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Sunday, All Souls,
2003 (Year B): Read Wis 3, 1-9; Rom
5, 5-11; Lk 7, 11-17
Let there be no doubt that God wills the eternal salvation of all mankind; while this earthly life lasts, there is
always still hope of salvation, no matter how hopeless someone’s case may seem. For salvation He created us and for
this, after we had sinned, He redeemed us. But just as God created and redeemed us out of divine freedom, so we can only be
saved by responding to that freedom with our human freedom. Without our consent, God offers us salvation in Christ; but only
with our consent can God actually bring that salvation about in the life of the individual person. In giving us the freedom
to choose Him as our Life and Love, God gave us that which makes us most like unto Himself. By the same token, however, that
very freedom gave us the possibility of not choosing Him but of choosing ourselves or something less than ourselves as if
that were our “god”. Notwithstanding our rejection of the Creator as God through original sin, the Creator remained
faithful to His plan to bring us to eternal life: He became our Redeemer. God’s answer to our sin was both just and
merciful. In Jesus Crucified, sin was expiated, the fundamental disorder it had introduced into creation was fundamentally
readjusted, and mercy was poured out to win us back to Himself.
But the return to God, the “metanoia” or “conversion” back to Him, cannot happen if we do not
freely embrace Jesus Crucified. If we do not freely recognize in His sacrifice the expiation of our personal sins, and the
merciful love that can purify us gradually from harmful attachment to ourselves, and to what is less than ourselves, then
we reject redemption and the Redeemer. The rejection of God as Creator is the meaning of original sin, which is washed away
in baptism, the sacrament by which we embrace, and more especially, are embraced by the Redeemer. But if we freely reject
even the Redeemer by grave sin, by mortal sin, then although He remains faithful to us, there is nothing He can do for us:
He will never force us to accept Him, although He will try to send us messages of His merciful love and grace, to stir our
desire for Him. He respects our freedom more than any human institution ever can. At the same time, with a joy greater than
any human being can know, the Redeemer rejoices when we turn from our mortal sin and embrace Him once more. This is what we
do in the sacrament of confession, called by the Fathers of the Church, “baptismus laborious”, “belabored
baptism”. That sacrament restores communion with God, which we forfeit by mortal sin. Should we persist in mortal sin
through death, continuing to reject the Redeemer’s equally persistent calls to accept His mercy, then that would constitute
the eternal self-inflicted punishment of separation from God, or hell.
Yet, as we all know from our experience, there exists what might be called a middle ground in our relationship with
God. It’s not that we reject Him as Redeemer, but we don’t quite fully accept Him either. We wander in the twilight
zone of venial sin, sin which does not break communion with God but which nevertheless offends His infinite goodness because
of our lukewarm and ungrateful response to Him. We are like bad-tempered children who go along with His wishes but with curled
lips, stamping feet and whining protests of “it’s not fair!” Venial sin also bespeaks unhealthy attachment
to the created order, to a petulant self-concern, which masquerades as a phony self-fulfillment. The venial sinner tries to
steal the beauty of the created from the Creator, failing to note as he gazes on his plunder, that created beauty, once out
of the Creator’s hand, rots from the inside out into a state of rancid ugliness. The venial sinner is a victim of his
own distraction; he sees the gift and envies it for himself, but cuts out the Giver from whom the gift has come. The venial
sinner fails freely to fix his gaze on the Giver, who in the last analysis is Himself the greatest Gift of all; he fails to
glorify God in praise and gratitude for all that He has given to help him on his way to salvation. The venial sinner is unwilling
to say no to the gushing excitement of the moment in order to pilgrim onwards with patient sobriety to the glory of the eternal.
The venial sinner suffers from a kind of arrest in his spiritual maturing process, and gets caught up in all manner of clinging
to riches, fame or pleasure which enslave his freedom and blinker his vision. Stuck in adolescent attitudes to spiritual things,
the venial sinner cannot, in the wisdom of St. Ignatius of Loyola, find the courage of holy indifference: that is, to use
the things of creation or to renounce their use to the degree that they lead, or do not lead, to the greater glory of God
and one’s own salvation.
So, clearly, the venial sinner in order not to recede farther backwards into mortal sin, is in a constant struggle
or “agony” to purify himself, to seek forgiveness, to perform good works, to pray and to do penance. For although
God loves the venial sinner, He wants him free from the clingings, from the adolescent attitudes, from the errors of judgment
and choice which, when taken altogether, obscure the possibility of seeing God. It is not God who obscures Himself, but the
venial sinner’s own cataracts. God so loves us that He will have us completely cleansed, healed and matured: for only
then will we be able to see Him as He is, only then can He reveal Himself fully to us in the beatitude of His glory. And who is the venial sinner? It is most probably
each one of us; it was most certainly each of the holy souls.
Therefore, the holy souls for whom we pray and offer suffrage today, are indeed holy and blessed, for they are in the
hands of God, being made whole that they might join the ranks of all the saints we commemorated yesterday. “To be made
whole” is another way of saying “to be purified” or “to be purged”. Purgatory is not some kind
of spiritual torture chamber. The fires of purgatory are not the fires of hell. The fire which purifies the holy souls is
the fire of Pentecost, the fire for which Jesus came down to the earth that it might blaze in the hearts of all believers;
it is the fire that carried Elijah up to heaven; it is the fire that issues forth from the throne of the One of Great Age
in the vision of the Prophet Daniel. The fire of God is the Spirit of God who, in Purgatory, reveals to each one the earthly
attachments of which he must let go to enter into the company of Heaven. That same Spirit enables the soul to have the courage
at last to embrace “holy indifference” and with its whole being finally to prefer absolutely nothing to the love
of Christ. Pray as we must for the holy souls, we are not however to fret for them, for truly they are in peace. It is not
the peace of the grave, but the peace of the lover whose heart plunges into the depths of God’s merciful love and finds
at last perfect reconciliation with himself, with God and with the whole of creation. No, they are not afflicted, except with
the happy affliction of one desperate to shout out the greatness of God’s mercy. No, they are not being destroyed, although
they are experiencing the liberating destruction of the chains, which tied them to the foolishness of fleeting joys. No, they
are not being chastised or punished, except in the sense that their hearts are at last coming to know the bliss of perfect
sorrow for their sins and the perfect mercy of the Heart of Jesus whose blood is wiping away every last trace of guilt.
The doctrine of Purgatory is among the most consoling doctrines of our Catholic faith. It shows forth our merciful
God’s compassion for our weakness in this life, His understanding that we find it difficult to le go of the beauty of
His creation, His patience and boundless kindness in giving us the possibility, even after death, of being fully converted
and reconciled to His truth and holiness. God understands our struggle, our “agony”, and He loves us for it. That
does not mean that we can give up the struggle! The battle of every soul means more to Him than all the battles and wars of
human history, for our real enemy is not flesh and blood but the spirit of evil, Satan, and his hateful designs for our eternal
damnation. Purgatory, more than a state of soul or a place of some unknown dimension, is the ongoing effort every day of our
lives to let the grace of God join intimately with our own free choices to purify us of all that is not worthy of the Kingdom
of God and of its King. When you go to confession, when you pray, when you give alms and do penance, when you seek to build
a civilization of love and a culture of life, when you suffer and forgive: that is purgatory, that is the blessed, married
effort of divine grace and human freedom to let the Truth and Holiness of Jesus Christ shine forth in your own life, upon
your countenance, in the depths of your heart. The fact that we fail, stumble or even fall, must not become a decoy of evil’s
conniving to spirit us out of the “logic of Purgatory”. On the contrary, our failures must serve paradoxically
to strengthen our resolve in purgatorial perseverance! God turns all things to the good of those who love Him and whom He
loves. Of course our ideal is to step from this life directly into heaven, but since we cannot presume that, we can prepare
ourselves by treading the path of purgatory, before and after we die. And one “day”, like the young man of Naim,
Jesus Himself will declare the whole process ended and command each faithful, holy soul: “My friend! I tell you to arise!”
So let us look with a holy envy upon the holy souls and, as we pray for their entrance into heaven, pray that they
will be there to welcome us when Jesus gives us back to our Mother, the Queen of Heaven, on the hoped-for day of our own coronation
among the angels and saints of God.
Msgr. Peter Magee, Sunday, November 2nd,
2003; St.
Matthew’s
Cathedral, DC; 10.00 am
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