Gentle Reader,
This little reflection is something I want to share with you as we leave November – the month when we have remembered the Communion of Saints. However, it is your own reflection that is important. What does this trigger off in your own heart? What is going on in you, after reading this reflection? That is the real pearl of great price. Now, enjoy your own reflection with your friends.
Keep safe and smiling. SAS
Father Tom
Talking to Myself – How are we to understand Purgatory?
When we speak of purgatory, we speak like blind folk trying to imagine the scenery of something that, in reality, we know nothing about. So as to grasp any understanding of a purgatory that speaks to us, I think we need to reflect on two things:
The first one is to keep in step with the Scriptures, especially Jesus and the New Testament.
Scripture tells us, and St Paul tells us: ‘I want you to be quite certain about those who have died to make sure you do not grieve about them like people who have no hope’. He says, ‘we believe Jesus died and rose again and it will be the same for those who have died with Christ’. According to the Scriptures, our death is going to be like Christ’s death. According to tradition, there is such a thing as purgatory.
In fact, the scriptures are peppered with pictures that open up the purgatory experience to us. The Prodigal Son in the embrace of his father: ‘we are having a feast, a celebration’. The woman brought before Jesus is to be stoned to death: ‘neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more’. St Peter at the great catch of fish: ‘Leave me Lord, I am a sinful man’. After his denial, Jesus looks at him with forgiveness: ‘he went outside and wept bitterly’. Zacchaeus: ‘if I have cheated anyone, I will pay back four times the amount’. These are all purgatory moments, when those people know they could have behaved differently – and yet they were still loved unconditionally.
The second one is to have some experience of purgatory in our own lives:
I use often the story of little Marty. He is not yet two years old and not only is he walking, but he has discovered where the biscuits are kept. Though his mammy tells him not to take any, he can’t resist and she catches him in the act – and she still cannot resist hugging him with delight. Yet little Marty cries. In the embrace of love, Marty knows and feels he should have been better – a purgatory moment? The mother’s delight in her child is merely a dim reflection of our Heavenly Father’s delight in all of us!
Which one of us hasn’t had moments in our lives when we have felt dissatisfied with the way we have behaved? Moments when we know we could have been better.
I come in after a day’s work and I feel and think in myself: ‘you know, when I was with that person, I could have been better. I could have dealt with him/her a little bit better and I could have been kinder or more patient. I have been mean, petty and small, all the while knowing that I am much better than my behaviour has been’. These are little purgatory experiences. There is something bigger in me than my performance today. ‘I was out socially and with friends and I could have been (4.18) more inclusive with that person but I was too caught up with my friends to bother with that person’. And thinking about it afterwards, I know that I wasn’t happy with myself because of that, and it burns within me. It is a little purgatory experience. I am watching TV and I turn on Match of the Day and I see a young footballer in the Premier league who played today for half an hour, and then he was taken off. He was so disappointed with his performance because he knows he’s better than that. In his interview, he said he wants to be the best footballer that he can be. That is his purgatory experience. Every person, parent and carer has those purgatory experiences because they want to be the best they can be. And there’ll be moments when they tell themselves they could have been better. The more we try to improve and become our better selves, the more sensitive we are to those purgatory experiences
Now, how do you understand purgatory? When I was young, I was taught that it was a place in between hell and Heaven… it was something like hell, but, like all of us, I knew that anyone who went there would get out of it sometime. Our job from here was to get people out of purgatory as quick as we could. But I don’t think people think much of that now. We have moved on. We get a little clue about purgatory and how to understand if from the funeral Mass. At every funeral Mass there is the Preface and in that Preface the priest reads out, ‘Lord, for your people, life is changed – not ended. When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death we gain an everlasting dwelling place in Heaven’. So that will give us a hint of and a notion of what purgatory is… ‘For your faithful people, life is changed – not ended’. This means that the life we are living now is going to continue and it indicates that we will go straight to Heaven.
Are you with me so far? It is important for us to grasp this otherwise we will never really understand anything of purgatory. Being in God’s company will make us want to change more, to become the best version of ourselves. Put simply, this is what God made you and me for – to be our true selves and to be together with Him for ever. We go back to, ‘Lord, for your people, life is changed, not ended’. And so, purgatory makes sense when we understand it, not as a place but as a process.