Purgatory - No Layovers

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In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:23-26 Jesus speaks about Purgatory.

So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; truly I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny.

What is the price of sin – the consequences of sin? It is two-fold: Grave sin deprives us of communion with God therefore makes us incapable of eternal life. Jesus removes that with Baptism or later with Confession. The second consequence of sin is a disordered attachment to the things of this world which manifests itself in the deadly sins: pride, vain ambition, envy, sloth, anger, greed, gluttony and lust. These prevent us from the complete union with God in heaven. We should remove these vices in this life but if we don’t then God in His mercy will remove them in Purgatory.

The CCC speaks of Purgatory (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.

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Where else does Jesus speak about Purgatory?

In Matthew 18, as Jesus teaches about the importance of forgiveness,

·       He gives the example in chapter 18 of the Gospel of Matthew

·       of a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.

·       He brought in a man who owed a great deal of money and forgave him the debt.

·       The forgiven man in turn went out and met one of his fellow servants,

·       who owed him but a fraction of the amount,

·       and demanded repayment.

·       The just king summoned his slave back and said:

Mt 18:32-35

“You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you? And in anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart”

In other words, Jesus the King is saying,

·       I have forgiven you – yet you have not purified your heart of selfishness, and a disordered love for created things.

·       Therefore, you must be cleansed of this to receive complete union with God

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Faustina was taken to Purgatory and allowed to speak to the souls there who said their greatest torment was longing for God (Diary 20). Their desire for God was the purifying fire – purging away every disordered love that stood between them and God.

Diary 1185-86 This evening, one of the deceased sisters came and asked me for one day of fasting and to offer all my [spiritual] exercises on that day for her. I answered that I would. From early morning on the following day, I offered everything for her intention. During Holy Mass, I had a brief experience of her torment. I experienced such intense hunger for God that I seemed to be dying of the desire to become united with Him. This lasted only a short time, but I understood what the longing of the souls in purgatory was like.

Here is the key: we travel to God by our desire. So if we want to possess God in this life and immediately after death, then the most important thing is to increase your desire for God.

We increase our desire for anything by thinking about it so spend more time thinking about God and Heaven.  

After that, fast. If we glut ourselves sick with physical things, we’ll have no appetite left for spiritual things.

We travel to God by our desire. What do you desire most?

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I hate layovers. I always want a direct flight – even if it costs me more in the short run. We want to go straight to Heaven. We don’t want a layover in purgatory. So, what do we need to do now to ensure a direct flight to heaven? Two things: We must be filled up with life and love of God; and sin must be removed from our lives.

Let’s start with the first one. If we want to filled up with the life and love of God, then it’s pretty simple: we need to love God and other people more. One way to love God more is to spend more time with him in friendship in prayer. For that is all prayer is, friendship with God. Spend time reading about Jesus in the Gospels and getting to know him better and thinking about his life and yours in silence. The more you know him the more you will love him. Go to Mass and go more often. At Mass, when the priest invites you to lift up your hearts. Lift your heart up to God – give yourself unconditionally to him out of love.

If you want to love your neighbor more then pick someone you can’t or shouldn’t get out of your life and be better to them.

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What prevents us from loving God and neighbor more is that we are too stingy with our time. We want to spend our time on our projects and our entertainment. These prevent us from loving God more in prayer and Mass and it prevents us from loving other people more, especially our spouse, family and others. The only solution is to cut down both our projects and entertainment. If you wont do that then you are choosing one stop before you get to your destination of heaven. I’m not going with you. I don’t have a tv and don’t really like entertainment. My vice is my projects. So I am making the resolution to cut my projects back by 20% because I too often run at 120% and I’m going to give more time to people in my life. Radical availability is the precondition for love of God and neighbor.

I think if we give less time to projects and entertainment and more time to God in daily meditation and the practice of a resolution and more time being radically available to family and friends it would help us cut out all lot of sin in our lives which is the second part of avoiding purgatory – removing sin. So I think we have a game plan now.