Homily - 16 February 2020 - The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Dear brothers and sisters,

           

Today, the Lord Jesus gives us a stern warning: “I tell you,” he says, “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). When we hear these words in the presence of Saints Damien and Marianne, we might begin to feel as if there is no hope for us; is it possible for us to do what they did, to love as they loved? The answer, of course, is yes; it is possible for us to do what they did and to love as they loved, although in different ways. Indeed, “If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall life” (Sirach 15:15).

We know that “death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ.”[1] This is why the manner in which we live this life is so important, for by it we make our decision for “life or death, good or evil,” which is to say either for or against Christ Jesus (Sirach 15:17). “With death, our life-choice becomes definitive – our life stands before the judge.”[2] This choice can have a multiplicity of forms because each of our lives is different, but the fundamental choice before us remains the same.

There are some people whose lives are so filled with wickedness that any desire for truth and love has been completely snuffed out within them. This is what is meant by the word, “hell,” “the state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed.”[3] But there are also people whose lives are so imbued with love and purity – those like Father Damien and Mother Marianne - that their love for God flows readily to their neighbor. Such holiness of life clearly marks one for heaven, “the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings.”[4] But such people are not common, are they? What, then, of the rest of us, who want to live holy lives, who want to keep the commandments, but who fail so often?

We can presume that in the majority of people 

there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. 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, and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul.[5] 

What, then, becomes of these souls who are open to, and are desirous of, truth and love, but whose lives are also marked with sin? “Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter?”[6]

It would go against God’s mercy to cast them into hell, but it would go against his justice for them to enter heaven straight away with such stains covering their souls. The answer is clear: they must first be purified. Thus, we hear the Savior’s warning that “you will not be released until you have paid the last penny” (Matthew 5:26). This process of purification is called purgatory for it is a purgation, a cleansing, of the soul.

We speak of the pain of the fire of Purgatory because Saint Paul tells us we will be saved, “but only as through fire” (I Corinthians 3:15). What is this fire, if not the fire of divine love? The Lord’s “burning flame cuts free our closed-off heart, melting it, and pouring it into a new mold to make it fit for the living organism of his body.”[7] This fire is the encounter with Christ Jesus himself, who is both Judge and Savior, and this encounter with him is the moment of judgment.

Many today are afraid of the notion of judgment “because they confuse judgment with petty calculation and give more room to fear than to a loving trust.”[8] They do not realize that

Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms us and frees us, allowing us to become fully 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 becomes 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 also a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally of ourselves and totally of God. In this way the interrelation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us forever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love… The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.[9]

In all of this, we see that “before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him” (Sirach 15:17). If we want our righteousness to surpass that of the scribes and the pharisees, if we want to enter heaven, then we must do better than them. They kept the commandments on the outside, but not in their hearts; we must do both.

We cannot forget that, in Jesus, every commandment “becomes true as a requirement of love, and all join in a single commandment: love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. “Love is the fulfilling of the Law”, St Paul writes (Romans 13:10).[10] Dear brothers and sisters, if we keep the commandments out of love for God and neighbor, then one day we, too, like Saints Damien and Marianne, will be plunged into the ocean of infinite love and be “simply overwhelmed with joy.”[11] Amen.

---

[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1021.

[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, 45.

[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1033.

[4] Ibid., 1024.

[5] Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 46.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., 229.

[8] Joseph Ratzinger, Seek That Which Is Above: Meditations Through the Year, Second Edition. Graham Harrison, trans. (San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press, 2007), 77.

[9] Pope Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, 47.

[10] Ibid., Angelus Address, 13 February 2011

[11] Ibid., Spe Salvi, 12.

Purgatory: The look and fire of His love (as seen in a statue)

In my boyhood church of St. John the Baptist (which was its own parish until 1999 when it was merged with St. Rose of Lima parish to form All Saints parish, which was more recently merged with St. Boniface and Immaculate Conception parishes to form Blessed Sacrament parish), a lovely statue of souls being freed from Purgatory could be found:

Photo: Keith Urbon

I spent many hours contemplating this statue when I was younger and,to this day, I have not seen its equal. I would dearly love to look upon it again, but - since it was sold - this not now possible; I do not even know to whom it was sold.

At any rate, above this statue was written the phrase, "Remember, me, for the hand of God has touched me." An allusion to a passage from the Book of Job which reads, "Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me" (19:21), the phrase also served as a constant reminder to the faithful to pray for the faithful departed because, as Pope Francis said today,

...we are called to remember everyone, to remember everyone, even those who no one remembers. We remember the victims of war and violence; the many "little ones" of the world crushed by hunger and poverty. We remember the anonymous who rest in common graves. We remember our brothers and sisters killed because they are Christians; and those who sacrificed their lives to serve others. We especially entrust to the Lord, those who have left over the last year.

These words are spoken by Job, who has suffered greatly and, according to his way of thinking, unjustly - because he committed no sin. Job demanded from the Lord to know the reason for his suffering, but never received it. Suffering as he did, Job found himself quite alone. "My kinsfolk and my close friends," he said, "have failed me; the guests in my house have forgotten me; my maidservants count me as a stranger; I have an alien in their eyes" (Job 19:14-15).

Even so, the holy man of God declared, as we hear from time to time at a funeral:

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me (Job 19:25-27)!

Returning to the statue, we see that as a woman receives "the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him" (James 1:12; cf. Revelation 2:10). As she is crowned by the Lord Jesus, her eyes look into his; from her flesh she sees God, her own eyes behold his face:

At the heart of the Church's teaching on the necessity of Purgatory for those who die in friendship with God but not yet fully purified (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030-1032).

In his encyclical letter Spe salvi, Pope Benedict XVI suggested that the purification of Purgatory is the encounter with Jesus Christ:

Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms us and frees us, allowing us to become fully 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 becomes 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 also a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally of ourselves and totally of God. In this way the interrelation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us forever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love… The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy (47).

The pain of the fires of Purgatory is the pain of knowing we have fallen short of the love God, it is the pain of our own disappointment.

As we pray today for our departed brothers and sisters, let us beg the Lord to let the light of his face shine brightly upon the souls of the faithful departed, that by the look of his love they may at last be fully purified.

Questions about Purgatory

Over at The New Theological Movement, Father Ryan Erlenbush has a fine post in which he answers several questions about Purgatory.  During this month of November, I encourage you to read it.

What is purgatory?

One week ago today Pope Benedict XVI devoted his Wednesday General Audience Address to the person of Saint Catherine of Genoa (the below translation is via Zenit).

Of particular note to us this morning is the portion of his address in which His Holiness explained Saint Catherine's understanding of Purgatory (with my emphases):

Catherine's thought on purgatory, for which she is particularly known, is condensed in the last two parts of the book mentioned at the beginning: "Treatise on Purgatory" and "Dialogues on the Soul and Body." It is important to observe that, in her mystical experience, Catherine never had specific revelations on purgatory or on souls that are being purified there. However, in the writings inspired by our saint purgatory is a central element, and the way of describing it has original characteristics in relation to her era.

The first original feature refers to the "place" of the purification of souls. In her time [purgatory] was presented primarily with recourse to images connected to space: There was thought of a certain space where purgatory would be found. For Catherine, instead, purgatory is not represented as an element of the landscape of the core of the earth; it is a fire that is not exterior but interior. This is purgatory, an interior fire. The saint speaks of the soul's journey of purification to full communion with God, based on her own experience of profound sorrow for the sins committed, in contrast to the infinite love of God (cf. Vita Mirabile, 171v). We have heard about the moment of her conversion, when Catherine suddenly felt God's goodness, the infinite distance of her life from this goodness and a burning fire within her. And this is the fire that purifies, it is the interior fire of purgatory. Here also there is an original feature in relation to the thought of the era. She does not begin, in fact, from the beyond to narrate the torments of purgatory -- as was usual at that time and perhaps also today -- and then indicate the path for purification or conversion. Instead our saint begins from her own interior experience of her life on the path to eternity. The soul, says Catherine, appears before God still bound to the desires and the sorrow that derive from sin, and this makes it impossible for it to enjoy the Beatific Vision of God. Catherine affirms that God is so pure and holy that the soul with stains of sin cannot be in the presence of the Divine Majesty (cf. Vita Mirabile, 177r). And we also realize how far we are, how full we are of so many things, so that we cannot see God. The soul is conscious of the immense love and perfect justice of God and, in consequence, suffers for not having responded correctly and perfectly to that love, and that is why the love itself of God becomes a flame. Love itself purifies it from its dross of sin.

Catherine's teaching on purgatory resonates well with what Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Spe salvi (with my emphases):

45. This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates, 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. The early Church took up these concepts, and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to examine here the complex 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[37]. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are[38].

46. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. 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 and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. 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 judgement according to each person's particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images—simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it. 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” (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.

47. 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. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart's time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ[39]. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice—the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgement and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).

48. A further point must be mentioned here, because it is important for the practice of Christian hope. Early Jewish thought includes the idea that one can help the deceased in their intermediate state through prayer (see for example 2 Macc 12:38-45; first century BC). The equivalent practice was readily adopted by Christians and is common to the Eastern and Western Church. The East does not recognize the purifying and expiatory suffering of souls in the afterlife, but it does acknowledge various levels of beatitude and of suffering in the intermediate state. The souls of the departed can, however, receive “solace and refreshment” through the Eucharist, prayer and almsgiving. The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a request for pardon? Now a further question arises: if “Purgatory” is simply purification through fire in the encounter with the Lord, Judge and Saviour, how can a third person intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to the other? When we ask such a question, we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer for him—can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert earthly time into God's time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain. In this way we further clarify an important element of the Christian concept of hope. Our hope is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me too[40]. As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well.

Homily - 2 November 2008 - All Souls' Day

The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed
All Souls Day

Today Holy Mother Church prays for her children who, at the moment of death, though destined for the everlasting glory of heaven, were not yet prepared to enter into that joy but who were also not deserving of hell. These are the Poor Souls in Purgatory, those who are being purged – purified – for the everlasting life of heaven.

This Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, this All Souls Day, is a stark reminder to us that not every soul enters the glory of heaven immediately at the moment of death.

This realization marks us with great sorrow and so we pray the Father of Mercies “hear our prayers and console us” and “strengthen our hope that all our departed brothers and sisters will share” in the resurrection of Christ Jesus, and we with them.[1]

Whereas yesterday Mother Church honored her heroic children who lived well the faith of Jesus Christ – the saints of every age and place – who are now with the Lord in glory, today we pray for those who hope to share in that glory, “those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.”[2]

Jesus says to us, “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me” (John 6:37). It is our choice in this life whether or not to belong to Christ, but just as he will not reject anyone who comes to him, neither will he force anyone to come to him. The choice is ours, to be made again and again, at every moment of our lives. With every word we speak, thought we think, deed we do, we are free to accept or reject the grace given us. He extends his hand toward us, saying, “Come, follow me” (Luke 18:22), and he waits for us to either grasp his hand or walk away.

We know that “death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ.”[3] This is why the manner in which we live this life is so important, for by it we make our decision for or against Christ. “With death, our life-choice becomes definitive – our life stands before the judge.”[4] Today is a fitting day for us to consider what the choice of my life is, what my life is oriented towards.

This choice can have a multiplicity of forms, for each of our lives is different, but the fundamental choice before us remains the same.

There are some people whose lives are so filled with wickedness that any desire for truth and love has been completely destroyed within them. This is what is meant by the word, “hell.” There are also people whose lives are so imbued with love and purity that their love for God flows readily to their neighbor. Such holiness of life clearly marks one for heaven. But such people are not common, are they?

What, then, of the rest of us? What of those of us who want to live holy lives but fail so often?

We can presume that in the majority of people

there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. 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, and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul.[5]

What, then, becomes of these souls who are open to and are desirous of truth and love, but whose lives are also marked with sin? “Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter?”[6] Certainly not.

Update: word order fixed: It would go against God’s mercy to cast them into hell, but it would also go against his justice for them to enter into heaven straight away with such filth covering their souls. The answer is clear: they must first be purified. Thus we hear the words from the Book of Wisdom: “God tried them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself” (Wisdom 3:5-6).

This process of purification is called purgatory for it is a purgation, a cleansing, of the soul. “[Purgatory is] the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God, and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints.”[7]

We often speak of the pain of the fire of Purgatory; why do we do so? The Psalmist tells us, “fire goes before [the Lord]; everywhere it consumes the foes” (Psalm 97:4). Saint Paul tells us that we will be saved, “but only as through fire” (I Corinthians 3:15). What is this fire, then, but the fire of love?

The Lord’s “burning flame cuts free our closed-off heart, melting it, and pouring it into a new mold to make it fit for the living organism of his body.”[8] This fire is the encounter with Christ Jesus himself, who is both Judge and Savior, and this encounter with him is the moment of judgment. Many today are afraid of the notion of judgment “because they confuse judgment with petty calculation and give more room to fear than to a loving trust.”[9]

Pope Benedict explains this encounter with Jesus most powerfully:

Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms us and frees us, allowing us to become fully 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 becomes 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 also a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally of ourselves and totally of God. In this way the interrelation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us forever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love… The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.[10]

Today’s celebration, while it is one of deep sadness as we mourn our beloved dead and pray for them, is also one of profound hope rooted in the love of God.

Let each of us, then, raise our prayers and offer our sufferings to the Father for the Poor Souls in Purgatory. We know that our prayers on their behalf are beneficial to them because, “No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone.”[11] We are all one in the Body of Christ. Therefore, let us keep ever in mind the words of St. Ambrose: “We have loved them in life; let us not forget them in death.” Amen.

[1] Collect of the day.
[2] Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer I.
[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1021.
[4] Pope Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, 45.
[5] Ibid., 46.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, Second Edition. Michael Waldstein, trans. with Aidan Nichols, O.P., ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 230.
[8]Ibid., 229.
[9] Joseph Ratzinger, Seek That Which Is Above: Meditations Through the Year, Second Edition. Graham Harrison, trans. (San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press, 2007), 77.
[10] Pope Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, 47.
[11] Ibid., 48.

St. Bonaventure on Prayer for the Dead

After addressing purgatory in The Breviloquium, Saint Bonaventure addresses the second of the antecedents to the Last Judgment, "the suffrages of the Church."

What Bonaventure terms suffrages, we might term prayer and sacrifices. These suffrages, he says,

benefit the dead; that is, those offered specifically for the dead, such as Masses, fastings, alms, and other forms of prayer and penance performed for the purpose of facilitating and hastening the expiation of their sins.

These suffrages do not benefit all of the dead, he is clear to remind us. They do not benefit the Saints - those in heaven - because we count upon and beg their prayers for us, and they cannot benefit the souls in hell - those who are "entirely evil." Our suffrages benefit those souls in purgatory, those who are "imperfectly good."

Being of practical minds, we might wonder how much our suffrages benefit those imperfectly good souls. Naturally, Bonaventure anticipates this question. The level of benefit, he says, "depends both upon the degree of merit of the dead and upon the charity of the living, who may apply them to some souls in preference to others, either to alleviate pain or to hasten relief, as divine providence sees fit for each soul's good."

We would do well to recover the practice of offering our prayers, sufferings and sacrifices for the souls in purgatory, asking God to more swiftly cleanse them that might, as Bonaventure says, "fly out at once and [be] introduced into the glory of paradise."

Now we must consider why our suffrages can benefit those in purgatory. Recalling, again, that God is supremely good, "and hence supremely severe against evil, [God] must display a corresponding supreme sweetness toward good." It is because God is that which is Good that our suffrages are beneficial to those who are suffering. He says:

Therefore, while the just in whom there remains some guilt of sin must be cleansed by the pain of purgatory after this life because of the severity of justice, they must also be lifted up and given assistance and comfort because of the sweetness of mercy; all the more so as they are in a state of pain and can no longer help themselves through good works and merits. Hence it was befitting for divine providence to dispose that suffrages be offered for them by those who could still do so; without, however, impairing the rectitude of justice, from which even the sweetness of divine mercy may not and cannot derogate or separate itself in any way.

Here, Bonaventure brilliantly balances, as it were, the divine justice and the divine mercy.

The Seraphic Doctor notes that rightness of God's justice "respects the honor of God, the government of the universe, and the fact of individual merit." Why must these aspects of God's justice be preserved?

First, he says, the honor of God must be respected and honored, which "requires the performance of works of reparation and penance to atone to Him for sins; therefore," he says, "suffrages are to be offered through such acts as best render satisfaction and repay honor to God." Such acts include fasting, prayer, the giving of alms, and the Holy Mass, "which is the best way of rendering due honor to God."

On a curious note, following Pope Saint Gregory, Saint Bonaventure makes these words of Saint Augustine his own: "the pomp of funeral processions, a costly tomb, solemn burial rites, are rather a solace for the living than a help to the dead." As such, these, says Bonaventure, do not count as suffrages.

Returning, then, to the divine justice, Bonaventure uses the analogy of the body to discuss the preservation of the order of the universe. Our suffrages cannot benefit those in hell because "these are completely separated from the mystical body of Christ." Consequently, "no spiritual effect can reach them, or be of any use to them, any more than the head can have an effect upon members severed from the body."

Likewise, our suffrages cannot benefit the souls in heaven because they "are at the summit and therefore cannot possibly rise any higher." It is, rather, the prayers of the Saints that are beneficial to us.

But whereas our suffrages do not benefit those in heaven or in hell, they do benefit those in purgatory because,

by the fact of suffering without being able to help themselves, they are inferior to the living; but in terms of justice, they are linked to the other members of the Church, so that the merits of the Church may rightly be applied to them. Lastly, the justice of God requires that the consideration of individual merit.

"Therefore," teaches Saint Bonaventure, "such suffrages as are offered for the dead in general, although they are effectivefor all good souls, each in his own measure, convey a greater effect in regard to those who during their life more richly deserved to be affected and assisted by them."

This is not to say that our suffrages do not benefit those who are less worthy of them, but they will rather need more suffrages offered on their behalf. For this reason, we would do well to strive to live as holy a life as possibly while we still may.

Tomorrow we will consider the consuming fire.

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."