So God needs us purged why again??? LOL
Good question! If, as Cronos, says we can never "pay enough" to get finally purified/sanctified by the Lamb of God, then why the insistence on indulgences, Mass for the dead, prayers for the dead, candles for the dead, alms for the dead? If "Purgatory" is a final place of cleansing before one can enter into the "beatific" vision (Heaven for us regular folk) and it doesn't mean further suffering, then why do some say we need to say special prayers/novenas for the "suffering souls in Purgatory"? Why speak of "pains" in Purgatory that God must be beseeched to ease?
Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologia, Two Notes on Purgatory, says:
It seems likely enough that the fires of punishment of hell and of purgatory are in the same place. Just as the same fire can be used to purify gold and to burn dross, so the one type of punishing fire may purify souls from venial sin and merely afflict souls in mortal sin. Still, no one can say for sure that the one fire afflicts both the souls in purgatory and the damned in hell. Nor can anyone say with certainty just where purgatory is located.
I seems that most Catholic "theologians" who address the subject of Purgatory agree only on the point that God requires that there be "temporal" punishments due for venial sins not previously repented of. From the link:
The punishments of purgatory purge the souls there of venial sins and cancel the debt owed for venial guilt. Not all venial sins are cleansed from a soul simultaneously; the more persistent or habitual venial sins are more slowly wiped out both as to guilt and punishment. Thus one soul may be liberated from purgatory more quickly than another soul which had committed the same factual venial sins; only the soul first liberated had not committed the sins with the persistency or intensity of the other.
However, those who know and trust from Holy Scripture recognize that Christ has cleansed us from ALL sin and, when we die, those who have accepted Christ go to meet our Savior the next instance clothed in the righteousness of God in Christ. The "need" for another place of purging outside of the cross is false and would negate the whole purpose of the redemption. Jesus IS our place of purgation! There is no other.
We in orthodoxy believe, as MD and I have stated that we are saved, are being saved and will be saved by the blood of the lamb. By the grace of God we are in the process of sanctification ending in the final sanctification/purgatory/seeing the face of the Lord -- as your very post above agreed,