Purgatory
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One
In Heaven we will participate in divine nature, we will be like God, like Jesus, fully human and divine.
What prevents us from achieving this? Our disordered attachments and vices.
The Book of Revelation 21:27 says nothing unholy will enter heaven. That means the vices of pride, vain ambition, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, lust, gossip, resentment, and so on cannot be in heaven. Well, what are we going to do? No, I don’t mean we won’t have any fun in heaven if those vices aren’t there…I mean - what are we going to do if we have these vices in us when we die and those vices can’t be in heaven?
Well, we’re gonna need to get rid of them. We’ll need to be purified. The Catechism teaches (1030) “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.”
Two
Purgatory is not a place of torture. It is where we detox.
Purgatory is like detox. All our sins, all our addictions, keep us from being happy. That’s why alcoholics, 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.
Your 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.
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.
Three
Sin and vice prevent perfect happiness, so why wait to get rid of these? Let’s do it now.
So, here’s a simple game plan for detox now:
Step One: Spend time in friendship with God every day in mental prayer through the Rosary or Lectio Divina, seven days a week, not just one or two. Mental prayer will increase your desire for God and decrease your hunger for sin, it will change your way of thinking, and if you practice a resolution every day it will change your behavior.
Step Two: Receive Jesus as often as you can in the Eucharist and go to Him in the Sacrament of Reconciliation at least once a month because Jesus is the Divine Physician who can forgive and heal you of your sin.
Step three: Remove the near occasions of sin. Our sins 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.
Four
St. Faustyna experienced souls in purgatory
She says, “One night, a sister who had died two months previously came to me. She was a sister of the first choir. I saw her in a terrible condition, all in flames with her face painfully distorted. This lasted only a short time, and then she disappeared. A shudder went through my soul because I did not know whether she was suffering in purgatory or in hell. Nevertheless, I redoubled my prayers for her. The next night she came again, but I saw her in an even more horrible state, in the midst of flames which were even more intense, and despair was written all over her face…Despite this, I kept on praying. After some time she came back again to me during the night, but already her appearance had changed. There were no longer any flames, as there had been before, and her face was radiant, her eyes beaming with joy. She told me that I had a true love for my neighbor and that many other souls had profited from my prayers. She urged me not to cease praying for the souls in purgatory, and she added that she herself would not remain there much longer.” Diary 58
“Then one evening…the deceased sister, who had already visited me a few times, appeared to me. The first time I had seen her, she had been in great suffering, and then gradually these sufferings had diminished; this time she was radiant with happiness, and she told me she was already in heaven…Then she came closer to me, embraced me sincerely and said, “I must go now.” I understood how closely the three stages of a soul’s life are bound together; that is to say, life on earth, in purgatory and in heaven [the Communion of Saints]” Diary 594
Five
We can help family, friends, and strangers in Purgatory.
The Catechism (1032) reminds us that by our prayer, especially by offering the sacrifice of the Mass, as well as Rosaries, and chaplets, by offering our sufferings, by giving money to the Church and the poor, and by indulgences, we can help those in Purgatory. We can in a sense speed up their purification process.
Helping souls in Purgatory is a win-win proposition because once we help them get to Heaven they can turn and help us in an even greater way.
CCC 958, “Our prayer for the souls in Purgatory is capable not only of helping them but also of making their intercession for us effective.”
So let’s make a deal with those who have gone before us, I’ll help you by offering prayer, work, joy, and suffering and then you help me, cause I need a lot of help!