And the last shall be the first - the second link leads to some kind of search engine
Now, I do follow the progression from the reasons presented on the working link, BUT ONLY if the following premise is true:
Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary did not atone for ALL of our sins.
Christ’s death on the Cross, together with His resurrection and His bodily ascension into Heaven, made it
possible for us to be cleansed of our sins, to break the bonds of death, and for human beings to be able to go to Heaven.
Obviously, the Crucifixion itself did not automatically cleanse the world of sins; otherwise, we wouldn’t still be dealing with it, today.
What happens is that the benefits of the Crucifixion are applied when we respond to it and do certain things. This isn’t salvation by works; these actions that we do are the actions of faith - being baptized, going to Confession, praying, participating in the Sacraments, etc. - all these things are ways of applying Christ’s atoning Sacrifice to our own situation.
One might ask, why should we need to do that? Shouldn’t Christ’s Sacrifice, all by itself, be enough to cleanse the whole world of sin, without us taking any action at all?
One could argue that it should, but one is arguing against the front page of every serious newspaper in the world - sin is still in the world, so we can conclude from that that the Crucifixion does not, in fact, do all the cleansing, all by itself - that we
do, in fact, have to respond to it, in order to complete the circuit.
If this is true, then it would seem to follow that we have to serve some time in some kind of cleansing place (although why that would have to be a place that is close to hell does NOT follow), but if that premise is not true, then neither is the conclusion.
Purgatory is just part of our continuing response to the Crucifixion. Most of us do not become perfectly without sin during this lifetime. (If the Crucifixion worked automatically, then we would become incapable of sin at the instant of baptism. We don’t.)
And referring to the Apocrypha does not impress me either. These writings do contain some good, and can be good to read, but they’re also full of anachronisms and contradictions; and that diminishes their value quite significantly, and makes them UTTERLY unusable for formulating doctrines.
I would say the same about many of the books that are in the primary canon, as well - for example, the Book of Daniel can’t seem to figure out which King was in charge at that period of time. In any case, we don’t use the Bible to formulate doctrine - that’s what the Magisterium and the Holy Tradition are for.
I expect to serve NO time in “purgatory”. I expect, as Scripture promises me, to be on Earth one moment, and before the Throne of God, hearing those blesséd words “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” the next.
Do you expect to be completely perfected during this lifetime, then? (Do you believe that you are, at
this moment, incapable of committing sin?) Or on what basis do you expect to be told, “Well done, good and faithful servant”?
It is only when we have become incapable of committing sin that we will be allowed to enter Heaven. Christ has made this
possible, but He has in no way
guaranteed it with regard to specific individuals. He has guaranteed that some will be in Heaven, but we don’t know specifically that it will be
us, in particular.
