Dear Father,

Your column on purgatory in the Oct. 20 edition of The Catholic Times made me wonder if we can bypass purgatory altogether. If so, how do I do it? Also, I heard that purgatory is a painful fire. Is that true?

-Marve


Dear Marve,

Yes, we can bypass purgatory altogether. Well, sort of.

Purgatory is not a place but a state of purification. To get to heaven, that is, in order to see God face to face, we need to be purified of all disordered attachments. Whatever has gotten out of hand in our lives needs to be set right in purgatory.

As Christians, we are meant to live free of disordered attachments. In other words, we can “do” our purgatory in this life, as it were. This means that at our death we could enter immediately into the beatific vision of the Blessed Trinity. 

But this is only part of the process of purification. Being free of disordered attachments is not the main “project” of the Christian life. To live as a Christian means to be as completely conformed to Jesus Christ. This means that we love God and neighbor just as Christ loves the Father and the Holy Spirit and all of our brothers and sisters.

To love God and neighbor in right order drives out disordered desires and disordered attachments. We can’t just get rid of evil in our lives; we need to fill our lives with all that is good and holy. Living the life of Christian virtues, especially the virtue of charity toward God and neighbor, means that we have less and less room for anything that is contrary to divine charity.

Purgatory, then, doesn’t consist so much in getting rid of bad things as much as it means getting the right things into our lives and keeping them there. That’s how we live purgatory on earth now so as to avoid the need for it when we die.

That said, St. Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510) helps us to understand purgatory. She was a mystic who had experienced her own disordered attachments in her life. At a certain point, she had a deep conversion experience and later shared her wisdom about purgatory. 

Her conversion was the beginning of living totally for Christ as a married woman. We often think that only priests and nuns can live totally for Christ, but that’s a lie. Everyone can live for Christ and live for Him alone.

Catherine of Genoa devoted her life to God and was dedicated to caring for the sick. Her husband, who had been a gambler, was moved by her love and joined her in her work at the hospital she organized.

Catherine did think of purgatory as a fire. But it was not an exterior fire pit into which we are placed. It was an interior fire that purifies the person. 

Think of someone you love and for whom you would give up your life. That deep love makes you want to do anything possible to care for the beloved. It’s a burning fire in your soul. You would go to any length to get rid of anything that prevented your love for your beloved from growing hotter. You would want your life purged of anything that separated you from your beloved, anything selfish, anything hurtful.

So it is with our love for God. That’s the gift of love that Christ gives us when He gives us the virtue of charity. Even if it starts small, it can become a conflagration that devours all selfishness, all disordered attachments, all sin and the effects of sin.

The pain of purgatory is the “temporary” separation from God that we experience. Catherine says that the souls in purgatory are happy because they are being cleansed.

She also compares purgatory to a hungry person seeing a loaf of bread and craving it but not being able to get to it. Purgatory is like enduring the pain of getting to the loaf. The bread is, of course, Christ.

Finally, Catherine bluntly tells us that the pains of purgatory are most grievous. Like gold in the furnace that burns away all dross, so purgatory purifies us so that we are able to be completely in union with God whom we love and desire.

Yes, you can bypass purgatory. It’s not a matter of just acquiring a bunch of indulgences, though, as if indulgences work like magic. An indulgence is a grant of pardon from the merits of Christ and the saints for the effects of our sins. Obtaining an indulgence, a remission from the punishments of purgatory, is intimately tied to living for and loving God and neighbor with all of our being.

Go to confession often; go to Mass and worship God; pray incessantly with a thankful heart for all the benefits God has given you; live for others. This is the road to heaven, for which every person is made.

And pray for the souls in purgatory, especially by having Masses offered for them.