Purgatory view

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I voted that there is no purgatory and there is a Heaven and a Hell.

This shouldn’t be much of a surprise. 😉

Your Resident Pseudo-Protestant,

~mango~
 
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mizcebe:
Nel,

I just finished a little book on the subject: “The Amazing Secret of the Souls in Purgatory: An Interview with Maria Simma” It was written by Sister Emmanuel of Medjugorje.
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I’ve read this book also, but the title on mine says, The wonderful secret of the Souls in Purgatory . It sounded authentic to me.

Based on what visionaries and other holy souls have reported about purgatory, I would have to conclude that Purgatory is a real place with real fire. The poor souls’ separation from God causes their greatest pain.
 
I’m not sure we should neccesarily assume that when we die we are suddenly outside of time, or that spiritual realities do not exist in a manner that is spacial or physical in a respective sense.
I know of no church teaching which states that we existed prior to conception, either physically or spiritually. If this is true, then as human beings our being(existence) has its beggining in time, and at the time of our death we do not cease to exist but pass the veil from the temporal to the eternal. Does this neccesitate a passing from time? Or do we cease to be human beings at death? I think that neither are true. We differ from God in that at our death, or at our conception depending on how one looks at it, we enter eternity. The divine being is eternal because there was no beggining to God. We enter eternity because God made us in His image and likeness so differ in our experience of the same reality. I’m sure no one suggests that we become omnipresent at our death as God is. After all why does the book of Revelations tell us that the martyrs cry out to God ‘How long till you avenge our deaths…’ If this is not a sign of duration in the afterlife I don’t know what is.
On the note of Purgatory being a real place with a real purifying fire, if there is no place so to speak, then how is it that the souls in Heaven, Hell and Purgatory are seperated. if eternity is void of some sort of spacial dimension, then those in Heaven would presumablly be able to view the souls of the dammed forever. How can this be as Jesus frequently said of the damned on judgement day ‘Depart from me you evil doers.’ The very fact that there are different realities in the after life, I believe, neccesitates spaciality in eternity.
Space and time may be experienced differently in eternity, but I must hold that they are realities we will experience. (That is, short of a really good premise to the contrary!)
 
I chose instantaneous because I don’t think there is such a thing as “time” in purgatory. Time is of the physical world.

The Holy Souls in Purgatory are suffering the purification of the temporal punishment due to sin.

tem·po·ral adj. Of, relating to, or limited by time …
 
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Nel:
Hmm…I’ve got a little problem with terms here.

My confessor tells me that purgatory *is in *heaven - it’s not some in-between place. There aren’t three ‘places,’ heaven, purgatory and hell.

Also, of course, there’s no time there.

And no ‘there’ there, as we think of ‘there.’ Spiritual things don’t have ‘edges,’ they don’t take up space.

I have often thought about how various saints felt a sort of ‘burning’ in their hearts when they had a profound experience of God, and I think that the ‘burning’ or ‘flames’ of purgatory might be something like that. I’ve had something like that - nothing like some great saint, no doubt - just this ‘burning’ feeling of passionate love for and longing for God.

I suppose that purgatory is like this: We have been judged and found ‘worthy’ (so to speak) of entering heaven, but there are still the ‘stains’ of sins on our soul. Those ‘sins’ are what separate us from God, we’re not perfectly pure enough yet (our souls aren’t) to be in the presence of such perfect purity and holiness as God is. We’re sort of ‘in the vestibule’ of heaven. We can ‘see’ God afar off, sort of, we know that He is there, we long to be in His presence with no barriers, we are passionately ‘on fire’ with His love for us…but there’s that ‘dirt’ on our souls, that ‘stain’ of sin that holds us back, somehow from being able to come into His presence.

I think that purgatory is a state of knowing the perfect holiness of God…and at the same time, looking at oneself and seeing the difference between one’s imperfect ‘unholiness’ and God’s perfect holiness. This awareness makes you ‘on fire’ with love for God and a longing for Him, while also ‘painfully’ aware that because of your own choices, you aren’t pure and holy - ‘clean’ - enough to be in His presence.

I think that people ‘suffer’ in purgatory because of the awareness of their distance from God and their acute longing to be wholly in His presence. I think that the souls in purgatory ‘hurt good’ in the sense that they know that this pain, this longing, this fire of passionate love/longing for God is something that purges them and purifies them and brings them closer to God.

I don’t think that purgatory is a fearful place at all. It’s not the bliss of heaven, its the longing for the bliss of heaven because we know what that bliss is that awaits us, far better than we ever know it in this life.

Maybe, in this life, we are always sort of ‘tending’ toward sin, there’s always a little part of us that ‘likes’ sin. And in purgatory, we are purged of that part that ‘likes’ sin, because we see sin for what it really is - and God for Who He really is. We are happy to be having that natural tendency to sin purged away, even while the purging, the passionate longing for perfect purity, ‘burns’ our souls.

Well, you asked.
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You can tell you’re a teacher because you explain things so well!!! Nicely put!
 
Quote from the book “Understanding Catholicism” saying
Purgatory had traditionally been thought of as a place, like hell, where people spend time to suffer for their sins and are later released to heaven. More recently, the pope has clarified that purgatory is the condition of the soul of a person who at the time of death has not completely repented for wrongdoing.
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Here is what I found other place on the web:
In three controversial Wednesday Audiences, Pope John Paul II pointed out that the essential characteristic of heaven, hell or purgatory is that they are states of being of a spirit (angel/demon) or human soul, rather than places, as commonly perceived and represented in human language. This language of place is, according to the Pope, inadequate to describe the realities involved, since it is tied to the temporal order in which this world and we exist. In this he is applying the philosophical categories used by the Church in her theology and saying what St. Thomas Aquinas said long before him.
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“Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us.” [St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q69, a1, reply 1]
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Edwin1961:
First of all, he said that Purgatory does not exist as it does in the Western Church…(so the thought mentioned above post is a true way of Eastern thinking).
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Maybe I’m misreading your post, but… Doesn’t the same Purgatory exist, regardless of which rite you are? To claim that Catholics in the Roman rite lack a notion of purgatory like you described, but rather believe in a literal place of literal flame and a certain number of days would be to ignore many of the posts on this thread. Some mystics and other writers have expressed purgatory in terms of fire, yes, but the Church (not the Western or Eastern Church, but the Catholic–universal–Church) has not defined it that way, so there are plenty of us who hold your view (an acceptable way of “Western thinking”), as well as those who hold the more physical view.
 
Albert Bessières, S.J. , Wife, Mother, and Mystic (Blessed Anna-MariaTaigi), Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., Rockford, Illinois

(from the backcover of this book): The Life of Blessed Anna Maria Taigi: “Her intellectual gifts were altogether overshadowed by an unexampled miracle. Shortly after she entered on the way of perfection, there began to appear to here a golden globe which became as a sun of matchless light; in this all things were revealed to her.”
Concerning the particular judgement, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, there is a footnote on page 184 in this book that records the Blessed Anna Maria Taigi saw this in her “sun”:

Father Callistus Vie de la V. Anna Taigi, 5th edition, p. 371) writes: “The priest who was her [Anna Maria’s] confidant one day had a discussion with another person on the small number of the elect. He contended that the greater number of Christians of to-day were damned, and his opponent defended the opposite opinion. The holy woman hearing of this discussion, looked into her sun and saw the destiny of those who had died during that day. Very few, not as many as ten, went straight to heaven; many remained in purgatory, and those cast into hell were as numerous as snowflakes in mid winter”. This quotation is take from the deposition of Anna’s confessor.

For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
Matt. 7:14
 
I think it’s real but I don’t know if it involves either a “place” or “time”, so I voted “other”. It’s a process.
 
Bud Stewart:
The hardest part about Purgatory must be that you are so close to God, but not quite there. Oh the anticipation! But, those souls in Purgatory are surely blessed they know that they will be in heaven some day. If only we on earth could all say that with certitude.
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Bud,
Well said, I couldn’t add anything more!🙂
 
In three controversial Wednesday Audiences, Pope John Paul II pointed out that the essential characteristic of heaven, hell or purgatory is that they are states of being of a spirit (angel/demon) or human soul, rather than places, as commonly perceived and represented in human language. This language of place is, according to the Pope, inadequate to describe the realities involved, since it is tied to the temporal order in which this world and we exist. In this he is applying the philosophical categories used by the Church in her theology and saying what St. Thomas Aquinas said long before him.

“Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us.” [St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q69, a1, reply 1]

Great quote! And that is why I voted other. Neither ‘place’ nor ‘state’ seem adequate to describe purgatory. I would hesitate to say that the they are outside of time but I doubt that time ‘works’ the same way (unless time is considered a factor of punishment.) :confused:
 
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SMHW:
I would hesitate to say that the they are outside of time but I doubt that time ‘works’ the same way (unless time is considered a factor of punishment.) :confused:
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Souls in purgatory may not perceive time as we know it, but since they are suffering the temporal punishment due to sin, there must be some temporal dimension in purgatory.

Perhaps a “day” in Purgatory is like a thousand years in our world. 😦
 
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Nel:
I think that purgatory is a state of knowing the perfect holiness of God…and at the same time, looking at oneself and seeing the difference between one’s imperfect ‘unholiness’ and God’s perfect holiness. This awareness makes you ‘on fire’ with love for God and a longing for Him, while also ‘painfully’ aware that because of your own choices, you aren’t pure and holy - ‘clean’ - enough to be in His presence.
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A masterful explaination. Well said. 👍
 
Charliemac wrote:
As I understand it no one will enter heaven until the soul has come to put God above all things. Mother, father, spouse, children, and even favorite pet.
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Pets and animals do not have souls. Sad, but true.
 
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Maria-Pia:
Pets and animals do not have souls. Sad, but true.
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i think Charlie was saying a human soul has to put God even before a favourite pet. not saying even pets have to put God before everything else… not having souls, they really don’t have much of a choice! 🙂
 
I read Purgatory by F.X. Shouppe, but I didn’t care for it’s description of Purgatory being somewhere in the bowels of the Earth somewhere on the outskirts of Hell (remember Heaven and Hell aren’t physical places).

I think Purgatory can be described as the vestibule of Heaven. I like Scott Hahn’s statement that “Hell is hot but God is hotter, as the bible describes him as a ‘consuming fire.’” I think the Bible somewhere mentions us being refined like gold in a refiners fire. I think this is an apt description of purgatrory: burning off all the dross and impurities in our lives.

Another idea I like is C.S. Lewis’s concept of “farther in and higher up,” which he explored in books like The Great Divorce and The Last Battle and which he mentions with purgatory in Letters to Malcolm .
 
Purgatory is a temporary sepperation from God, in which we ask God for forgivness for those sins we didn’t get of out chest while on earth.
 
This has turned into a most interesting thread!

I have enjoyed reading it because one can see the deep richness of peoples faith here.

One point of interest to me: this seems to be the only doctrine where the details are up for grabs. Some of the descriptions are actually poetic, although quite serious. There is a little bit of Mystic in each of us!

I am not keen on the name, it reminds me of “Penitentiary” or “Reformatory”! a place of punishment.

“Refinery” makes more sense to me! Of course, I don’t make the rules. 🙂

The reason I suggest this term is that I am taking some liberties with the Eastern perspective, which I am very fond of. I don’t think any discussion about Purgatory is complete without considering the doctrine of Theosis. We are “called to be Holy”. We are spiritual “athletes” in training, the Apostle writes in just such terms. We discipline ourselves with fasting, praise, alms and good works. It is a lifelong striving and God in His Mercy will not deny us if our life is cut short. We have Hope that some how, some way we will see the Face of God. This is the doctrine of Love.

Is it purgation? is it refinement? does it matter? We have Hope in the Lord! God is love! :love:
 
Cardinal Newman wrote one of the most beautiful descriptions of purgatory I have ever seen in the Dream of Gerontius.

I believe he has perfectly described it. It is a place in Heaven and a state of the Soul.
 
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Melchior:
How does “time” work in Purgatory? Since the after life seems to be out side of time. Just curious. Mel
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Does time exist in Heaven?

At the time of the Last Judgement a “new heaven and new earth” will come into existence. It makes sense that time will not cease at the Last Judgement but it will continue. Time is a part of God’s creation, as will be the new heaven and earth - these are created things which have a beginning in time… and it seems likely that they have a continuance in time.

Revelation 22:1-2
Code: 
    And he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as
    crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb,
    in the middle of its street. And on either side of the river
    was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its
    fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the
    healing of the nations.
Notice the passing of time. The tree of life puts forth its fruit “every
month.”

Also from the Book of Revelation…St John says:

“And there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour.”

Fr Ambrose

PS: I am not claiming infallibility on this 🙂
 
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