Father Nicholas Nelson: Purgatory, a beautiful reality

Handing on the Faith

Purgatory is the teaching that there is a further purification following death for those souls that while not fully perfected, were at the time of their death in friendship with God. 

There are basically only three official teachings on purgatory. There is a purgatory, it involves suffering, and we can help those in purgatory by praying for them. In addition to that we have teachings from saints, including approved private revelations from them. St. Catherine of Genoa (d. 1500), known as the “Apostle of Purgatory,” is maybe most noteworthy. 

There are a number of ways to consider purgatory. 

We can look at it as a purifying or a purging of all that is contrary to God. We need to be purified before gaining heaven. Such Scripture verses as, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8); and, “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness, without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14), give evidence to this dynamic. 

We can also look at it in light of justice. Our sins are an injustice towards God and towards others. Justice demands that we restore or make up for the damage our sins caused. And in that sense we can call it a punishment due to our sins. 

When a person commits a mortal sin, he incurs eternal punishment and temporal punishment. If he would remain unrepentant until death, he would be condemned to hell because of the eternal punishment ascribed to that mortal sin. If, however, he went to confession and confessed that mortal sin, he would be forgiven of the eternal punishment but would still incur the temporal punishment. Then, ideally in this life, he would do the requisite amount of penance, and complete the temporal punishment due to him because of his mortal sin and enter heaven immediately at his death. Yet, if he didn’t complete his temporal punishment, he would need to complete that temporal punishment in purgatory before being admitted to heaven. 

You may ask, “How do we know how much temporal punishment we have left?” Unfortunately, we cannot know. We can know that we are free of eternal punishment by making a good confession, but we will not know if we have completed our temporal punishment or not. 

We call those in purgatory the “poor souls” and the “holy souls.” They are called “poor” because they cannot help themselves. When we are on earth, we are active in our salvation. We can choose to do good, we can do penance, we can merit greater grace. In purgatory, it is an entirely passive purification. We call the souls “holy” because they are set apart for God. They belong to him. They are assured their salvation, it’s just a matter of final purification. 

Many people look at purgatory as a negative, unnecessary hassle. Why do we need it? Why can’t everyone just go to heaven? I see purgatory as a very natural and logical reality. 

Imagine being invited to the White House to meet the president or to an exquisite hotel ballroom for the most luxurious wedding reception and you were still in your scrubs from working at the hospital or in your coveralls from digging in the garden. You, on your own agency, would say, “Hey, I need to clean up first. I can’t go in there looking like this. Do you have a shower and some clean clothes I can put on?” Well, that’s purgatory. 

I, for one, don’t want to be in heaven as I am now. And to be honest, I don’t want to be in heaven with many of you as you are now, either. If heaven is to be heaven, then we all need to be perfected so that we can truly enjoy and be fulfilled in heaven. Hopefully, we can allow God to transform us completely before we die, but if we aren’t, God is so gracious that we don’t have to be perfected by the time we die. God will do the rest. 

Pope Benedict XVI put it this way: 

“I think [Purgatory] is something very human. I would go so far as to say that if there was no purgatory, then we would have to invent it, for who would dare say of himself that he was able to stand directly before God. And yet we don’t want to be, to use an image from Scripture, ‘a pot that turned out wrong,’ that has to be thrown away; we want to be able to be put right. 

“Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. That he can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to be with him and can stand there in the fullness of life. Purgatory strips off from one person what is unbearable and from another the inability to bear certain things, so that in each of them a pure heart is revealed, and we can see that we all belong together in one enormous symphony of being.” 

It can be tempting, when someone dies, to just assume they are in heaven, or to try to figure it out. But as Father Gabriel Waweru said, “Let’s not try to figure out where our loved one went, but let us rather beseech the One who can do something about where they are. Let’s pray to God for their purification and salvation.” 

Father Nick Nelson is pastor of Queen of Peace and Holy Family parishes in Cloquet and director of vocations for the Diocese of Duluth. He studied at The Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Rome. Reach him at [email protected].