357. The existence of Purgatory
357. THE EXISTENCE OF PURGATORY
Why is the existence of Purgatory certain, unlike Limbo?
Whether there is a Purgatory after this life?
Objection 1. It would seem that there is not a Purgatory after this life. For it is said (Rev 14:13): Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth now, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors. . . .
Reply to Objection 1. The authority quoted is speaking of the labor of working for merit, and not of the labor of suffering to be cleansed.
On the contrary, It is said (II Maccabees 12:46): It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins. Now there is no need to pray for the dead who are in Heaven, for they are in no need; nor again for those who are in Hell, because they cannot be loosed from sins. Therefore after this life there are some not yet loosed from sins, who can be loosed therefrom; and these have charity, without which sins cannot be loosed, for charity covereth all sins (Prov 10:12; 1 Pet 4:8). Hence they will not be consigned to everlasting death, since he that liveth and believeth in Me shall not die for ever (Jn 11:26); nor will they obtain glory without being cleansed, because nothing unclean shall obtain it, as stated in the last chapter of the Apocalypse (vs. 14). Therefore some kind of cleansing remains after this life. . . .
Those who deny Purgatory speak against the justice of God. . . (Appendix 2,1).
The most serious religious objection to Purgatory, on the part of Protestants, is that the anticipation of the pains of Purgatory detracts from a happy death (“blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord”—Rev 14:13).
But that is like saying that the pains of labor detract from the joy of childbirth. Deferred happiness is still happiness.
In Purgatory we will rest from our active labors of making right choices. We are in Purgatory rather than Hell, we are in Heaven’s remedial class, only because we have made the right choices on earth while there was still time. That active labor is completed. But we will experience the passive (receptive) labor of being purified and perfected in Purgatory.
Scripture clearly teaches Purgatory. (1) The passage from Maccabees, which praises prayers for the dead, makes no sense if all the dead are either in Heaven or Hell. (2) Purgatory can be proved even to Protestants who do not accept Maccabees and the other deutero-canonical books as Scripture (even though the same Church that canonized the other sixty-six books also canonized these). For Scripture clearly teaches that (1) we are sinners (1 Jn 1:8), that (2) nothing unholy can enter Heaven (Rev 21:27), that there is no sin in Heaven, but perfect sanctity and holiness; and that (3) the gap between sin and perfect holiness is very, very great (Lk 16:26). To believe that an ordinary, sinful believer, immediately after death, can just sashay into Heaven and endure the Beatific Vision, the revealing light of divine holiness, without a radical change in his soul, is radically to underestimate either (1) the badness of badness or (2) the goodness of goodness or (3) the bigness of the difference between them.