God’s judgment, Hell, Paradise, purgatory:
Lessons from John Paul II and Benedict XVI
are most relevant today
Translated from
November 11, 2017
Today, November 11, the Church remembers a great saint, Martin of Tours (316-397), familiar to most perhaps by an act which has been depicted in many paintings: Martin, who was Roman soldier serving in France, while on patrol one day saw a near-naked beggar freezing in the cold at one of the city gates of Amiens, whereupon he tore up his own cloak in half to clothe the poor man. The sky cleared, the temperature became more bearable, and that night, Martin had a dream: Jesus, wrapped in the half of the cloak he had given the beggar, was returning it to him. And the next day, Martin found his cloak intact once more.
Martin, who was 18 years old at the time and was preparing to be baptized, thus carried out an act which has become very central in Christian iconography. (Martin is venerated as a saint not just by Catholics but also by the Orthodox and Copts.) He entered popular culture in the expression ‘St. Martin’s summer’ (a brief warm spell at the start of November after the initial winter chill has set in), and he would have important consequences even in the language of the Church.
The Latin word for cloak or mantle is
cappa. The short mantle of the Roman soldiers was called a
cappella, which also became the name not just for the place where the Merovingian kings kept Martin’s miraculous cloak but, by extension, for all places of prayer in which relics are kept, under the custody of chaplains (in Italian,
cappellani).
In Tours, when he visited on the occasion of the 16th centenary of St. Martin’s death, John Paul II said:
St Martin of Tours is an important witness to evangelical charity. Every year, on the 11th of November, liturgy reminds us of his noble figure, of his life and the wonders that God realized in him. These events have become symbolic, so to speak – linked to this saint, who was first a soldier and then a bishop, they are known throughout the Church…
We all know the famous event in his life when, as a young soldier, he encountered a beggar, almost naked and trembling from the cold. Martin took his cloak, divided it in half, and covered the beggar with it. It is exactly what the Gospel from Matthew that we heard just now said: “I was naked and you clothed me” (Mt 25,36). At the last judgment, Jesus will say this to those he will point to his right, those who were good in life, and they will ask, “Lord, when did we see you naked and clothed you?” (Mt 25,38). And Christ will say to them: “Verily I say unto you, every time you did these things for the least of my brothers, you did it for me” (Mt 25,40).
One must highlight what John Paul II then said about the last judgment:
In giving half of his cloak to the poor man of Amiens, Martin translated into a concrete act the words of Jesus which announced the last judgment: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left”.(Mt 25, 31-33). He will say to those on his right: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”. (Mt 25,34).
Contemplating the life of St. Martin, and above all his ardor in showing love for his neighbor, the Church quickly concluded that the Bishop of Tours will surely be found among the elect.
Yet today, to speak of divine justice seems to have become obsolete. We are no longer used to it. Papa Wojtyla confronted us not just with the question of Christian consistency but also of the judgment that the Father shall render about us, a judgment that is necessary to validate our freedom of choice.
Starting with Martin of Tours, we arrived at John Paul II’s meditation on divine justice. Words that in turn link directly to an answer that Benedict XVI made spontaneously but with admirable lucidity, addressing the parish priests of Rome.
It was February of 2008 at the Hall of Benedictions in St. Peter’s Basilica. Papa Ratzinger was holding the traditional meeting of the pope with the parish priests of his diocese at the start of Lent, and was responding to their questions.
One priest denounced the increasingly widespread attitude on the part of Catholic priests to keep silent about the Last Things – death, the last judgment, hell and paradise – pointing out that
“In the catechisms of the Italian bishops conference that are used to teach the faith to our young people, hell is never mentioned, purgatory is never mentioned, Paradise once, sin only once, and it was to refer to Original Sin. If these essential parts of our faith are left out, does it not seem to collapse the meaning of Christ’s redemption?”
Here is what Benedict XVI answered:
You correctly spoke of the fundamental themes of the faith which unfortunately rarely appear in our preaching. In the encyclical Spe Salvi I wanted to speak precisely about the Last Judgement, judgement in general, and in this context also about Purgatory, Hell and Heaven.
I think we have all been struck by the Marxist objection that Christians have only spoken of the afterlife and have ignored the earth. Thus, we demonstrate that we are truly committed to our earth and are not people who talk about distant realties, who do not help the earth.
Now, although it is right to show that Christians work for the earth - and we are all called to work to make this earth really a city for God and of God - we must not forget the other dimension. Unless we take it into account, we cannot work well for the earth: to show this was one of my fundamental purposes in writing the Encyclical.
When one does not know the judgement of God one does not know the possibility of Hell, of the radical and definitive failure of life, one does not know the possibility of and need for purification. Man then fails to work well for the earth because he ultimately loses his criteria, he no longer knows himself - through not knowing God - and destroys the earth.
All the great ideologies have promised: we will take things in hand, we will no longer neglect the earth, we will create a new, just, correct and brotherly world. But they destroyed the world instead. We see it with Nazism, we also see it with Communism which promised to build the world as it was supposed to be and instead destroyed it.
In the ad limina visits of Bishops from former Communist countries, I always see anew that in those lands, not only the planet and ecology, but above all and more seriously, souls have been destroyed. Rediscovering the truly human conscience illuminated by God's presence is our first task for the re-edification of the earth. This is the common experience of those countries. The re-edification of the earth, while respecting this planet's cry of suffering, can only be achieved by rediscovering God in the soul with the eyes open to God.
You are therefore right: we must speak of all this precisely because of our responsibility to the earth, to the people who are alive today. We must also speak of sin itself as the possibility of destroying ourselves, hence, also other parts of the world.
In the Encyclical I tried to show that it is God's Last Judgement that guarantees justice. We all want a just world. Yet we cannot atone for all the destruction of the past, all the people unjustly tortured and killed. God alone can create justice, which must be justice for all, even for the dead, and as the great Marxist Adorno said, only the resurrection of the body, which he claimed as unreal, would be able to create justice. We believe in this resurrection of the body in which not all will be equal.
Today people have become used to thinking: what is sin? God is great, he knows us, so sin does not count; in the end God will be kind to us all. It is a beautiful hope. But both justice and true guilt exist. Those who have destroyed man and the earth cannot suddenly sit down at God's table together with their victims. God creates justice. We must keep this in mind.
Therefore, I felt it was important to write this text also about Purgatory, which for me is an obvious truth, so evident and also so necessary and comforting that it could not be absent. I tried to say: perhaps those who have destroyed themselves in this way, who are forever unredeemable, who no longer possess any elements on which God's love can rest, who no longer have a minimal capacity for loving, may not be so numerous. This would be Hell.
On the other hand, those who are so pure that they can enter immediately into God's communion are undoubtedly few - or at any rate not many. A great many of us hope that there is something in us that can be saved, that there may be in us a final desire to serve God and serve human beings, to live in accordance with God. Yet there are so very many wounds, there is so much filth. We need to be prepared, to be purified.
This is our hope: even with so much dirt in our souls, in the end the Lord will give us the possibility, he will wash us at last with his goodness that comes from his Cross. In this way he makes us capable of being for him in eternity. And thus Heaven is hope, it is justice brought about at last.
He also gives us criteria by which to live, so that this time may be in some way paradise, a first gleam of paradise. Where people live according to these criteria, a hint of paradise appears in the world and is visible.
It also seems to me to be a demonstration of the truth of faith, of the need to follow the road of the Commandments, of which we must speak further. These really are road signs on our way and show us how to live well, how to choose life.
Therefore, we must also speak of sin and of the sacrament of forgiveness and reconciliation. A sincere person knows that he is guilty, that he must start again, that he must be purified. And this is the marvellous reality which the Lord offers us: there is a chance of renewal, of being new. The Lord starts with us again and in this way we can also start again with the others in our life. This aspect of renewal, of the restitution of our being after so many errors, so many sins, is the great promise, the great gift the Church offers but which psychotherapy, for example, cannot offer.
Today, in the face of so many destroyed or seriously injured psyches, psychotherapy is so widespread and also necessary. Yet the possibilities of psychotherapy are very limited: it can only make some sort of effort to restore balance to an unbalanced soul but cannot provide true renewal, the overcoming of these serious diseases of the soul. It is therefore always temporary and never definitive.
The Sacrament of Penance gives us the opportunity to be renewed through and through with God's power - ego te absolvo -, which is possible because Christ took these sins, this guilt, upon himself. I think there is a great need of this especially today. We can be healed.
Souls that are wounded and ill, as everyone knows by experience, not only need advice but true renewal, which can only come from God's power, from the power of Crucified Love. I feel this is the important connection of the mysteries which in the end truly affect our lives. We must recover them ourselves and so bring them once again within our people's reach.
FromPapa Ratzinger, we have this first blinding reflection:
“When one does not know the judgement of God one does not know the possibility of Hell, of the radical and definitive failure of life, one does not know the possibility of and need for purification.” Because of this ignorance, or indifference, we cannot become better servants of others. Indeed, if one does not know God, if one ignores divine justice, one cannot know man, we cannot know ourselves, and failing that, we destroy ourselves.
Benedict XVI makes a link between the reticence of men of the Church today about the Last Tnings, and the Marxist-originated objection that the believer, by concerning himself with divine justice and the afterlife, detaches himself from reality. But the pope explains that
the believer, who, by ignoring the Last Things goes into the world to prove that his mind and heart are not in a remote and ultimately futile dimension, does not realize that by doing so, ‘he loses the criteria for living’ and ends up being subject to the world.
He recalls the ad limina visits of bishops from countries which used to be Communist, and says it is clear that during the years of oppression and state atheism, not just natural resources were destroyed but also souls. And so, it becomes more obvious how important it is to “rediscover a truly human conscience”, one that is “illuminated by the presence of God”.
In short,
believers put themselves genuinely in the service of their brothers and of the earth, not by following the world, nor by adhering to the latest environmental fad, but by re-proposing God and ‘finding God in our soul”.
Acknowledging how right the priest was in his question, he said that the Church should speak of the Last Things out of “responsibility to the earth and to the people who live on it”. But above all, that we must speak of sin as ‘the possibility of destroying ourselves’ and therefore, other parts of our world.
God’s judgment alone can guarantee justice, he says, reaffirming our faith the resurrection of the body at which time, not all will be equal. These are considerations that are ‘most incorrect’ , but they are increasingly valuable now when, especially in what is considered pastoral, the Church is going in a different direction.
Paradise is justice done. It is not amnesty. Being aware of this gives us the criteria for how we must live on earth, seeking thereby to find on earth a bit of the light of Paradise. Which leads Benedict XVI to the importance of the sacrament of Penance and the possibility it offers for renewal – unlike psychotherapy which can only seek to restore some balance to a troubled mind but cannot give true renewal that overcomes the maladies of the soul.
He concludes by saying that
“The Sacrament of Penance gives us the opportunity to be renewed through and through with God's power… Souls that are wounded and ill, as everyone knows by experience, not only need advice but true renewal, which can only come from God's power, from the power of Crucified Love. I feel this is the important connection of the mysteries which in the end truly affect our lives. We must recover them ourselves and so bring them once again within our people's reach.”
On the feast of St. Martin of Tours, let us meditate on the words of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
[This column would have been equally appropriate for All Souls’ DaY... And I do applaud Valli for his strategy - since he woke up to the sad reality that the reigning pope represents for the Church and for the faith - to take every occasion to highlight what other popes have said, especially Benedict XVI, about the things this pope should be saying but isn't doing so.]
P.S.
Here's an unexpected 'addendum' of sorts to the above...
Why John Paul and Benedict say
'Start your purgatory today'
Is purgatory a faraway place? Or does it begin here and now?
by Judy Landrieu Klein
ALETEIA
November 04, 2017
God is a consuming Fire. He alone can refine us like gold, and separate us from the slag and dross of our selfish individualities to fuse us into this wholeness of perfect unity that will reflect His own Triune Life forever.
- Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
While the month of November brings to the fore the awareness of the holy souls in purgatory, it also begets an important question: Is purgatory a faraway “place” or is it a state of existence all of us are called to, starting now?
St. John Paul II created a bit of a firestorm during a papal audience in 1999 when he stated during a catechesis on the Last Things, “Purgatory … is not a place, but a condition of existence.”
He continued, “Those who, after death, exist in a state of purification, are already in the love of Christ who removes from them the remnants of imperfection.”
(General Audience, July 21, 1999)
Earlier, in
Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul II had written:
The “living flame of love,” of which St. John (of the Cross) speaks, is above all, a purifying fire. The mystical nights described by this great doctor of the church on the basis of his own experience correspond, in a certain sense, to purgatory.
God makes man pass through such an interior purgatory of his sensual and spiritual nature in order to bring him into union with Himself. Here we do not find ourselves before a mere tribunal.
We present ourselves before the power of Love itself … It is Love that demands purification, before man can be made ready for that union with God which is his ultimate vocation and destiny. (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 186-187)
The Bible is replete with images that portray God’s love as fire, with a key theme being that the fire of God’s love burns that which it touches without destroying it (Ex 3:2, Heb 12:28). Pope Benedict XVI explained this concept pointedly in the following words:
Jesus sets fire to the earth. Whoever comes close to Jesus, accordingly, must be prepared to be burned …It burns, yet this is not a destructive fire but one that makes things bright and pure and free and grand. Being a Christian, then, is daring to entrust oneself to this burning fire. (God and the World, 222)
It could thus be said that purgation is the experience wherein one is immersed in the fire of the love of God, with the effect being that whatever is not of God, i.e., everything within us that is incongruent with his love, is burned away.
As Catholics, we may readily accept that such purgation will happen to us after death. But what we don’t often consider is that the same love we will encounter after death is meant to cleanse us even now, while we are still alive. In fact, the degree to which we allow the fire of God’s love to purify us in this life will determine how much purgation we will need in the next!
So bring on the fire, right?
Well, it’s not quite that simple. Because purification involves the pain of suffering and death, most of us try our darnedest to avoid it.
What within us, exactly, must be purified unto death as we draw near to Christ? While St. Paul called it “the flesh,” Trappist monk Thomas Merton named it the “false self,” which he said is
the illusory persona projected by the human ego that “wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love … the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires.” (New Seeds of Contemplation, 35)
This is the self that finds its identity in pleasure, popularity, power, posturing and pride instead of authentic love; the self constructed by the ego that gives us an identity of our own making instead of the identity that God invites us to discover only through love of him. This self must die that we might truly live; one must allow it to be stripped away in order to become real and true in loving God, self and others.
Purgatory now? Indeed, may it be so. Let us pray:
Sanctify, O Lord, our souls, minds, and bodies. Touch our minds and search out our consciences. Cast out from us every evil thought, every base desire and memory, every unseemly word, all envy, pride and hypocrisy, every lie, every deceit, all greed, all wickedness, all wrath, all anger, all malice, all blasphemy, all sloth, every movement that is alien to your holy will. Enable us to turn to you, O God, who loves humankind, to call upon you with boldness, with a pure heart, a contrite soul, a face unashamed, and with lips that are sanctified. Amen.
- From The Divine Liturgy of James the Holy Apostle
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/11/2017 14:20]