If There Was No Purgatory, We'd Have to Invent It

So often Heaven is spoken of in Scriptures as being a great feast. I like to think of that. All of us hallooing down the table to friends who we just have seen, everybody as happy as they could possibly be, having a wonderful time at this blowout celebration.

But before the celebration, we have to clean up (yes, behind the ears too), put on our finest clothes and properly adorn ourselves ... and that is where purgatory comes in, as our dear Papa points out to us.

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 post 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.

Pope Benedict XVI

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity