Bonaventure on purgatory

After discussing the Last Judgment, Saint Bonaventure proceeds to discuss two "antecedents" to the judgment, Purgatory and the suffrage of the Church. Today we will consider Bonaventure's teachings on Purgatory.

He says the following must be said:

The fire of purgatory is a real fire, which, however, affects the spirit of the just who, in their lifetime, did not sufficiently atone and make reparations for their sins. If affects their spirit in greater or lesser degree, according as they took with them from their earthly life more or less of what must be burned away.

There are some who question whether the fire of purgatory is a real fire or not. Saint Bonaventure clearly thinks it is; Pope Benedict XVI seems to be of a different opinion. The Holy Father's thoughts, though not specificially connected with the Seraphic Doctor, are worth quoting in full:

Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become
totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ's Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy (Spe salvi, 47).

Returning to Saint Bonaventure, he teaches that those in purgatory suffer more than they did on earth, though less than those in hell, the souls in purgatory are not affliced "so as to be deprived of hope."

Through the fire of purgatory, "the souls are cleansed of the guilt and dross of sin, and also of its sequels. When they are wholly cleansed, they fly out at once and are introduced into the glory of paradise.

But why is purgatory necessary? Recalling that God is Goodness itself and is therefore perfect, Bonaventure reminds us that God

supremely loves good and abhors evil: for, as supreme goodness suffers no good to remain unrewarded, so also it cannot suffer any evil to remain unpunished. But some of the just die before having completed their penance on earth; and their right to life eternal cannot remain unsatisfied nor their guilt of sin unreproved, lest the beauty of universal order be disturbed. Therefore those must be rewarded in the end, but they must also bear a temporal penalty that fits their guilt and sin.

But why is this necessary?

In his typical, orderly fashion, Bonaventure notes that sin does three things: first, it offends the majesty of God, which deserves punishment; second, it harms the Church, which harm must be repaired; and, third, it "distorts the divine image stamped on the soul," which must be purified. Keeping all of this in mind, he says the "penalty must be justly punitive, duly reparative, and properly cleansing."

The fire of purgatory must be justly punitive because, as he says, "the soul that spurns the eternal and supreme Good and bows to the lowest good must rightfully be subjected to things of lower order, so as to receive punishment from that which had been the occasion of its sin and the reason why it had spurned God and defiled itself." In considering this Bonaventure offers us this spiritual gem: "The more deeply a man has loved the things of the world in the inner core of his heart, the harder it will be for him to be cleansed."

Considering the reparative quality of the fire of purgatory, Bonaventure teaches that "those who are being cleansed possess grace which now they cannot lose, they neither can nor will be completely immersed in sorrow, or fall into despair, or be moved to blaspheme. Hence, severe as their punishment might be, it is far other and far milder than damnation; and they know without the possibility of doubting that their state is not the same as the state of those who are tortured irremediably in hell."

As to the cleansing quality of the fire, Bonaventure says that he believes the fire, by "the very power of the grace within, assisted by the pain from without, effectively cleanses the soul which is thereby punished for its offense and relieved of the burden of its guilt, so that there remains nothing unfit for glory."

The fire of purgatory, then, is a most beneficial pain, a blessed pain as Pope Benedict says.

But let us return to what Bonaventure said before. He said that when a soul is wholly cleansed that if "flies" out of purgatory straight to heaven. Implied in this verb is an immediate swiftness; there is no delay. Once the purification is complete, the soul immediately enters heaven. Why?

The Seraphic Doctor says that such souls "must take flight, for there is within them a fire of lov that lifts them up, and no impurity of the soul or any guilt to hold them down. Nor would it befit God's mercy of His justice further to delay glory now that He finds the vessel to be suitable; great would be the pain if the reward were delayed, nor should a cleansed spirit be punished any longer."