Today I would like to address the theme of Purgatory. Why? Because unhappily this theme is so forgotten and we Catholics are being Protestanized… we are leaving aside the Catholic faith, the faith of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ

Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Spes Salvi indicates that Purgatory for us is fount of great hope.

Poor Protestants that do not believe in Purgatory, they can begin to despair

Why? Because for us who hope for salvation, we have to understand a problem that is very serious.

God is Most Holy. Of course, He won salvation for us. In this sense our Protestant brothers are correct in saying that the sacrifice of the Savior is sufficient to redeem us and to open the doors of paradise for us. Yes, and we can and should believe in what Jesus reached for us in objective salvation. But now there is a problem. There does not exist only objective salvation. There also exists subjective salvation. It is that the conditions for our salvation already exist. Jesus saved us. The problem is that we have to choose this personally, and faith alone is not enough.

The Protestants find that only faith is enough. They believe Jesus did this and that was the end. But there exists a reality that we can touch in our day to day life. We believe in Jesus and even we have faith, we see inside of us something sinful, a tendency to sin.

This tendency to sin we call concupiscence St Paul used the word epitome.This reality brings to us a desire for the bad. This is inside of us despite that Our Lord Jesus Christ has saved us, we have this tendency. Sin comes from this and brings us to sin although this concupiscence is not sin. We know this. However, look, it is a consequence of sin. This is to say that it is in us and we can experience this. Really we don’t need to believe Fr. Paulo Ricardo nor believe Pope Benedict XVI. It is enough to believe that which happens inside of you.

We see that we who have faith in Jesus have a tendency to sin. The question is, my evangelical brothers, you find that this heart the way that it is with this tendency to sin is ready to enter eternal life joined with God? Well, I don’t know what your answer is, but the answer of Luther is “Yes.” He may be a sinner who has faith in Jesus Christ but he will enter Heaven with this sinful heart that is disguised. Or maybe Luther took a phrase from St. Paul and interpreted it literally. With the faith he is judged by God as being justice. Or maybe you were not crucified you not saved, you were not redeemed but God cleans your filth. Although you’ve done the opposite, God will consider you ready to enter Heaven.

This is not salvation, it is not happiness for anyone. Why, because imagine that you enter with this heart for all eternity. My brother this is terrible. Because look inside of you. Inside of you, you have generosity, but at the same time you have greed. You have love, but at the same time you have selfishness. You have forgiveness and you have resentment. We have inside of us We are human beings we are a battlefield. At our foundation we have this reality of conflict. So when we die, we die in this state of conflict.

The Pope in his encyclical Spes Salvi says there exist very good people who have hearts that are especially kind. These are people who suffer in this life and truly submit to the cross of Christ. Such as the Saints who are the heroes of faith. We don’t have difficulty believing that when they die they cross into Heaven

Neither do we have difficulty believing that there are people who are closed to God, closed to love, closed to the Holy Spirit that committed sins from a heart closed to the truth. That these people closed to God are going to be rejected and go to a different world called Hell.

There exist these two extremes. Hearts especially good and hearts especially bad.
But apart from these people we are you and I. A mediocre heart A heart of kindness and at the same time wickedness that is love and at the same time selfish. That is holy and at the same of misery.

These people, how can they go to Heaven. Luther found that they are disguised because Luther found that this faith unroots this sin and therefore, travesties of justice are considered just and they will live eternally. This is not salvation for I will live with this conflict in me for all eternity.
This is not salvation.

Therefore our church believes there exists a purification in Purgatory.
Therefore my miserable heart that does not love God sufficiently will be purified by the love of God.

Pope Benedict XVI this year January 12th He gave a catechesis about St. Catherine of Genoa.
This saint who died in the 15th Century had a doctrine on Purgatory.

Why? Because in her spiritual and mystical life she had an experience of the difficulty inside of us, the drama that exists inside of us because of our sins.

Catherine was a married woman and she married a man who wanted to live a worldly life.He was a man who was a man of vice. Catherine followed her husband in a worldly life. One day she went to confession she was transferred and driven by the love of God. God showed her his infinite love and she saw her great misery. Here she felt an experience here on Earth this immense love with whom she suffered an internal fire in which she passed for purification because upon seeing the great love of God and upon seeing her own misery was this experience basic and fundamental St. Catherine of Genoa discovered this purgatory. She found that it was different than what the writers of the time described as a place where someone remained paying for their sins. St. Catherine in Genoa understood in God perfectly that Purgatory was an internal fire a fire in the soul that burned but burned exactly because the sinful heart did not know the love of God and now passed into knowing it.

And when it knows its misery and the great mercy.
When we change when are loved when we don’t love in return here is the experience of purgatory it is the experience of seeing of receiving the grace of seeing our most deepest truth

My brothers, the doctrine of the Church on Purgatory is based exactly on truth.It connects to our truth, but what is our truth.

Our truth is an immense misery and the infinite mercy of God. When misery encounters mercy it becomes the pain of the Prodigal Son. I sinned against Him, against You. We are unworthy like the prodigal son but God continues loving and does the feast.

This pain that knows how much one is loved and knows how much love was not returned is called Purgatory.

Here is the essence of Purgatory.

The Church believes that Purgatory exists we can avoid this pain and this great purifying love after our death, if here on Earth we engage in penance. Here we can understand the ascetic life penitential life.

The life of ascetic is a life in which a person through penance here in this life enters this dynamic of seeing this truth. The truth of their misery and the truth of the infinite love of God. Penance is not to pay for our sins it is so that I can take account of my misery in the presence of God because as St. Catherine of Genoa said coming from the world coming from sin we cannot continue to remain giving ourselves to the sin to which we are subject when we are so loved by God. The penance we do in this world is now entering this process of purification. We are not trying to be saved by this penance. Jesus already saved me, the objective salvation already happened.

I need to take possession of this salvation and I take possession of this objective salvation which does not happen without faith. Faith alone is not enough because faith alone is dead faith. To understand the relationship between faith and works we could try to help our Protestant bretheren with a comparison.

Fr. Paulo Ricardo de Azevedo Jr.

Transcribed and translated from Portuguese

Fr. Paulo Ricardo de Azevedo Júnior is a priest from the Archdiocese of Cuiabá (Mato Grosso-Brazil) where he is the Judicial Vicar. Born on November 7, 1967 he was ordained a priest on June 14, 1992 by Pope John Paul II. He has a Bachelor’s Theology and a Master’s in Canon Law from the Pontifical University Gregoriana in Rome. Actually he lectures in courses of Philosophy and Theology.

He was Rector of the Archdiocesan Seminary of Cuiabá for 15 years. The Holy See named him a member of the Counsel of International Catechesis, of the Congregation for the Clergy. He is author of various books and presents weekly on the program “Oitavo Dia”, through the Canção Nova Television Network.