Okay back when I was raised Baptist: If you believe in God you go to Heaven, if not you go to hell.
I am TOTALLY confused on purgatory, praying for folks already dead, do we go to Heaven or hell right off the bat or is there a time we wait, what happens to Protestants who die…
Thanks again!
Kat
Hi Kat. . .
Purgatory is Scriptural, and it makes sense if you think about it as something like the wedding garment for a guest (in Jesus’ time, the family of the groom gave guests a nice, clean garment to wear for the wedding ceremony, so that even if you were poor and dressed in rags, normally, you would be appropriately dressed.) Now, suppose you love God, but you have a few sins on your conscience. You’ve been forgiven, but the effect is still there. (like suppose you broke your neighbor’s window with a baseball. Your neighbor could forgive you, but he still has a broken window that has to be fixed). Purgatory is like ‘fixing the window’. You aren’t being punished, you’re doing what you need to do to complete ‘making up’ for the action that caused the break.
Now suppose that your neighbor said, "Oh it’s ok, I’ll pay for the window’. But still, that window has to be bought and installed, and until it is, your neighbor gets the drafts, the rain, whatever. Jesus ‘paid for the window’, but our actions led to Him being scourged and beaten and killed. As St Paul says, we ‘make up the limitations in Christ’s suffering in our own bodily suffering’.
So. . .here you are, forgiven, justified in Christ. . .but the ‘effects’ of your sin, the broken window, are like faint stains on the garment of your soul. You aren’t quite perfectly clean yet, because you need to cooperate with Christ in atoning for your sins.
Enter purgatory. Which is not quite a ‘place’ but more a ‘state’ or action. And it doesn’t exist ‘in time’, and it will not exist at ALL after the Second Coming.
What it is, is like a ‘cleansing fire’ (as St Paul said, “and some will be saved as though through fire”) in which whatever ‘stain’ we have after Jesus has paid the price for our sin will ‘make our garments white in the Blood of the Lamb". It might even be something which is ‘instantaneous’. Perhaps merely in looking at the "Light of Christ’ fully (instead of ‘in a glass darkly’) will be LIKE a fire to us, and will be our purgatory, in which through that Light, we will become perfectly clean and pure.
As for ‘already dead’, Scripture (good old St Paul again) tells us that of all people, those who have died in Christ are more ALIVE than any person still on earth. So we aren’t praying for ‘dead people’ at all. We are praying to those who will never die, who are united perfectly to Christ in eternal bliss. . . while we ourselves are still wandering ‘separate’ from our selves, from others, and from a full and perfect union with God’. Our bodies are ‘dead’ in sin, whereas those in heaven have eternal life in Christ.
We go to hell right away if we reject Christ. We go to heaven just as soon as we are purified (which can be ‘right away’ if we die with no effects of sin on our souls, or 'after purgatory if we die in grace but with still some sinful attachments, but purgatory itself may be ‘instantaneous.’ )In any case, there is no TIME in eternity, which people did not come to understand until fairly recently. So it could be that a person, dying with some sin, would instantly face Christ, and in the Light of His Glory be purified (purgatory), and then enter Heaven, but it could seem that that instant lasts a long time, even if it didn’t really. Like the last couple of seconds before the end of work can always seem to last 10 times as long as the last couple of seconds of your vacation, even though obviously one second doesn’t last longer than any other second!
As for Protestants. . .hey, Protestants have a LOT of the Truth about Jesus (and that Truth originally came from the Catholic Church). So, if a given Protestant follows that Truth as best he or she can, and loves God as best as he or she can, that Protestant can be saved through following that Truth (from the Catholic Church) because God is merciful and can read our hearts.
Even nonChristians can be saved through the Church, even those who never even know God (Father, Son, and Spirit) or have never heard the gospel. It will be a lot harder for them (the difference between somebody putting together say a complicated piece of equipment with a guidebook, somebody putting the same thing together with a piece of paper with a couple of notes from the guidebook, and somebody putting the same thing together with NO directions at all. All things considering, the people with the guidebook have the best chance of putting the piece of equipment together. But if you have a very technically gifted person working, or a very LUCKY person, they can manage even with a few notes only, and if you have a REALLY genius person with incredible luck, they might manage to do it with no help. (Also, you can have those people with the guidebook be the kind of arrogant snobs who refuse to look at the guidebook and they’ll be unable to put the equipment together in spite of having all the tools they need. . .or you can have them decide that they’ll do it better by 'changing some of the stuff around in the guidebook that they think is outdated, and they want to try something DIFFERENT" --and they’ll louse it up as well. Having the guidebook, while very helpful if used PROPERLY, is no guarantee of success if it is ignored. . .and NOT having the guidebook does not doom a person to failure if they use their talent wisely.
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Anyhow, this is how I understand it, as a Catholic, and upon study. I know it’s limited but I hope it helps. And if there are any defects or faults in this that other Catholics note, please, let the OP know. Any failings are all my own, and not those of the Church or the Faith.
