Getting Rid of Our Addictions

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Purgatory

Have you ever thought to yourself “Well, as long as I get into Purgatory, that’s good enough for me.” This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about the Christian life, and about what Purgatory is. Because, if we understand what Purgatory is, it should make you more serious about holiness, not less.

When we start to talk about purgatory, it’s maybe not bad to begin by reminding people that the Christian life is a spiritual battle. Jesus said, “Think not that I have come to bring peace, but the sword,” and St. Paul spoke of fighting the good fight.

There are always three kinds of people after a war – and that’s true after the struggle of this life. There’s the Hero – someone who gave all they had, left it all on the field, who made amazing sacrifices and ran incredible risks for his cause. The Heroes of holiness are the Saints. And again, that’s what we’re all supposed to be.

There’s the Traitor – someone who joins the other side – who betrays his family, his people, those who love him, and fights for the enemy. After this life, the traitors – those who have served the devil in fighting against God, the Church, and human goodness itself… Those are the ones who go to the side they have chosen. They retreat to Hell, along with their masters.

Finally, there’s the Cowards – they don’t rebel against the cause, but they spend most of their time trying to stay safe on the battlefield – worrying about their own comfort, safety, or glory. So what happens to the cowards? They may be saved, but they must endure the shame and the suffering of purgatory.

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Pain of Detox

Traditionally, there are two kinds of suffering that happen in Purgatory. The first suffering we could call the pain of detox. All our sins, all our addictions, keep us from being happy. That’s why alcoholics and sexaholics and drug addicts – guess what? – they’re not happy. So if you brought your vices, your disordered desires and thought-patterns into heaven, you wouldn’t be happy and heaven wouldn’t be heaven for you.

You’re only hope is to go through God’s rehab program. And rehab hurts. Ask anybody who’s tried to get over a physical addiction – tried to get the sickness out of their flesh. Then remember that in purgatory, you’ve got to get the sickness out of your soul. You’ve got to burn out the resentment, you’ve got to sweat out the self-centeredness, the vanity…, you’ve got to work through the shakes and the DTs until you can let go of the denial about all the people you’ve hurt. It’s gonna hurt like a mother.

God’s rehab center is a mercy. But trust me, you want to spend as little time there as possible. You want to get free now. You want to be happy now. You want to get out from your addictions to vice and sin now. Don’t put it off.

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Pain of Loss

But the worst suffering of Purgatory actually isn’t the detox. The worst suffering is realizing the opportunities you’ve lost.

Do you remember in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, where the ghosts of rich men hover around a homeless woman and her child – and the ghosts scream in agony because it would have been so easy for them to have helped her. And now it’s too late. There’s nothing they can do.

Or did you ever see Schindler’s List? At the end the main character realizes how easy it would have been to have sold his car, or his watch, and saved the lives of more human beings. But now it’s too late. He missed his opportunity.

In purgatory, you’ll realize that you could be with God right now. And you’ll see how you could have helped your children, and your friends, and strangers – it wouldn’t have taken much, just a little faith and a little sacrifice, and you could have saved them from so much misery.

But you didn’t do it. You chose your own comfort, your own pleasure, your own will. And you left them to suffer. And now it’s too late. You can’t go back you missed your chance. You will not be able to help that way ever again. And you will see the suffering you could have prevented, and you will wail.

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Getting rid of our Addictions

So, we want to get rid of our addictions to vice and sin…Here’s a little game plan:

Step One: Spend time with God every day in deeper prayer. By this I mean meditation on the Word of God in the Rosary or Lectio Divina – the two forms the Catechism suggests. Seven days a week – not just one or two. This will increase your desire for God, will change your way of thinking, and if you conclude every meditation with a practical resolution it will change your behavior.

Step Two: Daily Examination of Conscience to reveal your habitual temptations, vices and sins – your addictions.

Step Three: Go to Jesus, the Divine Physician in the Sacrament of Reconciliation to forgive and heal you of your sin.

Step Four: Remove the Near Occasions of Sin. Our sins, our temptations, and our vices, are nearly always linked to particular situations. Sinful behavior and addiction are largely environmental. If you put folks in a certain environment, they’re almost certain to give in to their temptation. But if you remove them from that environment, the intensity of their temptations – and their likelihood of giving into it – goes way down.

Identify your habits of sin, then remove the things from your environment that trigger the sin. Or remove yourself from them.

This is just what classic Catholic moral advice has always said: avoid near occasion of sin. The eye we need to pluck out, the hand we need to cut off, is the environment, the situation, in which we are prone to succumb to our particular vices.

Do this and you will end as a hero.

Don’t do it, well, there’s always the traitor or the coward.

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Don’t Waste Any Time in Purgatory

a.  Purgatory is a reminder that a cowardly life, a mediocre life, is simply a life that stores up pain and regret.

b.  A life of holiness, a life free from selfishness and vice, a life of love is the only way to be happy now.

                                        i.    And it’s certainly the only way to enjoy the joys of the next life without an awful, tragic intermediate state.

c.  We only have one life. Purgatory reminds us not to waste any of it. Purgatory reminds us to become saints as soon as we can.