Don’t sweat the small stuff, like Purgatory, focus on your daily walk with Jesus and strive in all your doings “…to be perfect as MY heavenly Father is perfect…”
I thought I understand about Purgatory until I read the recommended booklet, “Read Me or Rue It” by Fr. Paul O’Sullivan, O.P., (in a purgatory thread in Ask an Apologist). When I read about the fire of purgatory being worst than the fires of hell and, how a minute in purgatory is like a century on earth and, how you can go through that for 20, 30, 40, 60 years or more — I’m worried and have the cajeebers scared out me! I think there’s a few things they forgot to tell us in our RICA classes.
So what everyone is saying is that those Biblical verses regarding God forgiving
and forgetting our sins don’t apply to us today; rather to a particular group of people in that particular biblical time? If so, then God judges sin differently for different people? An if those passages are only for that time in history, then how are we to know that Jesus died for all of us through the end of time and not just those in his own time?
Purgatory makes sense to me regarding sins you have either not repented of or incurred before you had the opportunity to deal with; as well as those things we’ve tended to hang on to and not fully turn over to Christ. But for our entire lifetime, of which most have been dealt with, repented of, made amends for and received absolution – all under the blood of Christ (of which we receive weekly under the Eucharist), I’m having a really rough time with that one. Where then does God’s and Christ’s mercy enter in if we still must pay for sins that have already been forgiven? I also can’t seem to figure out then what repentance, confession, and absolution would be for.
I was told in our RICA classes that it was so we could be cleaned of our sins and stand worthy of accepting our Lord’s mercy. If we must still pay the price for those sins, then we are not actually forgiven through Christ Jesus to begin with and that would make the Eucharist a lie. No matter how hard I try, I can’t believe that.
Let’s take even a mortal sin like adultery. If someone has repented, made things right as best they could between all parties, asked God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ, confessed that sin in a good confession, received absolution and did his penance, but that isn’t the end of that sin; he then has to pay for it all *over again *burning in purgatory for years? If Christ paid the penalty for what we deserved, but then we also have to pay if over and over again, what did Christ die for? And as much as Christ endured, purgatory is so much more painful and lingering so it seems so all in vain. I’m so confused.
