I've actually come to view this existence here in this world, as purgatory. One can live life in such a way as to experience heaven here in this life, where they have let go of all that hid God and Joy from them. In this life, we can either find God and our release from suffering; or not wake up and just keep living the illusion over and over again, finding what light can penetrate through to them in occasional moments, neither truly knowing Joy, nor misery; or they are so self-consumed that they see no Light at all, but only greedily consume the world for themselves and die without any Love known to them. In other words, it's here and now we are "working out our salvation".
That to me sounds a lot like purgatory, unless there is something I'm missing?
An interesting reflection.
In Catholic doctrine, purgatory is primarily associated with a postmortem state of moral purification - an intermediate state of being, or condition, for souls who are not 'damned' but nevertheless require spiritual cleansing, through a sort of life review in which they come to reckon / mortify themselves of guilt or regret accumulated during their life - which makes them ready to experience the Beatific Vision (the sight of God's Essence, unmediated, in heaven).
Praying for the departed souls of the dead is an important practice in Catholicism. In churches, we often light candles before or after Mass for our deceased relatives and friends, or have special Masses / public prayers during Mass offered up in their honour.
The Feast of
All Souls Day is particularly concerned with this dogma and its associated practices. In terms of origin, the source is originally biblical - in the deuterocanonical Old Testament book of Maccabees (only in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles):
"It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins" (2 Maccabees 12:46)
We do this because we believe these loved ones are likely in the state of purgatory and that our prayers / good thoughts / deeds are efficacious and that the grace can reach them in this state (due to the concept of the "
communion of saints, in which the living and the dead are still in communion - in a manner unknown to us - through God in whom we all, living and dead, have our being).
However, it is true to say that this process begins in our earthly life.
St. Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510), renowned for the important theological insights set forth in her
Treatise on Purgatory, experienced purgatory in this life for 25 years (during which she also found herself in synergy with the departed souls in the afterlife purgatory and had visions of them, according to her works):
Catholic Treasury | Treatise on Purgatory
"This holy soul, while still in the flesh, was placed in the purgatory of the burning love of God, in whose flames she was purified from every stain, so that when she passed from this life she might be ready to enter the presence of God, her most sweet love.
By means of that flame of love she comprehended in her own soul the condition of the souls of the faithful in purgatory, where they are purified from the rust and stain of sins, from which they have not been cleansed in this world.
And as in the purgatory of that divine flame she was united with the divine love and satisfied with all that was accomplished in her, she was enabled to comprehend the state of the souls in purgatory.
"The soul”, Catherine says, “presents itself to God still bound to the desires and suffering that derive from sin and this makes it impossible for it to enjoy the beatific vision of God
After life on earth the soul remains confirmed, either in good or in evil. Hence the souls in purgatory are confirmed in grace…The souls in purgatory have perfect conformity with the will of God…Hell and purgatory manifest the wonderful wisdom of God. The separated soul goes naturally to its own state. The soul in the state of sin, finding no place more suitable, throws itself of its own accord into hell. And the soul which is not yet ready for divine union, casts itself voluntarily into purgatory. Heaven has no gates. Whoever will can enter there, because God is all goodness. But the divine essence is so pure that the soul, finding in itself obstacles, prefers to enter purgatory, and there to find in mercy the removal of the impediment…” (The Doctrine of Catherine of Genoa).
So, I don't see it as a matter of "
and/or".
For some people, who have died in a state of grace (that is, without any serious violations of conscience), their purgatorial journey is not yet complete on earth. They need 'time' - although not in the sense of terrestrial time - to reckon with the life just lived and heal from the leftover psychological pain, regret and sorrow for things they got wrong, perhaps with the ability to see experiences from the perspective of the "
other person" or other people they might have wronged or misunderstood in some way.
Heaven, Purgatory and Hell are spiritual states of being (as opposed to physical locations) that occupy no location in space and are even apart from time as well, with the souls of the deceased thought (according to time-honoured, theological speculation) to exist in something mysterious called “
aeviternity”.
It entails a mode of existence which is a form of “
participated eternity". It lies between the timelessness of God and the temporal experience of material beings - to us, for all intents and purposes, it is akin to “no-time” - although this isn't strictly true.
One can expect that most human beings will first undergo
purgatory after death, since it seems apparent to the majority of theologians that a sizeable chunk of humanity is neither wilfully evil nor particularly saintly.
Terrestrial “time” is not part of the doctrine of Purgatory either. Here is what Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 1988 (before he became Pope Benedict XVI):
“…The transforming ‘moment’ of this encounter [Purgatory] cannot be quantified by the measurements of earthly time. It is, indeed, not eternal but a transition, and yet trying to qualify it as of ‘short’ or ‘long’ duration on the basis of temporal measurements derived from physics would be naive and unproductive. The ‘temporal measure’ of this encounter lies in the unsoundable depths of existence, in a passing-over where we are burned ere we are transformed. To measure such Existenzzeit, such an ‘existential time,’ in terms of the time of this world would be to ignore the specificity of the human spirit in its simultaneous relationship with, and differentation from, the world…”
(Ratzinger, Eschatology, p. 230)
His Holiness reiterated the same point in his 2007 encyclical
Spe Salvi:
Spe salvi (November 30, 2007) | BENEDICT XVI
The fire of Purgatory which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away…
It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace…
46. With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are.
46. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul.
