The month of November, in our Catholic tradition, is devoted to prayerful reflection on “The Last Things” consisting of death and judgement, heaven, hell and, finally, purgatory.
That prayerful reflection has many aspects. For instance, the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed on the first Sunday’s Mass gave us readings that centred more on the living than the dead! In the Gospel miracle of Jesus raising the widow’s son, the stress was on the bereft woman’s grief and the Lord’s compassion for her (Lk 7:11-17). The Old Testament reading spoke of a time when God will lift the mourning veil covering all peoples and even destroy death itself (Isaiah 25:6-9). The message I took from those readings was an encouragement to comfort those who mourn in the spirit of the Beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted” (Mt 5:4).
Another important theme in relation to the faithful departed is to thank God for their influence on our lives, especially for the gift of loving parents, grandparents, siblings, extended family and friends. But, what of those relations and friends who have hurt us and others, some in serious ways, as in cases of abuse or negligence in the home or, even in church?
This is where the teaching on purgatory comes in. We are recommended to pray for those who, though forgiven their sins before death, have some work to do to atone for their faults. The following is the definition given by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the most recent official teaching of the Church’s Magisterium or teaching authority:
All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.
(Article 1030, Catechism of the Catholic Church, Veritas, 1994)
Now contrast this to the definition given in the Irish Catechism promulgated by the Irish Bishops in the 1950s, in the format of question and answer:
Q. What is Purgatory?
A. Purgatory is a place or state of punishment in the next life where some souls suffer for a time before they go to heaven.(Lesson 13, The Catechism, Gill &Son, 1954)
The first major difference is the negative emphasis in the Pre-Vatican Two Church, with its stress on punishment. The contemporary teaching stresses purification over punishment and sets this in the context of the assurance of eternal salvation for those who die in “God’s grace and friendship.”
Another difference is the contrast between the older reference to place or state in the definition of Purgatory, absent from the recent one which prefers to speak in relational rather than spatial terms. The final mention of “enter into the joy of heaven” has more to do with a state of being than a place. This fits in with the tendency to see heaven in terms of our relationship with the Divine. Again, we turn to the current Catechism:
“To live in heaven is ‘to be with Christ.’ The elect live ‘in Christ.’
(Art. 1025)
“Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ.”
(Art. 1026).
In fact, what the contemporary teaching on heaven, hell and purgatory is doing is to think of these realities as “states” rather than places. But what is a ‘state’? This isn’t defined but our common usage may provide some clarity.
For example, we sometimes speak of an emotional ‘state,’ such as happiness or sadness. Now, recall the earlier reference in the Catechism which spoke of “entering into the ‘joy’ of heaven” The stress here must be on ‘entering’ a state of ‘joy’ rather than a place called ‘heaven.’
This approach to ‘life after death’ is made explicit in the article already cited, 1024: “Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfilment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.”
A secondary use of this word “state” may also be useful because it too is essentially relational. This is when we speak of people being in the married or single ‘state.’ One’s life is defined not in terms of place, i.e., where you are, but in terms of who you are with!
Maybe this is why we sometimes distinguish a ‘house’ from a ‘home.’ A home consists of relationships between family members, whereas a house is just a place (which may not be very homely at all, if relationships are fraught).
Sadly, the same relational nature applies to hell in Church teaching, but there it is all about separation, from God and others (see articles 1033 – 1037). That, rather than fire, is the suffering of souls who deliberately reject God’s love and choose to walk alone. May they come to their senses before it is too late.
Alongside this suspicion of spatial language in reference to life after death, there is also a reluctance to speak of time. That older definition of purgatory spoke of some souls suffering “for a time” before going to heaven. As with the case of the language of place, we must be extremely careful of assuming that our concept of time has a similar application to the next life.
Indeed, we are already familiar with the biblical warning on this issue, when it reminds us that for God, a thousand years are like a single day (Psalm 90:4 & 2Peter 3:8). We cannot go into this complex and mysterious discussion here, especially in speaking of eternity, which is really about timelessness rather than time going on and on or everlasting time.
The nearest we can get to this is in fact those moments of joy when we are unaware of either time or space! How different experiences of pain are when every minute seems like “an eternity!”
In all of this discussion, we must recognise that the starting point is surely those words of St Paul speaking of the afterlife:
“No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
(1Cor.2:9)
In the light of this warning, we need to take care how we use metaphors for mysterious things, especially the temptation to take them literally. This fault may be responsible for some false or misleading ideas of states like purgatory when we were taught about them as children. When I learned that purgatory was a place or state of punishment from that earlier catechism, I naturally thought of it as something like a prison, where the “suffering souls” were helplessly waiting behind barbed wire fences (like a concentration camp) for people like me to pray for their release, possibly for years and years if they had committed lots of venial sins in this life and hadn’t done enough penance to atone for them!
But such images fail to ‘do justice’ (deliberate pun!) to the merciful love of God who calls the dead into his loving presence to experience purification, not punishment. How that happens we haven’t the faintest idea!
The Catholic Catechism doesn’t give a direct answer but warns against any comparison with the so called “fires of hell.” In article 1031 the document states:
“The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.”
It goes on to speak of a traditional image of fire, but in this case a “cleansing” one. Again, we are using metaphors which are not literally true but are still significant.
It may be helpful in this context simply to recall the positive as well as the destructive connotations of the fire metaphor in Scripture. Thus, God appears to Moses in a ‘burning’ bush, but it is to promise to save his people from slavery. The Holy Spirit comes down on the apostles like ‘tongues of fire, to set them ‘on fire’ with the Good News for all humankind. There is no reference to burns needing a visit to the Emergency Department in Jerusalem Hospital!
I can find no mention “suffering souls” in the latest teaching on purgatory. But we can surmise from the concept of a “state” that it could involve some psychological pain such as remorse and guilt which have to be experienced before one can enter that full relationship with our merciful God.
Perhaps another image which might be the least damaging in thinking of this experience or relationship borrows from the concept of restorative justice, where someone who offends, rather than face a court sentence comes to acknowledge their guilt, express remorse and promise to live a reformed life. This was the process we associate with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, developed to deal with the multitude of crimes committed during the apartheid era and the struggle for majority rule in that country.
How we can be part of the process of purification is also problematic, in spite of references to prayer, indulgences and almsgiving. I can only think of one way in which this might work and with some reservations given our limited thinking. It concerns forgiveness in two ways.
Since the teaching of Jesus, e.g. in the Lord’s Prayer, makes God’s forgiveness dependent on our forgiving others, we can imagine people dying in a ‘state’ (that word again!) of bitterness or resentment which would hold them back from that perfect holiness which Jesus identifies with the Father’s compassion, “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate” (Lk.6:36).
Maybe our prayers can help change their hearts to forgive those who have offended them. And from the other direction, could it be that we need to forgive those who have died and offended us in their lifetime? Perhaps our hardness of heart is hindering that final reconciliation with God for someone else?
In conclusion, the key issue I have raised on the meaning of purgatory concerns how little we can say with certainty about this mysterious dimension, which is actually impossible for us to conceive, mainly because our minds are grounded in space and time, which then colour the metaphors we use. Protestants tend to dismiss the whole concept, especially because of the lack of scriptural support for it.
Much of the Catholic tradition’s interest comes from its moral theology, based on a legal model of large (mortal) and small (venial) crimes or sins, judgements, and penalties. Justice rather than mercy is the controlling image, leading to that older catechism definition of a place or state of punishment where souls suffer in some kind of fire.
But can we simply replace that image with one of a mercy which overlooks even the most wicked deeds of people with a God who pats them on the head and grants a free pass into heaven? Whatever happened to that “narrow door” spoken of by Jesus when pointing to the way to the Kingdom (Mt.7:13)?
The present doctrine of the Catholic Church with its plethora of inverted commas around those “places or states” and focussing instead on changing relationships, is the least misleading approach to the concept of purgatory.
Of course, it remains true that whatever purgatory is like when we “slip off this mortal coil” it still makes sense to “do” our purgatory on Earth instead of in that still mysterious state that may await us.
Kieran Cronin OFM