Purgatory and Matthew 22:1-14

[mark_a]

I was re-reading Patrick Madrid’s Where is that in the bible? In it, he cites Matthew 22:1-14 as scripture that attests to the Church’s teaching on purgatory.

But I don’t get it. Can someone help me understand?

 

[Madia]

1 Cor 3:10-15 might be a better example.

The guest without a wedding gament (someone in mortal sin) seems to be either cast into hell or left out of the banquet (Eucharist).

 

[MariaG]

mark a:

I was re-reading Patrick Madrid’s Where is that in the bible? In it, he cites Matthew 22:1-14 as scripture that attests to the Church’s teaching on purgatory.

But I don’t get it. Can someone help me understand?

Are you sure those verses Patrick Madrid said attest to the Church’s teaching on purgatory?

If they are, I sure would like to hear an explanation also.

At Scripture Catholic it is not used as one of the verses talking of purgatory, so no help there.

 

[mark_a]

Are you sure those verses Patrick Madrid said attest to the Church’s teaching on purgatory?
If they are, I sure would like to hear an explanation also.

At Scripture Catholic it is not used as one of the verses talking of purgatory, so no help there.

Yep. It’s 1 of about 12.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

The best one I know in Matthew is Mt 5:25-26

Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison.26 Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.

Since you will eventually get out of the prison, it appears to be Purgatory. The earlier verses discuss condemnation to hell.

 

[MariaG]

I don’t think Mark is looking for good verses talking about purgatory. He is looking for an explanation of why Matthew 22:1-14 is about purgatory.

 

[MariaG]

There is an explanation here, post #5.

Originally posted by YinYangMom

but what I recall is that all are invited to the feast. Some say yes, others say no, or ignore the invitation, others say yes, but take their time getting ready.

Baptism/confirmation is our “Yes”…we are washed in water and given clean clothes to begin our journey to the feast.

We hit the road (life) and along the way we get lost, we fall. Catholics go to the priests to fix them up and get them back on the right road. They cleanse the wounds, use stitches if necessary, set broken bones. No time to shower and do the laundry though, getting lost set us back and we have to get going.

So we finally arrive at the location of the feast/wedding but we’re dissheveled from the journey. We certainly can’t go into the wedding chapel to face the bride and groom looking like this!

Purgatory freshens us up. The scars/blemishes from the healed wounds (temporal effects of sin), and the dust in our hair (venial sins not confessed before our death) are removed completely. How long the process takes depends on how lost we got, how many times we fell, the nature of those falls. But in the end we are as clean as the day we were baptized and finally able to enter that Holy Place to face the Lord.

The good news is we arrived at the location and were let in, instead of having the gates shut on us.

The difference in this explanation and the Scripture is that the people that are not cleaned up for the feast, get thrown out, so I think she got that part wrong. But it would explain purgatory because we are all invited, but if we don’t get cleaned up before getting to heaven, we won’t be allowed to stay.

The problem with using this verse for me, (if this is the explanation), is if we don’t go through purgatory, we are getting thrown out of heaven, but we won’t even be going.

But maybe there is another explanation still out there?