Bypassing Purgatory? - Updated

This might be perceived as a controversial post because some of us have been taught, rather without footnotes to Catechisms or scripture, what purgatory is and why most all have to pass through it, whatever it is---a place, a state of being, before entering heaven.

When I think back on what I was taught or heard, what stood out clearest prior to my current understanding was a teaching of Bishop Sheen's that is used to explain indulgences.  He was saying that when we sin it is like hammering nails into a board and when we go to Confession, the absolution is like getting the nails pulled out, but then the holes are still there.  Punishment is still necessary.

Of course this flies in the face of what the Protestant would tell you that Jesus once and for all paid the price of sin and no other price needs to be paid.  That would take a post longer than any post ever written and there are books out there explaining the meaning of suffering, why suffering can be offered in reparation of sin, why some saints, particularly in the Latin rite, viewed suffering as means of resembling Christ.  This post isn't about trying to suffer our way into heaven.  We only get to heaven through belief and trust in our Savior, "washing our robes" in the Precious Blood of the Lamb of God (Revelation 7:14).

There is value in our suffering when united to the suffering of Christ and that is scriptural too (Colossians 1:24), and it has been enlighted by the teachings of Blessed Pope John Paul II in Salvifici Doloris.

We have the wisdom that was given by God to the saints, and preserved for us through their writings to help us, that the Protestants have unfortunately been deprived of.  I am speaking of the teachings of St. Catherine of Genoa, and St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, and St. Faustina.

My understanding is not incompatible with the teaching of Bishop Sheen, but more along the lines that the holes left over indicate a tendency toward sin due to our not resembling the heart of Our Savior, the most tender, most merciful, most forgiving, most loving, most sensitive heart.

My belief/understanding is to the extent our heart resembles Christ's merciful heart of forgiveness and love, and the more perfect our trust in Jesus's Divine Mercy the higher the probability that we will bypass purgatory. When I hear people I love say something is unforgivable or say something disparaging, unloving, judgmental about someone or some group of people, this is when I worry for their spending time in purgatory. It shows their heart has not been formed into the mold of Jesus.

OK, yes, I am still very much one of those!  I have hope though that I have found the way, of course his name is Jesus, but it isn't just his name, or who he is (our Savior), but also, what he taught or rather what he commanded us:

John 13:34: "I give you a new command: Love each other. You must love each other like I loved you."

1 John 4:16: And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

1 John 4:8: Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

What these verses say to me (and this is illuminated by the writings of St. Catherine of Genoa, St. Therese) is that to the extent we do not love we are not following Jesus's command to love like he has loved us.  We cannot love the way he loves us unless we know and rely on the love God has for us.  Obviously, God is the judge and Jesus the gate, but my strong sense is we cannot know God in heaven unless we love as he has loved us, which is a symptom of being docile to the Holy Spirit's work of sanctifying grace.  My belief is if we don't learn what seems to be a very obvious teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, and echoed in the First letter of John, further illuminated by the writings and example of Saints, but rather persist in non-forgiveness, acts of commission and omission that show lack of love and mercy, actual prejudice toward groups of people, etc. then we will not be able to go from death straight into heaven.  We will instead learn what should have been the obvious and demanding, commanding lesson of love in Purgatory, whether that be a state or a place.  Some mystics (personal revelations only, not teachings of the church, or scriptural) did write that there is a place and real suffering in purgatory.

We will need to have our heart fixed first through either a very soul-filled spiritual purgation as we realize the magnitude of Christ's love and sacrifice (will come rather quickly when we are face to face with our beautiful Savior without the veil of this life), or perhaps through experiencing some real suffering in a state or place of purgatory.  It seems to me that the purity of heart and primary willingness to love and console our Precious Lord are brought about by following Christ's command, thus, "Whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God in him."  Even if we have failings instead of the holes in the board remaining after the nails are removed, they are filled in by the perfect way of trust in God's love and the confidence that his love and mercy are greater than any failing we could commit.
  

In case it seems I have left the reservation on this one, I would implore you to take some time and ponder the teaching on purgatory from St. Therese.  This post by Patricia is concise, versus re-reading Story of A Soul (which I just did), and then reading multiple commentaries on it, and due to including a commentary, thoroughly explains this teaching, and is well worth the time to read it.

I love the empty hands teaching of St. Therese also contained in her Offering to Merciful Love. It is along the lines of Marian consecration . . . we give any merit for anything we do to her to use as she wills. The effect of this is empty hands and the trust that the Father will look at us through the precious face of his Son and that his precious blood alone will merit our entrance into heaven....why else would we be longing to be one of the white robbed masses in Revelation 7 that washed their robes in the blood of the lamb?

I do think the more suffering one has (sometimes it starts spiritually when we are humbled by the mercy and love God shows to us so directly) and the more one submits to the transforming love (is that not also part of the teaching from St. Therese's Offering to Merciful Love?) of the Holy Spirit, and the grace and mercy streaming from Jesus's Sacred Heart, the more compassionate and loving one will become. It isn't just the one that has been forgiven much that loves much, but also the one like our beloved St. Therese has the Holy Spirit granted insight that it is all-about being loved by God, and loving others that way we have been loved and making that the focus of our spiritual and active life pursuits (John 13:34).

From EWTN's whitepaper on St. Catherine of Genoa's teaching on purgatory:

Suddenly, as she was kneeling down at the confessional, "her heart was wounded by a dart of God's immense love, and she had a clear vision of her own wretchedness and faults and the most high goodness of God. She fell to the ground, all but swooning", and from her heart rose the unuttered cry, "No more of the world for me! No more sin!" The confessor was at this moment called away, and when he came back she could speak again, and asked and obtained his leave to postpone her confession.

Then she hurried home, to shut herself up in the most secluded room in the house, and for several days she stayed there absorbed by consciousness of her own wretchedness and of God's mercy in warning her. She had a vision of Our Lord, weighed down by His Cross and covered with blood, and she cried aloud, "O Lord, I will never sin again; if need be, I will make public confession of my sins." After a time, she was inspired with a desire for Holy Communion which she fulfilled on the feast of the Annunciation.

She now entered on a life of prayer and penance. She obtained from her husband a promise, which he kept, to live with her as a brother. She made strict rules for herself—to avert her eyes from sights of the world, to speak no useless words, to eat only what was necessary for life, to sleep as little as possible and on a bed in which she put briars and thistles, to wear a rough hair shirt. Every day she spent six hours in prayer. She rigorously mortified her affections and will.

 

The path of love bypassing purgatory does not help us to avoid taking up our cross and following Jesus (Matthew 16:24, Luke 9:23) as you see by how St. Catherine chose to live after her experience, or if your read and understand the magnitude of the sufferings St. Therese endured without pain relief.  The other related insight from St. Therese, is that suffering for love of Jesus, knowing that the merits of her sacrifices did help further the Kingdom of God in other souls, became a great joy for her.  My own belief, perhaps subject of another post, is that there is heavenly reward correlated to the way we pick up our cross and follow Jesus (Revelation 22:12), that there is reward commensurate with our ability and willingness to do so with the pure intention of loving and consoling Jesus.  St. Therese and St. Faustina wrote on this, but again, too much for one post!

As far as St. Catherine's living like sibling with her husband, I wouldn't say that is the way for everyone that is married being transformed by the love of God either; it was her way, and there are other holy people who chose to live this way, in keeping with what St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7:1-2.

And as for the bed of briars and thistles and the hair shirt, I still love Father Corapi's comment, "You are sitting next to your hair shirt," during one of his talks.  Further, an eastern father, Abba Pimen, said that we lay down our lives for our friends when we leave our self-absorption, pride, and self-indulgence aside, and essentially love each other and forgive each other, and do not judge each other.  Doesn't that sound very much like St. Therese's Little Way of Love?

John 15:13:  "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

Please share your thoughts.  I don't mean this as a controversy because that isn't the mission of this blog, but if this really is the core teaching of Christ that we should be striving to understand and live, relying on God's love, it is important to discuss and help each other, and all those in contact with us learn it too, so as to spare them learning the lesson on the other side, when the suffering, as St. John of the Cross (mentioned in Patricia's post) indicated, will be far greater than that which can be experienced in this life.

After dying, wouldn't you want to pass straight into the arms of your loving Savior and into the incomprehensible love of the Father if possible?

Wouldn't you want your loved ones especially, and if we really get the lesson, all souls that we could persuade to this necessity, to do the same?

Calling Doctor Therese! Paging St. Therese!

"We live in an age of inventions.  We need no longer climb laboriously up flights of stairs.  And I was determined to find an elevator to carry me to Jesus, for I was too small to climb the steep stairs of perfection.  So I sought in Holy Scripture some idea of what this lift I wanted would be, and I read, 'Whoever is a little one, let him come to me' (Lk 8:16).  I also wanted to know how God would deal with a 'little one' so I searched and found:  'As one whom a mother caresses, so I will comfort you, you shall be carried  . . . ' (Is 66:12-13) Ah!  Never did words more tender and more melodious come to give joy to my soul.  It is your arms, Jesus, which are the elevator to carry me to heaven.  So there is no need for me to grow up.  In fact:  just the opposite.  I must become less and less." - St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul

So many of us in this Community have been helped by our beloved St. Therese.  If you would like to share how St. Therese's little way of great love has been a blessing to you as you seek to grow in deep love of our Lord, please do so in the comments, inclusive to sharing links to posts you have on this great saint.

Patricia, whose profile name at I Want to See God is "littlesoul2" has written meany beautiful posts especially on St. Therese's Act of Oblation to Merciful Love.  

Recently she was sharing and teaching me more about St. Therese in the comment box to one of her posts.  If you do take the hyperlink that is to the offering itself.  There is a series of beautiful posts leading up to it that you may want to review first.  You can see all of them if you hit St. Therese in the tag cloud at the bottom of her blog page.

Many of us are drawn to St. Therese, and even Fr. Gaitley in Consoling the Heart of Jesus uses her as an example of how all of us little souls can follow her example of love to grow in holiness.  Not to discourage anyone from following her Little Way of Great Love for fear of suffering, but rather to help us appreciate her great love for Jesus and souls more, I wanted to share with all of you what Patricia taught me.

Regarding St. Therese, you are absolutely correct about the great trials she suffered, and the many trials which all of those who truly wish to love Our Lord will no doubt encounter. Therese used to pray, “Jesus, make me resemble You.” Because, the beloved of Jesus seeks to be like her Divine Lover…she too is “thirsty” for souls, and desires to unite any sufferings God permits in her life to those of Jesus to “help” win souls for Him.

Therese, wishing to leave ALL to God’s Will did not desire to ask for greater suffering, (as some Saints have done), but rather to accept whatever joys and sorrows the Will of God destined for her. Her genius, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was to say to God, through her Act of Oblation, that she wished to live her entire life as “one act of perfect love”….her life would be the “holocaust,” and God’s Love would be the Fire. She begged Him to consume her unceasingly, so that she would become a “martyr to Your Love, O my God.” She desired that the “waves of infinite tenderness” rejected by others would flow into her, and God’s Heart would be relieved of this Love “locked within.” Her great grace was to believe so confidently in His Love…the immensity and tenderness of It, and His “need” to find someone to receive it. But again, if we are to have this deep love relationship with Jesus, He will share with us His Passion..the greatest expression of His Love… but our suffering will have untold merit, because it will be so intimately united with His Own.

Therese spent the last 18 months of her life, enduring a horrendous trial of faith…she even wrote out the Creed in her own blood. In addition, she suffered immensely from the pains of tuberculosis which caused her unbearable agony, and the Prioress at the Carmel would permit no morphine or any pain medication recommended by the doctors.

She truly resembled her beloved Jesus in His experience of abandonment and torture on the Cross. She clung to Him in her darkness and pain and died making an act of love…”Oh, I love Him..my God, I love You!”

Thank you, Patricia!  I told you that this was so beautiful it would help others, and this is my attempt to share it.

There has just been a book published by a survivor of sexual abuse, Dawn Eden, that also gives beautiful insight into the wisdom of our beloved doctor of the church, St. Therese.  While trying to find an image for this post I stumbled on a review of her book that included the following beautiful and helpful excerpt from Chapter 4.  Reflecting on it gives me a glimpse of how St. Therese came to find joy and peace in the midst of suffering.

The Love that Transforms:Learning the true meaning of spiritual childhood with St. Thérèse of Lisieux

Most of what we know of St. Thérèse (1873–1897), a nun of the Carmelite convent at Lisieux, France, is from The Story of a Soul, a collection of autobiographical writings. In 1895, Thérèse began the work in obedience to an order given by the prioress of her community, Mother Agnes, who happened to be her real-life sister Pauline. Mother Agnes had enjoyed hearing Thérèse speak of her childhood memories and wanted to have a permanent record of them.

Thérèse, although only twenty-two, was already well advanced on the path to holiness at the time she began her autobiography. She saw her sister’s order as an opportunity to "begin to sing what I must sing eternally: ‘The Mercies of the Lord.’"

With those words, Thérèse shows us the proper role of memory. Memory is not to be feared; it is to be purified in the white heat of divine love. As divine love’s light enters into the wounds left by past sorrows, we come to realize how the divine mercy carried us even during the times of our lives when we felt abandoned by God.

That is why, in the opening pages of her autobiography, Thérèse stresses that she is thankful for the gift of remembrance: "God granted me the favor of opening my intelligence at an early age and of imprinting childhood recollections so deeply on my memory that it seems the things I’m about to recount happened only yesterday."

Her memories were inseparable from her gratitude for divine providence. All the things that had happened to her, whether pleasurable or painful at the time, were now visible to her only through the light of God’s loving plan for her life. This is a saint who, even while enduring the most intense physical sufferings on her deathbed, was able to say, “everything is a grace” and really mean it.As she continues her story, it seems Thérèse stresses her gratitude partly to steel the reader for the many childhood sufferings she will recount. One could say, in a sense, that she sees her life as the story of a soul who went from suffering without God to suffering with God.

Of course, as Thérèse would be the first to say, God is never truly absent from us.However, we can will to deny him entrance into our heart. When we hold onto resentment that our own will is not being done, we become locked in a solitary prison of self-pity.

Thérèse herself experienced the interior pain of this prison. The key that freed her is what she wants to share with us: the realization that, to the degree that we can say “Not my will, but thy will be done,” suffering can become the foundation for a closer union with God. Thérèse spoke of this during her final illness: “I have suffered very much since I have been on earth, but, if in my childhood I suffered with sadness, it is no longer the way I suffer. It is with joy and peace."

Excerpted from My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints by Dawn Eden. Copyright 2012. Ave Maria Press Notre Dame, IN. www.avemariapress.com. All rights reserved.

Just As I Am

"Just As I Am" is by Fernando Ortega off of his latest CD, "Come Down O Love Divine".  Fernando had performed this hymn as a young artist, but this was a new melody and arrangement for this his latest project.  The music and the lyrics are stunning and soul moving.  They also have a similarity to the words St. Therese chose in the longer version of her Offering to Merciful Love.

Fernando dedicated the song to Billy Graham and there is a section in the song when we hear briefly from Billy Graham.  Here are the lyrics:

I waited and waited for God
He turned and He heard me
He lifted me out of the mud
His own hand secured me
The Lord is my strength
I will not be confounded
So I have focused my face like a flint
I'll not be ashamed
Lord I come

Just as I am
Without one plea
But that Your blood
Was shed for me

Take the days that remain in my life
Lord, let me serve You
While there is breath on my lips
I would proclaim You
I long for Your return
I long to see You face to face
I long to join the eternal song
Communion of all the saints

Just as I am
Without one plea
But that Your blood
Was shed for me

From St. Therese's Offering to Merciful Love (long version)
Since You loved me so much as to give me Your only Son as my Savior and my Spouse, the infinite treasures of His merits are mine. I offer them to You with gladness, begging You to look upon me only in the Face of Jesus and in His heart burning with Love. . . . 

After earth's Exile, I hope to go and enjoy You in the Fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for Your Love alone with the one purpose of pleasing You, consoling Your Sacred Heart, and saving souls who will love You eternally.

In the evening of this life, I shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask You, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is stained in Your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in Your own Justice and to receive from Your Love the eternal possession of Yourself. I want no other Throne, no other Crown but You, my Beloved!

We can only confess that Jesus is Lord (see 1 Corinthians 12:3) or call God, "Abba", Father (see Galatians 4:6) in the Holy Spirit.  Our faith itself, our confession of faith, our realization that Jesus is Lord, and through the shedding of his Precious Blood we have the Holy Spirit to teach us to call out Abba--Our Father, all of it is gift.  Lord, make us truly thankful!

We will show up empty handed just like St. Therese, Great Saint that she is!

We know we have nothing to boast of

that our hope of salvation came from God, Our Father, 

not sparing his only Son, 

and that Son in obedience and love

became incarnate of a woman, 

full of grace, conceived without sin because of God her Savior, 

and this Son, revealed his Father to us,

taught us to pray, Our Father, 
taught us how to love, how to show mercy and compassion, 

how to forgive, he suffered betrayal, humiliation, bodily and soul wrenching torment, 

and then laid his life down for us his friends, 

and every drop of his Precious Blood ran from his pierced side, His Sacred Heart.  Jesus, I do Trust in You.  Jesus I thank you that you thirst for me.  Increase my thirst, increase my love for you.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!"  And all the angels stood round the throne and round the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen."  Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, clothed in white robes, and whence have they come?"  I said to him, "Sir, you know." And he said to me, "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.  (Revelation 7:9-14)

Repeat Offenders

Have you ever resolved never to commit a sin or fault ever again and bang! the next thing you know you're at it again? Like nagging your spouse over some annoying habit or yelling at the kids to clean up their rooms? Or maybe it's that tendency to overindulge yourself in your favorite treats? Or gossip about things and people? Or not do stuff you know you really ought to do and inconvenience others?

The list could go on and on, right? Priests get it all the time in confession. Somebody comes in and says he is discouraged because he keeps confessing the same sin over and over, intends to improve, and the good intentions come to naught.

If you give up the devil has already beaten you. Surely God doesn't want us to throw in the towel. So why does God let us keep falling? Here's an answer from Divine Intimacy by Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD.

…God permits it in order to humble us more - we must join to humility an immense confidence in the divine help.

"He that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved" (Mt. 10:22), said Jesus. He who will persevere unto the end is not he who will never fall, but he who after every fall will humble himself and rise again, relying on the infinite strength of God.

One no less than the great Doctor of the Church, St. Therese of Lisieux says:

If it is Your will that throughout my whole life I should feel a repugnance to suffering and humiliation; if you permit all the flowers of my desires and good will to fall to the ground without producing any fruit, I shall not be disturbed. I am sure that if I persevere in my good efforts, in the twinkling of an eye, at the moment of death, You will cause rich fruits to ripen on the tree of my soul.

What a happy thought.

I apologize to my fellow bloggers. This was supposed to go up tomorrow and I clicked the "publish" button accidentally. I know we only want one post a day so it will be easier for all of us to get read.