Holy Thursday services.

This struck me from our reading as Jesus washed the disciples’ feet. Peter balked …

Jesus answered him,
“Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”
Simon Peter said to him,
“Master, then not only my feet, but my hands and head as well.”
Jesus said to him,
“Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed,
for he is clean all over;

Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed.

I just “heard” that in a cool way. As believers, we are washed clean all over by the blood of the Lamb; we have bathed.

Who is to say that as we exit this life and enter the next, Jesus doesn’t wash the last residue of this world from our feet?

Isn’t that, in essence, what purgatory is all about?
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kinda…purgatory is a place to be cleansed from the sins and stains of sin…and the blood of jesus can and does do that
 
I think that’s a really beautiful thought. I haven’t studied purgatory yet, but I really like that thought. I look forward to seeing what other people think as well! 🙂
 
I like that comparison also! Another couple verses I feel say something to the doctrine of purgatory are Luke 23 verses 42-43:
42 And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when you shall come into your kingdom. 43 And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to you: This day you shall be with me in paradise.
We know from 1Peter 3 18 :
18 Because Christ also died once for our sins, the just for the unjust: that he might offer us to God, being put to death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the spirit, 19 in which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison.
Jesus told the good thief that on that day they woud be together in paradise, yet Peter tells us that when Christ died he went in spirit to preach to the spirits that were in prison. This couldn’t be hell, because he called it paradise, and it can’t be heaven because the spirits were in prison. I like to think this was purgatory. 🙂
 
cor,

It most certainly was Purgatory or, as some of the “ancients” called it - “the Limbo of the Fathers”.

Even to this day, I amazed at the number of Catholics who do not believe (or worse yet, who have never been taught) that Purgatory is a DOGMA of the Catholic Church that must be believed. This is not one of those “take it or leave it” teachings where learned theologians have discussed it but no consensus has taken hold.

Purgatory exists - just as sure as does Heaven and Hell.

To deny the existence of Purgatory is to deny what many posters said above, and to deny St. John’s teaching in Revelation: nothing unclean shall enter heaven.

If we die with mortal sin on our soul and have not repented for it before death, then we suffer Hell. No “if’s” “ands” or “buts” about it. Even the bible specifically distinguishes between the types of sin.

If we die sinless and without any corruption of any kind based on our life on earth (I am no judge, but I don’t know of anyone who would fit this category, except Christ, unborn children, and people - both children and adults who have some mental disease that prevents them from understanding right from wrong), then we go to Heaven.

The remainder (and that likely means everyone else) must spend some “time” in which the state of our immortal souls are purified by purgation so that they enter Heaven in a manner that is fit for the Beatific Vision - seeing God in the face: something we all should strive for.

As someone alluded to above, when Christ died and he went to preach to the captive souls, he didn’t go to heaven, as heaven had been closed since Adam and Eve. He didn’t go to Hell, as that would have served no purpose - once in hell, always in hell.

He went to Purgatory - to announce the wonderful news that those who had been held “captive” all those years were finally going to enter heaven because his Passion had done something no man could do - redeemed mankind.

That is why Easter is even “more important” than any other Holy Day - it is the day where Christ triumphed, literally, over death and Satan at the same time.

Happy Easter!
 
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Salvatore123 said:
As someone alluded to above, when Christ died and he went to preach to the captive souls, he didn’t go to heaven, as heaven had been closed since Adam and Eve. **He didn’t go to Hell, **as that would have served no purpose - once in hell, always in hell.

He went to Purgatory - to announce the wonderful news that those who had been held “captive” all those years were finally going to enter heaven because his Passion had done something no man could do - redeemed mankind.

Happy Easter!
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I liked you explaination, but, in our Apostles’ Creed, we proclaim:

He…was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into Hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead;

I’m totally OK with Purgatory, but your explaination does not jibe with the AC.

Help?

Glennonite
 
“Hell” in the creed does not refer to the place we call “hell” today.

Today, we refer to Hell as the place for the eternal damned.

Back when the Creed was “born”, “Hell” referred to the “place of the dead” or “sheol”.

Christ, I assure you, did not visit the dominion of Lucifer 🙂
 
Salvatore123 said:
Christ, I assure you, did not visit the dominion of Lucifer
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Salvatore, that is certainly one standard theological view. However, the influential Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar in fact, argues for a full descent into the deepest realms of Hell. You can read a summary of the debate here.

(Since both JPII and B16 admire Balthasar, some argue that his opinion was within the limits of allowable debate within the Church, without violating the limits of orthodoxy.)
 
Bible Reader,

I am familiar with Balthasar and that Benedict XVI even spoke at his funeral out of admiration for the man.

The problem with Balthasar (and please do not misunderstand my point - I am in NO WAY saying I am any where near the level of thought regarding theology as Balthasar) is that he sought to attach to Christ’s physical death, the awful agony of being separated from his Father, that Balthasar may have envisioned Christ going further than Purgatory.

Whether Balthasar meant or believed that Christ went to the realm of Lucifer is anyone’s guess, as the man has been dead for 23 years . . .

My own humble arguments against Christ descending into Lucifer’s abode are two-fold:
  1. Christ was sinless, and thus was, by “definition” (based on what I call the “Physics of Christendom” - my phrase for what does and does not “work” in the realm of God; sort of how things operate in our world - gravity, inertia, etc.) “barred” from entering the realm of Lucifer as that abode is reserved only for those with mortal sin on their souls.
  2. What would have been the point? Those in Hell did not benefit one bit from Christ’s redemptive death. And I am pretty sure Christ did not go to Lucifer and his minions to taunt them along the lines of, “I win, you lose - ha!” 🙂
 
crystal_waters said:
kinda…purgatory is a place to be cleansed from the sins and stains of sin…and the blood of jesus can and does do that
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Purgatory is a place??? Don’t think so. Don’t let your physical mind get in the way of spiritual matters. Purgation is an activity, a process, of a spiritual nature that does not need a physical place in which to occur.
 
Bible Reader,

One thing I forgot (and I apologize for moving a bit off-topic) - Balthasar appeared to be a “fan” of Father Raymond Brown. If you read any modern theology books, I am sure you will have either read something Brown wrote or read a commentary of something Brown wrote.

I do not doubt that Brown was a priest in good standing (at least from a public point of view, there being no public suspensions or interdictions). But when Brown began to argue that one could not “prove” the virginal conception of Christ through history (Brown being a supporter of the historical-critical method) and had a tendency to say the bible was not “historically accurate” when viewed as a whole, then one begins to question.

By the time Brown died, he had been given numerous awards - the total of which had come from as many or more from non-Catholic organizations as Catholic.

Lastly, I never read a word from Brown where he criticized modernists or the “liberal” side of theology. Yet, he never wavered from labeling traditionalist Catholics as "“ultra-right,” “fundamentalist,” “ultra-conservative,” “right-wing vigilantes,” and “extremists”.

My point in this is: one may offend a great many people in our Church, and yet still maintain their priestly office.

I was a great admirer of John Paul II. As the same time, I winced quite heavily when I saw John Paul II, on Feb. 2, 1986, receiving on his forehead the Tilac or Tika, the red powdery paste of the Hindus, the sign of recognition of the adorers of Shiva. I simply think that John Paul II’s “handlers” or “advance men” did not tell His Holiness what to expect when he attended such events and rather than cause a “scene”, he assented by act but not with intent.
 
Actually, I think Raymond Brown is viewed in many quarters of Biblical studies as being rather more conservative than most academics. For example Frank Kermode wrote in The New York Review of Books on Brown’s Birth of the Messiah:
Yet, like his magisterial and enormous commentary on John’s Gospel, his new book, a commentary on the Infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke, has been submitted to ecclesiastical authority and bears the nihil obstat and imprimatur of his ecclesiastical superiors (still in Latin, whether or not Milton was right to say that English would not provide “servile letters enow to spell such a dictatory presumption”)
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In any case, the fact that Brown always got nihil obstat and imprimatur demonstrates that while Brown had an opinion, his views were not heretical – rather they were within the range of allowable opinions to the Church. Some make the same claim about Balthasar (whose Mysterium Paschale is published in English by Ignatius Press, known for being a fairly conservative-to-mainstream Catholic publisher.)
 
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