There is purgatory BECAUSE God knows that we aren’t perfect. Purgatory is a place of healing and cleansing to prepare us for heaven.
C.S. Lewis said:
Realistically we can. The host of saints attest to this. Starting with the martyrs. Martyrdom is a one way ticket to heaven. Leading a virtuous life will also get you into heaven. I don’t think there is such a thing as a person must sin. Sin is always a choice, even if it is on poorly provided information. Grace does work in one’s life, and can transform someone into a saint. Sin is always an option, not a demand. Being armed with the right weapons from childhood, one can keep himself pure and clean. Most of us don’t attest to this, for we were not rightfully prepared for the spiritual war. But, there is no one who cannot win remission of sins and who cannot rebuild his life, in shambles as it may be. Most of the redeemed will go through Purgatory. As painful as it may be, at least it’s not everlasting. I just hope I will be, at least, in Purgatory.
I would compare G-d’s standards to so-called “stretch goals,” which were once common in the business world. These goals are designed to surpass the normative capabilities of workers but, at the same time, encourage them to strive and achieve beyond their customary productive output. By setting high standards for us, so high that we may not be able to achieve them completely, G-d encourages us to lead better lives and achieve more than we would if His expectations were lower.
Everyone that chooses heaven will be made perfect in Christ. When I mean perfect I mean PERFECT. In Jesus suffering and death on the cross he has made it that you whole life is perfect even though it contains sin. All we need to do is accept this gift of the redemption. In purgatory we are asked to give up our disordered attachments (sins) and once we are totally free of them Christ will be able to be in complete Union with us (heaven). There is nothing we can do to make ourselves perfect other than simply receive the gift Christ intends to give us.
Personally I don’t like the analogy of purgatory being for “paying off every last debt”. Purgatory is not debtor’s prison.
Amen brother. All we owe God is to trust in him. When we fully trust in him our purgatory is over. Purgatory is not a punishment but a healing.
“Agree with thy adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him: lest perhaps the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Amen, I say to thee, thou shalt not go out from thence, till thou pay the last farthing.”
Yes - we must respect such views - if they are helpful. In the case of the OP, that does not seem to be the case…
Also note that satisfying the justice’s demands of us is actually part of the healing, and so while there is sometimes a tendency to speak of punishment and purgation/healing as separate things, I think (especially in the case of purgatory and the actions of God in general) this is a false dichotomy. The chance to truly make amends and satisfy the debts we have incurred, while not always pleasant, is in fact good for us.
Iron Donkey:
Feeling lazy today… the notion that purgatory is punitive doesn’t sound quite right to me. Do you have any citations from magisterial sources that say it is so?
Make no mistake about purgatory, it is a place of great suffering. Burning our last desires of self-love and sin will not be quite pleasant, but with the certainty of salvation, one can be enormously happy. And we know that once the soul is free from the body, we will experience pain and happiness at a level we never did. It is the sole consolation of Purgatory, that we are not damned for all eternity, and we will get to see the face of God.
“. . . If they have died repentant for their sins and having love of God, but have not made satisfaction for things they have done or omitted by fruits worthy of penance, then their souls, after death, are cleansed by the punishment of Purgatory. . .”
Right: purgatory is about cleansing.
Again, cleansing.
Yet, we need to see what, in context, the Church says about temporal punishment: "every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin. " (CCC, 1472)
Here, I think, is where my internal alarms go off. If you want to call the cleansing of purgatory ‘punitive’, then that’s ok, I guess – there’s certainly a tradition of characterizing it that way (although that’s not at all the way that the Church currently describes it to us. Are you really saying that the metaphors of ‘punishment’ that the Church used 400 or 600 years ago are more accurate than the teachings of the catechism today?). However, you’re linking the notion of ‘punishment’ to the notion of “God’s Justice.” Clearly, God’s justice is satisfied through absolution (“These two punishments [eternal and temporal] must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God”, CCC 1472), and so, there is no satisfaction due through an appeal to justice, but rather, through an appeal to the goodness of God, who gives us the grace necessary to attain to heaven: “when the day comes, serenely facing death, the Christian must strive to accept this temporal punishment of sin as a grace” (CCC, 1473).