Let me propose an example of a kind of thinking that we feelthy papists do: God is due our prayers and praises. If someone didn't praise a beautiful sunset, we'd think something was wrong with his vision or his psyche. The Good, the True, the Courageous, the Beautiful are due praise. The only problem with this is that it is almost too obvious to see.
When we give God what He is due, He blesses us, even though we have only done what we were supposed to do. There are two ways (at least) to think about this: (1)It is just plain good for one to do the just thing, to render what is due to him to whom it is due. (2)God is generous.
When we do wrong, we are due punishment. In that case, for us to do justice is to submit to punishment, to pay the penalty.
Of course, the penalty for offending God is more than we can pay. Looking to Christ, all we can do is throw ourselves on His mercy, and so we do.
But even then there is usally stuff we can (in grace, at least) do. We can make reparation, fix the window, replace the destroyed thing, "make it up to" the one we have offended as best we can.
This is not only just in the obvious sense (I broke your window, I owe you a window) but in a deeper sense. That is, in acknowledging my fault and in making reparation I am acting in accordance with justice. That is good for me. It helps me (again, under and by grace) cultivate the "habitus" of justice, even though I start from a very lousy position. At least I am headed the right way and training my will, as it were, to see, to choose and to do the right thing.
So the same sorts of "gifts" for the same sorts of reasons apply.
THIS is why Dante present Purgatory as a place of joy and hope, albeit in suffering. The soon to be full-fledged saints (so to speak, nobody really thinks there is a mountain at the antipodes of Jerusalem) are being sanctified.
There is ONE way in which the measure of their sins is requited by the measure of their punishment. And if that one way is focused on to the exclusion of the other way, then it looks all punitive and tit-for-tat.
But the (or 'an') other way is explained by the therapy analogy. That is, to the extent that I let myself grow weak (through injustice) I lay myself open to tearing a shoulder ligament. Once I have done so, I protect that shoulder, I grow weaker, I hunch, motion is restricted, other ligaments contract.
To be healed, I have to grow stronger, to reduce inflammation, to have the ligaments stretched, and so forth.
Fixing your window (or working for the money to pay somebody else to do so, and putting up with privation because my iPhone money went instead to your window) is allowing justice to work in me, to make me more just. The seemingly tit-for-tat trials of purgatory are me enduring that part of the remedy for my sin which is not beyond my capacity to endure. I submit to justice and so God blesses me and makes me more just.
WE may conceptually imagine Hell as the state of those who will not allow justice to work on them, because they have turned away from the God of Righteousness. Purgatory is where those who long to drink deep of God's justice learn how to swallow again.
It's another way of looking at it.
Excellent Post ,MD!
The following is from Pope Paul VI regarding this
APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION
OF POPE PAUL VI
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_19670101_indulgentiarum-doctrina_en.html
Excerpt..
2. It is a divinely revealed truth that sins bring punishments inflicted by God’s sanctity and justice. These must be expiated either on this earth through the sorrows, miseries and calamities of this life and above all through death,(3) or else in the life beyond through fire and torments or “purifying” punishments.(4) Therefore it has always been the conviction of the faithful that the paths of evil are fraught with many stumbling blocks and bring adversities, bitterness and harm to those who follow them.(5)
These punishments are imposed by the just and merciful judgment of God for the purification of souls, the defense of the sanctity of the moral order and the restoration of the glory of God to its full majesty. Every sin in fact causes a perturbation in the universal order established by God in His ineffable wisdom and infinite charity, and the destruction of immense values with respect to the sinner himself and to the human community. Christians throughout history have always regarded sin not only as a transgression of divine law but also—though not always in a direct and evident way—as contempt for or disregard of the friendship between God and man, (6) just as they have regarded it as a real and unfathomable offense against God and indeed an ungrateful rejection of the love of God shown us through Jesus Christ, who called his disciples friends and not servants. (7)
3. It is therefore necessary for the full remission and—as it is called—reparation of sins not only that friendship with God be reestablished by a sincere conversion of the mind and amends made for the offense against his wisdom and goodness, but also that all the personal as well as social values and those of the universal order itself, which have been diminished or destroyed by sin, be fully reintegrated whether through voluntary reparation which will involve punishment or through acceptance of the punishments established by the just and most holy wisdom of God, from which there will shine forth throughout the world the sanctity and the splendor of his glory. The very existence and the gravity of the punishment enable us to understand the foolishness and malice of sin and its harmful consequences.
That punishment or the vestiges of sin may remain to be expiated or cleansed and that they in fact frequently do even after the remission of guilt(8) is clearly demonstrated by the doctrine on purgatory. In purgatory, in fact, the souls of those “who died in the charity of God and truly repentant, but before satisfying with worthy fruits of penance for sins committed and for omissions (9) are cleansed after death with purgatorial punishments. This is also clearly evidenced in the liturgical prayers with which the Christian community admitted to Holy Communion has addressed God since most ancient times: “that we, who are justly subjected to afflictions because of our sins, may be mercifully set free from them for the glory of thy name.(10)
For all men who walk this earth daily commit at least venial sins;(11) thus all need the mercy of God to be set free from the penal consequences of sin.
The following from the late Father William Most’s article ....”How Redemption Operated” sheds light on this..
Excerpt...
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/most/getwork.cfm?worknum=160
Simeon ben Eleazar, a Rabbi writing about 170 A.D. (Tosefta, Kiddushin 1. 14), and claiming to base himself on Rabbi Meir from earlier in the same century, gives us a striking comparison which helps to illustrate the text of Paul VI: “He [meaning “anyone”] has committed a transgression. Woe to him. He has tipped the scale to the side of debt for himself and for the world.”
The image is a two-pan scales. The sinner takes from one pan what he has no right to have. The scale is out of balance. The Holiness of God wants it righted. How do that? If he stole some property, he begins to rebalance by giving it back. If he stole a pleasure, he begins to rebalance by giving up some pleasure of similar weight.
But we kept saying “begins”. For the imbalance from even one mortal sin is infinite, an Infinite Person is offended. So if the Father wanted a full rebalance - He did not have to - the only way to achieve it would be to send a divine Person to become man. That Person could produce an infinite value. Paul VI put the redemption into this framework.
All sinners of all times took an immense weight from the two-pan scales. But Jesus gave up far more than they had stolen, in His terrible passion.
So this is the price of redemption, the rebalancing of the objective order, which the Holiness of God willed. Rom 5:8 said,”God proved His love.” Yes, if someone desires the well-being of another, and starts out to procure it, but then runs into an obstacle - if a small obstacle will stop him, the love is small. If it takes a great obstacle, the love is great. But if that love could overcome even the immense obstacle of the terrible death of Jesus, that love is immense, beyond measure. It was not only the physical pain, but the rejection by those whom He loved that hurt Him. The pain of rejection can be measured by two things: 1) how severe is the form of the rejection; 2) how great is the love for the one who is rejecting. If someone jostles me in a crowd, that is a small thing. But if he wanted to kill me, that is far worse, and if he means to do it in the most hideous way possible - then the rejection is at the peak . And what is His love?: Inasmuch as He is a Divine Person, the love is infinite; in as much as we consider the love of His human will, able to overcome such a measureless obstacle - the love is beyond measure.
In the garden He foresaw all sins of all times, and suffered from that vision. Let us recall all that we saw in commenting on NC §§471-74 on His foreknowledge and life-long anxiety, resulting from the vision His soul saw from the first instant of conception, and which He let us see briefly in Lk. 12:50 and John 12:27. In line with this, Pius XI, wrote in his Encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor (AAS 20. 174): “Now if the soul of Christ [in Gethsemani] was made sorrowful even to death on account of our sins, which were yet to come, but which were foreseen, there is no doubt that He received some consolation from our reparation, likewise foreseen.”
So now we see why obedience called for something so tremendous. Yes, even the least thing done by an Infinite Person could rebalance. In fact, the Father could have accepted an incomplete rebalance, from any religious act He might order to be done by an ordinary human. He could have been content with the incarnation in a palace since, again, any act of an Infinite Person is infinite in value. But the Father wanted not only to be able to forgive, but to forgive lavishly. (The priest in giving absolution, can wipe out even a lifetime of dreadful sins in a moment: “I absolve you.”) So He went beyond the incarnation in a palace, to the stable, beyond an incarnation with only a prayer, to the horrible death of the cross. The first thing Jesus had to say to His Apostles when He first came after His resurrection was “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them.” He had just paid a terrible price for that forgiveness. He could hardly wait, we might say, to make that concretely possible.
Off to Adoration for me!
No yelling, and your analogy has validity, but checking with the tangible source which is assuredly inspired of God, we see that it is in this life that God chastens believers that they may be “partakers of his holiness”, (Heb. 12:10) to be practically what they are positionally. As in my first response to this shows, the Bible speaks of the believer’s postmortem destination as being directly with the Lord, in whose presence there is fulness of joy, (Ps. 16:11) even the Corinthians, who had some carnality of the heart, such as results in needless strife, while those in fornication, etc. where not even in Christ. Certainly the Thessalonians had not all arrived at perfection either, but if the rapture happened they would then forever be the Lord.
While the revelation of God that shows that the saving faith of Rm. 4 is one that is a confessional faith, (Mt. 10:32; Rm. 10:10), is not full perfection either, though the heart of a real believer should be seeking that (Phil. 3).
What this does mean is that those who suppose they can live a carnal life and get into glory via purgatory, and that such nominal faith constitutes saving faith, are only going south after death, and that purgatory, coupled with paedobaptism, and lack of evangelistic preaching, and the the RC gospel which teaches that the RC justified, by their very works which have been done in God, have truly merited eternal life, (Trent, CHAPTER XVI) has the practical effect of paving the broad way of destruction.
I’m not going to yell - still have a sinus headache and loud noises and even all caps are not needed - but I completely, totally and passionately disagree.
When we sin, we sin against God. Sometimes we also sin against man.
For our sin against God, there is only one remedy - the blood of Jesus Christ, sacrificed for us and accepted through believing him. That ENDS our penalty from God. Nothing more needed, and nothing more to be given.
It is rooted in the new birth. Sin isn’t the surface act, but the rebellion within. Jesus describes the sins as being the deeds that manifest our heart.
Mat 12:34 “You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
Mat 15:8 ‘”This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
Mat 15:10-20 And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”
Mat 18:35 “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Mat 19:8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
Etc, etc.
The sermon on the Mount wasn’t about our actions. If it was, we would all be walking around with our eyes ripped out. The theme of Matt 5 is this: You admire the Pharisees for their strict observance of the Law, but to see the kingdom of God, you must be far better - for they obey on the outside, but the law is spiritual and must be obeyed on the inside. And no one does that...
We are born warped, with hard hearts that don’t want to admit God or recognize him. God in his mercy and grace pursues us, but we wish to run. But sometimes our running reveals our need, and we turn to God and accept His love and mercy. “6And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”
“And that message is the very message about faith that we preach: If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.” - Romans 10 NLT
And that is it, so far as God is concerned. I’ve quoted this before, but I’ll use a paraphrase to make the words fresher:
“But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus.
God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” - Ephesians 2 NLT
There is nothing left for us to do.
“But our High Priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand. There he waits until his enemies are humbled and made a footstool under his feet. For by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy.
And the Holy Spirit also testifies that this is so. For he says, “This is the new covenant I will make with my people on that day, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”
Then he says, “I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.” And when sins have been forgiven, there is no need to offer any more sacrifices.” - NLT Hebrews 10
There is no further repairing left to do with God. It is finished, because we are no longer rebels but sons.
With regard to men, healing comes from confession and reparation, if possible. And this is good both as an attempt to heal and a confession of what God has done. But it doesn’t justify us or gain us access to God. It is an outward indication of the inward change, and someone who refuses to do so would still be out of God’s will and in sin.
Pain we suffer doesn’t remove sin or its penalty. It may teach us and guide us, and God does so to discipline his children, but it is geared toward our future actions and understanding, not our past. Spurs and bits cause pain, but in the hands of a good rider, they communicate the will with no more pain than absolutely required.
Purgatory is not just contrary to what scripture reveals happens to those who die in Christ, but it is utterly unneeded. It would use our pain as a substitute for what Christ did, and God will not accept or tolerate the competition.
Sanctification is separation from this world, and from the flesh we still carry. But at death we lose this body, and wait for the Day when we receive a new one. At death, sanctification is finished, for we are then totally separated from our flesh and from this world around us, and we wait for the new body and new world.
Paul wrote, “Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)” - NLT Romans 8
Heaven has started for those who believe. The Kingdom of God doesn’t start later. For us, it has started. In this life, sanctification draws us away from this world and into the next. But there is no need for further sanctification when our body is cast off and we leave this world.
If you applied Purgatory to our current life, it might have some value as an image of what God is doing through sanctification. However, the doctrine applies it after death, when it has no need or function.