Purgatory, prayer and CS Lewis
Before Father Joe, I’d never thought of the souls in Purgatory as my brothers and sisters. In fact I didn’t think of them at all. But then I attended a November week of Masses in Half Moon Bay, California. They were celebrated by a newly ordained priest at Our Lady of the Pillar Church.. Clearly and radically orthodox, this young priest unabashedly delighted in practicing what I have learned is the “extraordinary liturgy.” Father Joe’s reverence and devotion seemed to light up the altar when he raised the Host.
Furthermore, Father Joe, (I never learned his last name) had a deep love and sympathy for the souls in Purgatory. His homiles were brief but instructive. These souls, he exhorted, are our “brothers and our sisters in Christ.” Now disembodied spirits, these souls suffer profound contrition for their sins and unimaginable pain from being separated from the God they yearn for. Unlike us, he explained, they are powerless to help themselves through prayer and penance.
“But,” he declared,”we can help them!”
Father Joe invited us to join him in prayer after Mass at the cemetary.
We did.
It’s been years since that day we followed Father Joe outside the church. Then, about half a mile down the block and up the hill to the cemetary. There were just five of us, John and I, another couple and the priest. But I recall clearly the sacred and mysterious beauty of the priest’s prayers and my awareness that we stood on holy ground. Ever since those first cemetary prayers with Father Joe, we’ve not missed the first eight days in each November, the month of the dead. Wherever we are living, we find a cemetary and then pray as we walk through the tombstones, confident in the heavenly help-indulgences-these souls are receiving.
Wait, isn’t Purgatory outmoded?
The concept of purgatory makes us stumble, individually and collectively. To the point that more than a few Catholics and Christians claim there’s just one destination for faithful souls: heaven. And hell? Well, “surely a loving God wouldn’t create and damn anyone to hell.” Hold that thought.
Although All Saints Day is considered uniquely Roman Catholic, a little research reveals that John Wesley-founder of the Methodist Church loved All Saints Day.
And purgatory?
For first-century Jews, purgatory was axiomatic. And was based on the Torah, specifically the Book of Maccabees: “If he [Judas] had not hoped that they that were slain should have risen again it had been superfluous and vain to pray for the (dead. . . . Whereupon he made an atonement that they might be delivered from sin”; for this indicates that souls after death pass through an intermediate state in which they may by some intercession be saved from doom.”
Our Catholic catechism is clear. Purgatory’s not a matter of opinion, but fact:
“All who die in God’s grace and friendship but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification so as to attain the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. The Church gives the name “Purgatory” to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. (Catechism 1030-1031).
Logically, a belief in heaven necessitates a corresponding belief in hell. But that is apparently not the case. A 2015 Pew Research study of 35,000 people found 72% of Americans believe there is a heaven. But less than 58% believe in hell. For increasing numbers of believers, the notion of hell-even of purgatory- does not conform to their notion of a loving God. Despite our weekly recitation of the Apostle’s Creed.
CS Lewis: The Great Divorce
CS Lewis lived and worked among atheists and agnostics- Oxford intellectuals- in nineteenth century England. A product of the enlightenment and the first world war, he was one of them. Until he wasn’t. After decades of struggling with his disbelief, Lewis became one of the great Christian apologists of the last century. For Lewis, hell, purgatory and heaven were no mere abstractions, they were dogma. In fact, one of his books, (pdf embedded here:)The Great Divorce is a most intriguing journey to the land of the dead. Only fifty-one pages, Lewis’ novel improves with each read. I’ve read it now three times.
The book begins in a dismal, wholly depressing place, appropriately called Gray Town. Our tour guide takes us on a bus ride which we soon realize is heading to heaven or maybe the foyer to heaven. We learn quickly of former earthly relationships between the ghost souls and the celestial spirits sent to persuade their friend, brother or spouse to make the seemingly trivial sacrifice necessary to enter heaven.
Although Lewis wrote and published The Great Divorce in 1945, the personalities of those who prefer to remain in purgatory or hell are distressingly familiar. Our own shadowy selves are mirrored by a few of the persons still hungering for fame or a perverted notion of love. Time after time, the notion of letting go of the lingering anger or ambition is simply too much and the ‘ghosts’ trudge back to the bus and Gray Town.
Lewis meets and is ‘mentored’ by Scottish fantasy writer George McDonald.
“But I don’t understand. Is judgment not final? Is there really a way out of Hell into Heaven?”
“It depends on the way you’re using the words. If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand.”(Here he smiled at me). “Ye can call it the Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye can call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will have been Hell even from the beginning.”
I suppose he saw that I looked puzzled, for presently he spoke again.
“Son,” he said, “ye cannot in your present state understand eternity: when Anodos looked through the door of the Timeless, he brought no message back. But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all this earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved….CS Lewis The Great Divorce
“Never fear. There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”
