Article 12 (no change come Advent 2011):
…and the life of the world to come
Here’s where things get kinda messy between Christian faiths. We all believe in Heaven and Hell, but we have VERY different ideas of who goes where and how they get there. Then there’s the whole Purgatory issue—look out! No matter what aspect you’re speaking of, the “life of the world to come” refers to where we go after we die and how we spend that phase of our existence (notice I didn’t say “how we spend that time” because it won’t be time in the way we know it after we die). So here’s my best attempt at explaining what CATHOLICS believe (or should believe) about what happens once we kick the bucket.
1 – Heaven
Ah, Heaven. Contrary to what the lyrical stylings of Belinda Carlisle may suggest, Heaven is NOT a place on Earth. I say that because, if nothing else, Heaven is not a place. Remember, God is limitless and infinite, so to imply that there is a physical limit on Heaven seems pretty contrary to our understanding (or best attempt at an understanding) of how the Spiritual Realm of God works. Heaven, like Hell and that “Purgatory” thing we’ll talk about in a minute, can probably be better understood to be a “state of being” rather than a place. If we go with that explanation, it would mean that we would be in a constant state of realizing that God loves us, and we could simply bask in the awesomeness of God for all eternity. Don’t worry, it won’t get old, because since God is infinite, it follows that God’s love is infinite, so it’s not like we can ever run out of ways to feel God’s love. I like to think that Heaven will be one of two things: either (1) we’ll be able to understand the answer to every question we ever had about God and our Faith, or (2) we’ll be so pre-occupied with the glory of God that we won’t care about things as trivial as where Cain’s wife came from (sorry to hurt your brain if you’ve never thought of that before). We believe that souls that are clean and free from sin are able to enter Heaven after they die. Notice, though, that this is contrary to what most Protestant faiths believe. Their belief is that when Jesus died for us on the cross, that he didn’t CONQUER our sins, but rather covered them. So it seems to me (and any Protestants out there, please correct me if I’m wrong) that when we die, it doesn’t matter how much or how little you’ve sinned, you’re still getting in as long as you “confess with your lips” that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior. Now I don’t know how many parents are out there reading this right now, but it seems a little hard to believe that there would be absolutely NO atonement we’d need to make for our sins at all. We have an instinctive sense as parents to want to have our children not only realize, but UNDERSTAND why what they do is wrong. That’s why we have systems of rewards and punishments when dealing with our children. If we see the benefit of commending our children when they do well and discouraging negative behavior when they do something bad, how much more does God see that benefit, and how much better would he execute that system? The answer is infinitely. We need to recognize and understand that our actions in this life DO play a part, however large or small, on our situation after this life. Remember the last verse of Chapter 21 of the Book of Revelation? “But nothing unclean will enter it, nor any (one) who does abominable things or tells lies….” (Revelation 21:27a) So how do we get into heaven if we’re not absolutely perfect when we die? We’ll get there in a second.
2 – Hell
Ooooooh…he said “H-E-double hockey sticks”! Hell seems to be a fascination of humanity. I mean, seriously: stop and think for a minute of how many movie’s you’ve seen where Hell was involved in some way, whether someone was taken there, or came out of there, or was threatened with it, or something of that nature. I’d be willing to say that there are far more (mainstream) movies that have some connection with Hell, or demons, or Satan, himself, than there are those that have some connection with Heaven. The funniest thing about this (entirely made up) statistic is that most of these movies are probably incredibly off-base with their depiction of Hell. First of all, like Heaven, Hell is not a place, but rather a different state of being for your soul. Remember our discussion on the Penitential Rite? God always loves us, no matter how horrible of a thing we might do. When we do something against the will of God, the only thing that changes about our relationship with God is OUR part. We break our relationship. When we accept God’s love and forgiveness, whether that be through the Penitential Rite & the Eucharist (for venial sins) or through the Sacrament of Reconciliation (for mortal sins), we restore that relationship to its rightful set-up of us being loved by God infinitely and unconditionally and us reciprocating that love as best we can. We essentially keep ourselves in a state of hell when we refuse to accept the forgiveness of God. Remember, God loves all his creation…even the souls of Hell. That’s why they still exist. Our existence comes from God, in the form that we can best describe as “love.” So if God would stop “loving” something, it would cease to exist.
3 – Purgatory
Here’s the biggie. People have debated the validity of Purgatory for centuries. The reason is that Purgatory is not mentioned by name in the Bible. But just because something is not explicitly named in the Bible doesn’t mean that the underlying concept isn’t there. In the end it doesn’t matter what we CALL it, because we just gave the concept a name so that it would be easier for us to discuss it. So let’s be clear: Purgatory IS in the Bible…just not under that name. So where is it? Let’s just go ahead and take a look see, shall we? Let’s go first to 2 Maccabees 12:43-46:
And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection. (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead), and because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.
So we clearly see here in the scriptures that the idea exists that it is a good practice to pray for the dead so that they may be forgiven for their sins. If someone has died with sin, they are unclean and unable to enter Heaven (Revelation 21:27). However, this passage shows that it is possible for people who have died to be forgiven of their sins after death. So there has to be another option besides just Heaven (where perfectly clean, sinless souls are) and Hell (where unclean souls unwilling to accept God’s forgiveness are) where a person can be cleansed of their sins so they might be fit to enter Heaven. This is what we call Purgatory. Want a better, more directly-related-to-Jesus-type of passage? Well, here you go:
And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world, nor in the world to come. (Matthew 12:32)
NOW we’re getting somewhere. See, the Books of Maccabees are not included in most Protestant versions of the Bible. From the very beginning of Christianity, certain books were kept and others omitted as we learned more about their background. The Catholic Faith has kept the 2 Books of Maccabees, while Martin Luther omitted them from his version of the Bible during the Protestant Reformation because he didn’t like the whole “praying for the dead” concept (yeah, that wasn’t arrogant of him at ALL…). Anyway, it’s kind of hard to argue with what Jesus is getting at here, isn’t it—no matter WHAT religion you connect yourself with? Again, Jesus doesn’t use the word Purgatory—this is just a word we coined along the way to identify the concept. Notice the root word of Purgatory? --purge—Which the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines as “to clear of guilt.” In the passage from Matthew’s Gospel above, Jesus is saying that sins against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven neither in this world, nor in the world to come. Anyone with half a brain can figure out that that implies that there ARE some sins that can be forgiven in the world to come—or Jesus wouldn’t have made the (then) unnecessary distinction. But he did, so there is a distinction. We call this distinction Purgatory. So even if your Bible doesn’t contain the 2nd Book of Maccabees, it most likely DOES contain the Gospel of Matthew.
So now that we’ve given fairly good evidence as to the existence of Purgatory, what is it, exactly? Just like Heaven and Hell, it probably isn’t a place, but more of a state of being. It is a cleansing stage that we have to go through before we can enter Heaven. Again, it’s not like there is some timeline of how long we stay, because there is no time after we die…and I seriously hope you’re not still trying to grasp the concept of being outside of time, because it’s probably humanly impossible. It’s just a phase we have to go through if we want to be in Heaven. It might just be until we are able to accept God’s love and forgiveness, and THAT’s why the souls that have died with sin need our prayers—to help them realize that they CAN be forgiven so that they’ll accept the forgiveness. That’s just MY thought, though.
So there you have the Profession of Faith/Nicene Creed/Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed…whatever you want to call it. We say it at Mass regularly on Sundays and on Holy Days of Obligation (which we’ll get to in time). Leave your comments and questions about the Creed below. If you have none, we’ll move right along in the Mass in our next post.
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