If God Forgives Everything… Why Still Purgatory? (Ken and Janelle)

If God forgives all our sins, why does Purgatory still exist? Many Catholics struggle with this question, and today we unpack what the Church actually teaches about forgiveness, purification, and God’s perfect love.

Transcript

So, if God forgives everything,

why purgatory? Welcome back, everybody. It's great to have you here with us and it's great for you to be doing this with me again. Yeah, I feel a little rusty. It's been a while. It's uh it's great to have you back, you know, although I see you every day. Today we are going to talk about the souls in purgatory, a couple common questions or questions people sometimes have and then offer you a great resource, a list of all the prayers that we have on our YouTube channel where we can pray for the souls in purgatory. If God has forgiven your sins, why would any suffering still remain after death? from the Baltimore Catechism. Purgatory is the state in which those suffer for a time who die guilty of venial sins or without having satisfied for the punishment due to their sins. So when Jesus died and then rose again from the dead, did he do away with all sufferings due to sin? And the answer is no. He he did away with the eternal punishment to do this sin. He he died for that, but he did not get rid of all the temporal punishment due the sin. Now, sometimes we're like, well, what is that? Well, here's an analogy. It's not in a perfect analogy, but it'll get us in the right track. Imagine there's a little boy named maybe Johnny. Johnny's like 8 years old. He's in his front yard and he's got this ball and he's throwing the ball up into the air as high as he can throw it and catching it. Well, one of the throws, he throws it up in the air and as his hands coming by his hip, he it catches his hip and instead of going straight up, it goes straight forward and it goes right into the big picture window of the front of the house and puts a hole in it. Now, this big picture window, it's huge. It's it's it's it covers from the floor to the ceiling and it's worth about $1,000 Canadian. That's probably 120 US, right? And then he's like, "Well, how am I going to pay for this?" like this is terrible. My dad when he comes home I'm going to get into so much trouble. His father comes home and Johnny does the right thing. He goes to his father and says, "Dad, I'm sorry I broke the window with my ball." And his father's compassionate. He He forgives him. But the father says, "But we we still have a broken window and you're going to have to pay for it." And the boy says, "I got no money." The father says, "Okay, how about this? for the for the next while, I want you to work in the yard and I'll pay you $5 an hour and maybe do two hours a day, five days a week, and you can start earning some money to pay for the window. And Johnny's pretty good with math. And he realizes at that this rate, that's about 50 bucks a week, it's he's going to be graduated from high school by the time he pays for this window. Doesn't like the prospects of this. And so he says, "Dad, I it's just going to take too long. like I just how am I going to do that? Father already perceives his his son's quick math skills and says, "You know what? I got you covered. Work one week and then I'll cover the rest and then we repair that window together." You see, the boy doesn't have the means to amend for his mistake. His father forgives him and his father then gives him the means by which he can repair his offense. And in a similar way, Jesus by his death and resurrection grants us grace. He he suffers the punishment of our the eternal consequence of sin. And the temporal ones, we still don't have the means to make up for it. But it's like he says, "I got you covered by grace. If you just try, I will give you all that you need." And so we try. And how do we try? We offer our prayers. We offer our sufferings. We offer the mass. We we offer our lives. and with the intention of making up for reparation for sin, our own sin. And we can also apply that also to the souls in purgatory. If God loves us, why would he allow any suffering after death at all? From the Baltimore Catechism, there must be a purgatory, for one who dies with the slightest stain of sin upon his soul cannot enter into heaven. And yet God would not send him to hell for so small a sin. But why does God punish those he loves? Why does he not forgive everything? He punishes because he is infinitely just and true. He warned them that if they did certain things, they would be punished, and they did them. And God must keep his promise. Moreover, he is just and must give to everyone exactly what he deserves. So that's why we should just not sin and then we wouldn't have to go to purgatory. Wish it was that easy though. Right. Right. Sometimes we think you know God is all loving of he would never allow suffering after death. Right. But then when we think about this then we also deny his justice. God does reveal in scripture that there's consequences to sin. As a man re sews he he will also reap. And so God in his infinite wisdom he's perfectly just and he's perfectly love. Mhm. I just kind of think for like a little child like to always be like, "Oh, it's okay. Oh, it's okay. Oh, don't worry about it. It's okay." Like, does that really serve the child? No. It it raises entitled bratty adults. That that child becomes an entitled bratty adult is what happens. And they there will be consequences for that kind of behavior as adults. Yeah. Yeah. Parent ruins their child's life if they do that. Mhm. Why would souls in purgatory willingly embrace the same pains as the damned and still be filled with hope? Now, the souls in purgatory suffer in purgatory willingly. And some say that their suffering is so intense that it resembles those sufferings of hell. So, it leads us to a question, well, why would a soul in in purgatory willingly embrace such intense suffering? from the Baltimore Catechism. They suffer, we are told, the same pains of sense as the damned, but they suffer willingly, for they know that it is making them more pleasing to God and that one day it will all be over and he will receive them into heaven. Their salvation is sure and that thought makes them happy. So in life we can suffer willingly or unwillingly. Now what's the difference? Well, will willingly we have our sufferings that come into our life and then we intentionally offer them to God. Unwillingly, God gives us the chance to offer our sufferings to him and then we go to him and argue about it. Like uh the difference with fasting, fasting, you choose to fast, right? And then you offer that suff sacrifice to Jesus. unwillingly is when you go to the parish bake sale to get those brand those beautiful tasty cinnamon buns and you get there and they're sold out. That's right. What a travesty. And then you complain to God about it. That's the difference. So here's the question. How many things in your life, how many cinnamon buns have you passed over in your life and complained about it? God, why did you allow this to happen? Those are the experiences in our life where we miss out on offering our suffering to God for reparation for our sin. But they can also be offered as well for the souls in purgatory. Now moving on to some of the prayers that we have on our channel. Yeah, we have a number of them that are there for anybody's use and actually I use them quite regularly especially during the month of November. Like the most used one I would say is the St. Gertude chaplet. Um I really like that one. And then we also have the seven prayers for the souls in purgatory. And then we have St. Milda's um our father. And then lastly, we also have what's the last one again? A litany. A litany to the holy souls in purgatory. So there's a number of them that can be used if you don't have time to read from a book or something like that. So we'll put a link at the in the description of all these prayers where you can participate and pray. And then we'll put a link also at the end of this video. Can I share a couple things about St. Milda? Okay. So, one thing that's really interesting is that today is actually the feast day of St. Matilda, November 19th. And we didn't plan that. So, I feel like that's God's finger in this in this video. And how is she significant? Because she actually a lot of the devotions that we have on our channel are because of her u mystical experiences that she's had. She has a deep devotion to the holy souls in purgatory. Okay. And then also the other interesting thing is that St. Gertude who is another like intercessor for the holy souls was actually mentored by St. McDilda. I didn't realize they were friends. That's amazing. So I was learning a little bit about her and uh there was four things like during her mystical visions that she would have of Jesus. He would share with her about how important there was four points when it came to the holy souls in p purgatory. And one was that he truly does desire that we pray for the holy souls. Um, number two, that even the smallest acts of charity can be of value to the holy souls and can alleviate their suffering. And then number three, that when we do an act of sacrifice out of love, that it is then multiplied by God's mercy. So even our smallest little acts of charity that we do to the holy souls, God then multiplies it, you know. So I mean, it's it's even of greater value. And then the fourth thing that really um stood out to me was that he desires that we pray often for the holy souls. So maybe not just in the month of November, but all year. Good points. Mhm. Oh, one thing that everybody should do, well, anyhow, we do is even after the the grace prayer. Oh, yeah. I remember a couple years ago we decided that we're going to be lifers and we're going to pray this every day after every meal when we pray grace and then we say for the may the souls of the faithful depart for the mercy of God rest in peace. So anyhow if you're looking for some ideas it's hard to remember that if you don't see the grace before. Yeah. Anyways, we do this as a family every meal. Every meal twice a day. So hey share with us below what's stood out to you and why and we'll see you soon.