What about Purgatory?

My innocent self used to think that there is a physical life after death, in other words; we enter into another world somewhere up in the sky, a paradise and a perfect place. This world is not given to the dead right away but a dead has to pass through a phase of punishment and torture because of the transgression in the world, then only one can attain that perfect place. This idea remained in my head for a long time and it scared me not to do any mischief. I never questioned this idea because it was engraved in me so much; I refused to entertain any other ideas about after life. Of course, time came for me to study the Church teachings on eschatology. I was awestruck by one aspect of the eschatology, i.e. purgatory. Let me try to expound a few enigmas of the purgatory and its significance in this present world.

What is purgatory? Who goes into it? What do we do there? I will try to illustrate a few aspects of this non-friendly word purgatory. Very often, persons decline to speak or petrified to speak about purgatory. There is a lovely song by Jim Reeves, which says, “I have a loving mother just over in glory land and I don’t expect to stop until I shake her hand”. I am sure Jim Reeves has found a way to console himself saying that he would not stop until he shakes her hand in glory, which simply means that he is in a journey towards God and he presumes that his mother is already in glory, so he is hoping to see her one day.

All the living tissues have to fade away so as to make way for the new tissues be born. Most medical experts or anatomists would tell us that the human body is made up of flesh and blood and has to pass away. Hence, death is certain for every person born on this earth. What is after death has been our unsolved mystery, which irks us in our day today life, particularly when we are struck with a death of our beloved.

Christians believe that we die in God’s grace and friendship. We are assured of our eternal salvation. We are imperfect living beings who undergo constant purification. It is believed that we need to undergo purification even after our death so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. The Church gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment. This doctrine was formulated at the Councils of Florence and Trent. Purgatory comes from a Latin word ‘purgatorius’, which means purifying, from the verb ‘purgare.’ We have concentrate on this optimistic word purification, and not to be pessimistically dwelling on the idea of punishment in the hell.

Purification: Every human person has to grow; grow holistically. Human persons are living and mobile beings, hence persons have to grow spiritually, physically, socially and so on. If a person does not grow holistically, then we cannot call that person a human person. Human person has to have all the ingredients to make a person human. Purification is a form of growing up, or an important ingredient to growing up. We are purified everyday of our lives, but most often we take for granted this process. For example, a child goes through a vigorous purification by the parents; parents make sure that child grows up into a wonderful human person, hence they take every measures to make that child a human person. Therefore there is an element to purification. The child is purified from its habits of like. It is painful for the child to go through this purification.

In our spiritual life, we are purified day after day, in other words we purify our relationship with God, hence we consolidate our relationship with God. During our life, we try to come closer to God a bit by bit. At times, this process of coming closer to God can be painful, but it will simply allow us to grow in freedom with God. As human persons, we are in this process of reaching God. This process makes us joyful, because of the process of purification that we undergo here on earth. Our faith is tested in the fire, same way our lives are purified by good and bad experiences in our lives. We are purified so that we can attain holiness in this life. Same thing can be applied to after life, where our beloved dead are in process of attaining holiness. This can be very vague since no one has told about it, except Christ himself tells us that he will not turn us away but will accept us as we are.

We are in a process of purification. All need purification in our lives because we are living beings and fragile beings. We tend to go astray from our God and follow a worldly path. We need to be purified from our own little habits that make us non-loving person. We need to be purified from vices that hinder our relationship with God and our neighbour. We have to spot these vices and try to purify asking God to intervene in our lives. It’s easier said than done; hence it might take some time to be purified. Today let us ask ourselves what are the areas of my life that I need to be purified? Let us not wait until we die to be purified in the purgatory rather let us try to purify ourselves here and now.