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Purgatory and hell
Only God
can create justice.
The
image of the Last Judgment is not primarily an image of
terror, but an image of hope; it may even be the
decisive image of hope. Is it not also a frightening
image? I would say: It is an image that evokes
responsibility, an image of that fear of which Saint
Hilary spoke when he said that all our fear has its
place in love.
God is
justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and
our hope. And in his justice, there is also grace. Both
justice and grace must be seen in their correct inner
relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does
not make wrong into right. Evildoers, in the end, do not
sit at the table at the eternal banquet beside their
victims, as though nothing had happened. Quoting from
Plato, which expresses a premonition of just judgment,
expresses the truth, saying that in the end, souls will
stand naked before the judge. It no longer matters what
they once were in history, but only what they are in
truth: “Often, when it is the king or some other monarch
or potentate that he [the judge] has to deal with, he
finds that there is no soundness in the soul whatever;
he finds it scourged and scarred by the various acts of
perjury and wrong-
doing . . . ; it is twisted and warped by lies and
vanity, and nothing is straight because truth has had no
part in its development. Power, luxury, pride and
debauchery have left it so full of disproportion and
ugliness that when he has inspected it [he] sends it
straight to prison, where on its arrival it will undergo
the appropriate punishment. . . . Sometimes, though, the
eye of the judge lights on a different soul which has
lived in purity and truth . . . then he is struck with
admiration and sends him to the isles of the blessed.”
In the
parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus admonishes us
through the image of a soul destroyed by arrogance and
opulence, who has created an impassable chasm between
himself and the poor man; the chasm of being trapped
within material pleasures; the chasm of forgetting the
other, of incapacity to love, which then becomes a
burning and unquenchable thirst. In this parable Jesus
is not referring to the final destiny after the Last
Judgment, but a notion of an intermediate state between
death and resurrection, a state in which the final
sentence is yet to be pronounced.
This
intermediate state includes the view that these souls
are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but are
already being punished or are experiencing a provisional
form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state
can involve purification and healing which mature the
soul for communion with God.
These
concepts gradually developed into the doctrine of
Purgatory. We do not need to examine the historical
paths of this development; it is enough to ask what it
actually means.
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—people for whom communion
with God gives direction to their entire being, and
whose journey toward God brings to fulfillment what they
already are.
Yet, we
know from experience that neither case is normal in
human life. 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.
What happens to such individuals when they appear before
the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed
through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might
occur? Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the
differing impact of God’s judgment according to each
person’s particular circumstances. Paul begins by saying
that Christian life is built upon a common foundation:
Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood
firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we
know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death.
Then Paul continues: “Now, if any one builds on the
foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood,
hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest; for the
Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with
fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one
has done. If the work which any man has built on the
foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any
man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he
himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
To be
continued next week
Spe
Salvi Encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI to all “On
Christian Hope”
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