Necessity of Purgatory

This is how Pope John Paul II explains why purgatory is necessary. For, he continues, we are called "to be perfect like the heavenly Father during our earthly life... sound and flawless before God the Father 'at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints' (1 Thess 3:12)."

Here John Paul re-affirms the old wisdom concerning the existence of a "state of purification" after death. Purification means atonement for sins and their effects on the soul. It is not a painless, automatic process of "growing" the soul, of attaining full "self-realization" through the acquisition of ever more insight after death, as is the soothing theory of some spiritualists. It is not an accumulation of learning, through a series of "reincarnations," until some point of perfect wisdom is reached, as in the fantasy of some Western New Age disciples. Such are childish attempts to suppress man's deep awareness that the basic dimension determining his destiny in the next world is not knowledge or experience, but moral purity: sin, and the traces it leaves on the soul, versus holiness.

In our culture today, of the three destinations that traditional Christian doctrine teaches may follow death and judgment — heaven, hell, and purgatory — only belief in heaven or some such happy state has widely survived. The prevailing cheap optimism holds that (if there is anything at all across the threshold of death) the life of practically everybody automatically ends up in a state of bliss. De-christened and inwardly impoverished Western man may acknowledge having his imperfections and shortcomings, but doesn't look upon himself as sinful. To him, atonement for or purification from sin is a "medieval" idea.

Already 150 years ago, Cardinal John Henry Newman saw the rise of this superficial, humanist mentality:

We are cherishing a shallow religion, a hollow religion, which will not profit us in the day of trouble. The age [our age considerably more than his!] loves an exclusively cheerful religion. It is determined to make religion bright and sunny and joyous, whatever the form of it which it adopts. And it will handle the Catholic doctrine in the same spirit... we take what is beautiful and attractive, shrink from what is stern and painful.

Purgatory (to say nothing of hell), penance, expiation, God's holy Justice: these just do not fit in with today's cheerfully cheap religiosity. However, the truth remains that man has to be "sound and flawless before God the Father" when, after death, he appears before Him to render an account of his life. Only holy souls have direct access to the blissful abode where "nothing unclean shall enter." Therefore, "every trace of attachment to evil must be eliminated, every imperfection of the soul corrected." The place for this correction of the soul's imperfections is purgatory.

This is a profound and holy mystery, and also an appalling mystery, whose frightening aspects cannot be glossed over. But the reality should not terrify us. John Paul II continues: "One last important aspect which the Church's tradition has always pointed out should be re-proposed today: the dimension of 'communio'... the ecclesiastical solidarity which works through prayer, prayers of suffrage, and love." Here John Paul teaches us that penance and pain in purgatory are mitigated by the comfort of mercy. In the final analysis, purgatory is the mercy of Christ working through his Mystical Body, the Church.

Close to the Vatican, alongside the Tiber in Rome, stands a beautiful neo-gothic church — the only one in that style in the whole city — which is devoted to the Sacred Heart of Suffrage; suffrage in the meaning of help to the souls in purgatory. In a room in the sacristy are exhibited a small number of strange, fascinating "relics": objects bearing visible, physical traces left by souls in purgatory. The collection is known as the little Museum of Purgatory, the Piccolo Museo del Purgatorio. The Museo and the church of the Sacred Heart of Suffrage represent two sides of purgatory: the collection offers impressive bits of tangible evidence for the harrowing existence of the souls there, while the church itself displays the Christian comfort of the mercy and charity for the suffering souls as practiced since time immemorial by the Catholic Church. The great central triptych in the church, representing the Sacred Heart, the poor (or holy) souls, and various saints, has even been called "a visual compendium of Catholic doctrine on purgatory" by Pope Benedict XV.

The church is a monument in honor of the mercy of the divine-human Heart of Christ for the souls in purgatory, and at the same time an invitation to the faithful to practice charity for them in union with his merciful Heart. For the devotion to the suffering souls is inextricably linked to the devotion of the Sacred Heart. That has been made especially clear by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the apostle of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. As Father John Croiset wrote:

The revelations she received about the sufferings of these souls, about our Divine Lord's tender love for them and His eager desire for their deliverance, of the great efficacy of the devotion to the Sacred Heart for their early release, and the fact that ... (she) combined these two devotions so intimately in her own person, indicate that there is such a close connection between the two devotions that the devotion to the souls in Purgatory may be said to form a part of the devotion to the Sacred Heart.

The "paranormal" evidence displayed in the Little Museum of the church and some additional evidence, notably the burned-in hand in the corporale of Czestochowa in Poland, is instrumental in developing devotion to the suffering souls. It brings us nearer to the reality of purgatory by allowing us a closer look into this awful abyss of purification.
Read rest