[Apologetics] Purgatory Exists. And It Burns

[Dianne Dawson]

source: 　http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1346327?eng=y


Purgatory Exists. And It Burns

But its fire is an interior one. The fire of the justice and grace of God. 
Benedict XVI has explained this in an audience with 7,000 pilgrims. But even 
more in a memorable page of the encyclical "Spe Salvi" 


by Sandro Magister

ROME, January 17, 2011 – In illustrating the life of Saint Catherine of Genoa, 
at the general audience last Wednesday, Benedict XVI took the thought of this 
saint as a point of departure to explain what purgatory is.

During the second half of the 15th century, the time of Catherine, the 
contemporary image of purgatory was like the one depicted above. It was the 
mountain of purification sung of by Dante in the "Divine Comedy."

That purgatory is a physical place is a very ancient conviction, which endured 
until recent times.

But not for Catherine. For her, the fire of purgatory was essentially thought of 
as an interior fire.

And Benedict XVI has completely agreed with her.

Some in the media have covered this catechesis of pope Joseph Ratzinger, placing 
it among the good news. As if the pope had decreed not so much the interiority 
of purgatory, but its wholesome disappearance. A disappearance, moreover, that 
to a large extent has already taken place in the current preaching of the 
Church, as of several decades ago.

But the teaching of Benedict XVI says exactly the opposite. Not the 
disappearance of purgatory, but its true reality.

Almost no one has recalled this. But Benedict XVI has written his most powerful 
pages on purgatory in the encyclical "Spe Salvi," the most personal of the three 
encyclicals he has published so far, the only one planned and written entirely 
by him alone, from the first line to the last.

Below is presented the passage of the catechesis on Saint Catherine of Genoa 
relating to purgatory.

And immediately afterward, the paragraphs from "Spe Salvi" also dedicated to 
purgatory, against the background of the judgment of God, which "is hope, both 
because it is justice and because it is grace."


__________



"THIS IS PURGATORY, AN INTERIOR FIRE"

by Benedict XVI

From the general audience of  January 12, 2011


[...] Catherine's thought on purgatory, for which she is particularly known, is 
condensed in the last two parts of the book mentioned at the beginning: 
"Treatise on Purgatory" and "Dialogues on the Soul and Body."

It is important to observe that, in her mystical experience, Catherine never had 
specific revelations on purgatory or on souls that are being purified there. 
However, in the writings inspired by our saint purgatory is a central element, 
and the way of describing it has original characteristics in relation to her 
era. 


The first original feature refers to the "place" of the purification of souls. 
In her time [purgatory] was presented primarily with recourse to images 
connected to space: There was thought of a certain space where purgatory would 
be found. For Catherine, instead, purgatory is not represented as an element of 
the landscape of the core of the earth; it is a fire that is not exterior but 
interior.

This is purgatory, an interior fire. The saint speaks of the soul's journey of 
purification to full communion with God, based on her own experience of profound 
sorrow for the sins committed, in contrast to the infinite love of God. We have 
heard about the moment of her conversion, when Catherine suddenly felt God's 
goodness, the infinite distance of her life from this goodness and a burning 
fire within her. And this is the fire that purifies, it is the interior fire of 
purgatory.

Here also there is an original feature in relation to the thought of the era. 
She does not begin, in fact, from the beyond to narrate the torments of 
purgatory – as was usual at that time and perhaps also today – and then indicate 
the path for purification or conversion. Instead our saint begins from her own 
interior experience of her life on the path to eternity.

The soul, says Catherine, appears before God still bound to the desires and the 
sorrow that derive from sin, and this makes it impossible for it to enjoy the 
Beatific Vision of God. Catherine affirms that God is so pure and holy that the 
soul with stains of sin cannot be in the presence of the Divine Majesty. And we 
also realize how far we are, how full we are of so many things, so that we 
cannot see God. The soul is conscious of the immense love and perfect justice of 
God and, in consequence, suffers for not having responded correctly and 
perfectly to that love, and that is why the love itself of God becomes a flame. 
Love itself purifies it from its dross of sin. 


Theological and mystical sources typical of the era can be found in Catherine's 
work. Particularly there is an image from Dionysius the Areopagite: that of the 
golden thread that unites the human heart with God himself. When God has 
purified man, he ties him with a very fine thread of gold, which is his love, 
and attracts him to himself with such strong affection that man remains as 
"overcome and conquered and altogether outside himself." Thus the human heart is 
invaded by the love of God, which becomes the only guide, the sole motor of his 
existence. 


This situation of elevation to God and of abandonment to his will, expressed in 
the image of the thread, is used by Catherine to express the action of the 
divine light on souls in purgatory, light that purifies them and elevates them 
to the splendors of the shining rays of God.

Dear friends, the saints, in their experience of union with God, reach such 
profound "knowledge" of the divine mysteries, in which love and knowledge are 
fused, that they are of help to theologians themselves in their task of study, 
of "intelligentia fidei," of "intelligentia" of the mysteries of the faith, of 
real deepening in the mysteries, for example, of what purgatory is. [...]

__________



"HE HIMSELF WILL BE SAVED, BUT ONLY AS THROUGH FIRE..."

by Benedict XVI

From the encyclical "Spe Salvi" of November 30, 2007


[...] I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential 
argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favour of faith in eternal 
life. The purely individual need for a fulfilment that is denied to us in this 
life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive 
for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the 
impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the 
necessity for Christ's return and for new life become fully convincing.

44. To protest against God in the name of justice is not helpful. A world 
without God is a world without hope (cf. Eph 2:12). Only God can create justice. 
And faith gives us the certainty that he does so. The image of the Last 
Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it 
may even be the decisive image of hope. Is it not also a frightening image? I 
would say: it is an image that evokes responsibility, an image, therefore, of 
that fear of which Saint Hilary spoke when he said that all our fear has its 
place in love.

God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope. And in 
his justice there is also grace. This we know by turning our gaze to the 
crucified and risen Christ. Both these things – justice and grace – must be seen 
in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does 
not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so 
that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. 
Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and 
this kind of grace in his novel "The Brothers Karamazov."

Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their 
victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened. [...] In the 
parable of the rich man and Lazarus (cf. Lk 16:19-31), Jesus admonishes us 
through the image of a soul destroyed by arrogance and opulence, who has created 
an impassable chasm between himself and the poor man; the chasm of being trapped 
within material pleasures; the chasm of forgetting the other, of incapacity to 
love, which then becomes a burning and unquenchable thirst. We must note that in 
this parable Jesus is not referring to the final destiny after the Last 
Judgement, but is taking up a notion found, inter alia, in early Judaism, namely 
that of an intermediate state between death and resurrection, a state in which 
the final sentence is yet to be pronounced.

45. This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these 
souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the 
rich man illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a 
provisional form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve 
purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God.

The early Church took up these concepts, and in the Western Church they 
gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to examine 
here the complex historical paths of this development; it is enough to ask what 
it actually means.

With death, our life-choice becomes definitive?our life stands before the judge. 
Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can 
have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their 
desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a 
lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within 
themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can 
be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be 
beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we 
mean by the word Hell. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly 
pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their 
neighbours?people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their 
entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they 
already are.

46. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For 
the great majority of people – we may suppose – there remains in the depths of 
their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the 
concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises 
with evil?much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it 
still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the 
soul.

What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the 
impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else 
might occur? Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an 
idea of the differing impact of God's judgement according to each person's 
particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to 
express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these 
images?simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we 
have any experience of it.

Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: 
Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation 
and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in 
death. Then Paul continues: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, 
silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw – each man's work will become 
manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, 
and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which 
any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any 
man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, 
but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15).

In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different 
forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved 
we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to 
receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal 
marriage-feast.

47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns 
and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is 
the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This 
encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to 
become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere 
straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when 
the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies 
salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably 
painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the 
holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become 
totally ourselves and thus totally of God.

In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the 
way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us 
for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards 
truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ's 
Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming 
power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of 
love becomes our salvation and our joy.

It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning 
in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming 
“moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning?it is the heart's time, 
it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ.

The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is 
grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God 
would still owe us an answer to the question about justice – the crucial 
question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the 
end it could bring only fear to us all.

The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together – 
judgement and grace – that justice is firmly established: we all work out our 
salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us 
all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our 
“advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).

48. A further point must be mentioned here, because it is important for the 
practice of Christian hope. Early Jewish thought includes the idea that one can 
help the deceased in their intermediate state through prayer (see for example 2 
Macc 12:38-45; first century BC). The equivalent practice was readily adopted by 
Christians and is common to the Eastern and Western Church.

The East does not recognize the purifying and expiatory suffering of souls in 
the afterlife, but it does acknowledge various levels of beatitude and of 
suffering in the intermediate state. The souls of the departed can, however, 
receive “solace and refreshment” through the Eucharist, prayer and almsgiving. 
The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and 
receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond 
the limits of death?this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity 
throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel 
the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of 
gratitude or even a request for pardon?

Now a further question arises: if “Purgatory” is simply purification through 
fire in the encounter with the Lord, Judge and Saviour, how can a third person 
intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to the other? When we ask 
such a question, we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. 
Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they 
are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved 
alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, 
say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: 
for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous 
to that person, something external, not even after death. In the 
interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other – my prayer for him – can 
play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert 
earthly time into God's time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time 
is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it 
ever in vain.

In this way we further clarify an important element of the Christian concept of 
hope. Our hope is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly 
hope for me too. As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: how 
can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be 
saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise? Then I will have done my 
utmost for my own personal salvation as well. [...]

__________


The complete text of the encyclical:

> "Spe Salvi"

__________


The complete text of Benedict XVI's catechesis on Saint Catherine of Genoa:

> General audience of January 12, 2011
 
Like a deer that longs for running waters so my soul longs for you, O God.
Ps 42:1


      
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