"Time" in Purgatory

[retrovert]

Can someone answer me this. If time and space no longer exist after we die how do we account for the “time” we may have to spend in purgatory?

 

[otjm]

The “time” in purgatory is a misunderstanding in part as to time as it relates to indulgences, and in part is an attempt to speak about a form of existence for which we do not really have language. If one has no body, it is not that change is not possible; but time to us mortals is a measure of change and our references are to changes within the mortal world. Without a body it is much more difficult to define meaningfully what time means.

 

[Genesis315]

I tend to think there is time–since we are experiencing a change and change is a function of time. However, none of us can say for sure what existence is like outside of our universe.

In the past indulgences were given a time component because they corresponded to specific penances. Penances in the early Church were often long and public. An indulgence was equated to a certain time period of penance. For example, praying a prayer enriched with a 300 day indulgence would remit as much temporal punishment as doing 300 days of penance.

Since penances are no longer done this way and Purgatory may not have such a worldly time component, the Church changed the terminology used with indulgences to just “partial” and “plenary” (all temporal punishment is remitted by a plenary indulgence; just some is remitted by a partial indulgence.)

 

[FCEGM]

I tend to think there is time–since we are experiencing a change and change is a function of time. However, none of us can say for sure what existence is like outside of our universe.

It seems to me that one of our struggles after death will be precisely that transition from living within a frame of time, to living in the eternal now. Thus, it also seems to me that those Saints and saints who are ready for heaven immediately are so precisely because the gift of contemplation has brought them entree into that Now, the Beatific Vision, while those who enter Purgatory have more of time (however brief or long) to die to self and live for and in God - or at least it seems to to them since their hunger for God grows the “closer” they get to Him.

 

[Leopard]

The experience of Purgatory is a temporal (as in temporary) experience in so far as it has a definite begining, a definite end (it is not eternal), and some kind of duration. What the relationship is, if any, between that duration and time as we experience it in this life is unknown, however.