Pray for Departed Souls
Let us remember the departed souls in purgatory this month of November. One suggestion is to pray the Eternal Rest prayer between decades, when praying your Rosary: "Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen. "
Here is an excellent piece of apologetics on Purgatory by James Akin of Catholic Answers, taken from Catholic Culture.
What the Church teaches is that there is a purification that occurs after death for all who die in God's friendship but who have not been sufficiently purified for the glory of heaven. This purification can involve some kind of pain or discomfort. And the faithful on earth can assist those being purified — for example, by their prayers and by the saying of Mass.
Most of the additional things one hears about purgatory are theological speculation or metaphor. For example, the idea that purgatory occurs in a special "place" in the afterlife is a matter of speculation. We don't know that. And, for that matter, we don't know how the concepts of "place" or "space" work in the afterlife.
Similarly, discussion of individuals spending time in purgatory also must be understood with nuance. Just as we don't know how space works in the intermediate state between death and resurrection, neither do we know how time works. The common teaching among medieval theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas is that the departed exist in a state of sharing some of the properties of time and some of the properties of eternity but properly identical with neither. From our time-bound perspective in this world, purgatory might be instantaneous, having existential rather than temporal "duration."
The image of purgatory as a cleansing fire also is one that the Church will not say is literally true. The Catechism notes only that "The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire" (CCC 1031, emphasis added) and stresses that the purification is "is entirely different from the punishment of the damned" (ibid.). This suggests considerable reserve with respect to the image of fire in purgatory.
Read the entire text here.
Here is an excellent piece of apologetics on Purgatory by James Akin of Catholic Answers, taken from Catholic Culture.
What the Church teaches is that there is a purification that occurs after death for all who die in God's friendship but who have not been sufficiently purified for the glory of heaven. This purification can involve some kind of pain or discomfort. And the faithful on earth can assist those being purified — for example, by their prayers and by the saying of Mass.
Most of the additional things one hears about purgatory are theological speculation or metaphor. For example, the idea that purgatory occurs in a special "place" in the afterlife is a matter of speculation. We don't know that. And, for that matter, we don't know how the concepts of "place" or "space" work in the afterlife.
Similarly, discussion of individuals spending time in purgatory also must be understood with nuance. Just as we don't know how space works in the intermediate state between death and resurrection, neither do we know how time works. The common teaching among medieval theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas is that the departed exist in a state of sharing some of the properties of time and some of the properties of eternity but properly identical with neither. From our time-bound perspective in this world, purgatory might be instantaneous, having existential rather than temporal "duration."
The image of purgatory as a cleansing fire also is one that the Church will not say is literally true. The Catechism notes only that "The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire" (CCC 1031, emphasis added) and stresses that the purification is "is entirely different from the punishment of the damned" (ibid.). This suggests considerable reserve with respect to the image of fire in purgatory.
Read the entire text here.
2 Comments:
Happy all souls day to you. Our preist was teaching the school children about purgatory during mass, it was great the way he explained it.
Congratulations on the dominican cross I just saw that!
Thanks Carmel, God bless you and keep you!
What a wonderful priest to be teaching the children about purgatory. The little ones need to be fed by good priests. They are our future saints.
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