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How We Help Others in Purgatory

Writer's picture: Fr. SeraiahFr. Seraiah

While in college and (protestant) seminary I was taught that the Catholic Church invented the idea of Purgatory sometime in the middle ages to make people believe that they can sin all they want and get a second chance after they die. I had a complete resistance to the idea of Purgatory as I understood it, because that teaching is completely contrary to Scripture. In that, I was correct, for if Purgatory is really what protestants think it is, then it is wrong.


Of course, we know that Purgatory is not even close to this silly protestant distortion of it, but we must give them credit for rejecting an error (even if it is not actually our error!). Right along with the doctrine of Purgatory, is the doctrine of indulgences, which protestants reject just as quickly. These always go together: if you reject the idea of a "second chance at a free ticket to Heaven" then you will also reject the idea that anything we do on earth can help those who get the "second chance". Protestants have a serious objection to the idea that one person can do a righteous act and have that holiness impact another person.


We all know that a holy action if done directly for another (e.g. to give alms to a poor person) has a good effect on that other person. That is not what people resist. Rather they resist the idea that a prayer, or a devotion, or a personal sacrifice that one of us does can have an impact on someone else if we do not do anything specifically for that person. "God doesn't take your righteousness away from you and give it to another", is the way we used to say it when I was a protestant.


In today's gospel reading from Mark 2 (which is largely the same as Matthew 9), we read that a group of people showed faith by bringing a paralytic to Jesus for healing. Jesus proceeds to grant that man forgiveness and healed him of his paralysis. We are told specifically (in both gospel accounts) that Jesus saw "their" faith; the paralytic is never mentioned as specifically having faith (he may have, but that is not the point of the passage, and neither Mark nor Matthew felt the need to mention it). It is clear that they both wanted us to understand that the blessing Jesus gave came as a result of what the others did, and not the man himself. This is startling, especially when you realize that the blessing was not just a physical healing, but actual reconciliation: the man was forgiven of his sins!


In other words, Jesus healed and granted absolution to the man because of the faith of his friends. Certainly, there was some faith in the man; forgiveness would not be granted to an impenitent. It was, however, their faith in Christ that was the primary motivator, and it was that faith which God took and applied to the paralytic's situation. It might have been their faith that moved them to bring the man to Jesus, but what Jesus sees is deeper than that; He sees their hearts. We can see here one of the clearest testimonies to the principle of how indulgences work. We can do a good work in gaining an indulgence and we can even apply that to someone else. As a result of our good actions, others can be blessed.


Do you really believe this? You need to. You need to see the grace and mercy of God, and just how willing He is to grant grace to others if we will have faith and do the works He calls us to do. Certainly in our prayers, we can help others, but we can also extend God's grace to them by the various holy deeds that we can perform and the faith that we have in God; both for those on earth and those who have gone to their time of Purgatory. Many of those deeds are lost if we do not "offer them up" for others. Let us take full advantaqe of this wonderful grace of which God allows us to be a part, and send up all that we can for the good of others.

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