God
Faith
I'm blessed to work with several of my best friends, and we get into lots of very interesting conversations. One such topic we got into yesterday was that of purgatory. The Catholic teaching can be found here, in the Catechism. Please do read the actual text, but to sort of paraphrase it in my own terms, it's like this:
When we die, our souls are not in a condition to "withstand" heaven, or to look on God's face. Figuratively speaking, being in the Lord's presence in this imperfect state would melt our faces off; we couldn't withstand it. To flip that around then, our souls can only exist in that perfect union with God once perfected.
Death = Soul not ready.
Heaven = Soul ready.
So there is some kind of gap there which needs an explanation. The Catholic answer to that gap is purgatory.
The other subject we got into was Catholic salvation theory. As before, please go look this up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the official teaching-- do not take my ramblings as official! Maybe some day I can do a "deep dive" and cite lots of courses, but for now my own understanding will have to suffice:
Catholics have this notion of being in a "state of grace". We also differentiate between what we call "venial" sins and "mortal" sins. A third concept is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which I will not go into here, as that's probably a whole series of blog posts just by itself!
To tie all of those together from a high level though-- again, please check the Catechism for the details:
A venial sin is a "slip up"; like, someone cuts you off in traffic and you curse at them-- then right away, you're like "Shoot-- sorry God, I didn't mean for that to happen, it just slipped out." It's still a sin, but it's not the kind of sin which will sever our relationship with God, when it was a momentary accident and we're authentically contrite.
A mortal sin is one where we say, "You know what God, I know this action I'm about to do is sinful, and you know what? I just don't really care, I'm going to do it anyway." Mortal sins actively turn us away from God, to the point where they can and do sever that connection with the Lord: they remove us from a "state of grace".
As Catholics, we do not presume to know God's judgement: how could we? Only God knows His judgements! But what we do know is that, if we commit a mortal sin, are unrepentant, have not gone to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and confessed that sin, and we die in a car accident while in this condition, our souls are in grave peril.
Again, this isn't like some kind of mathematical formula-- we can't know God's judgement! But we had best be careful to not commit mortal sins, and if we have, to confess them and receive absolution as soon as possible. Further, receiving the Eucharist before that happens is compounding the mortal sin with a second one.
Catholics also believe in "culpability"-- to make an extreme example, if the Jungle Book kid who was raised by a pack of wild pineapples slaughters the neighboring tribe and has literally never even heard of God, it's still a grave sin to have murdered, but there is this founded notion that a factor of culpability will go into God's "judgement mixer". To what degree, only God knows-- but it is "a thing".
Heaven is being joined to God's love perfectly and eternally.
Since love is a voluntary, reciprocal act which requires giving by two or more discrete persons, if we repeatedly tell God we don't want an eternal relationship with him by persistently turning away from Him, then we won't have that relationship! We said "no" to it!
God wants us to buy that plane ticket, but ultimately it's our choice. Satan is constantly trying to get us to put the ticket through the paper shredder. If we are authentically contrite, God will give us a new ticket-- but then Satan will tempt us to the paper shredder again, and again, and again. This is where an active prayer life becomes indispensable.
When we die, our souls are not in a condition to "withstand" heaven, or to look on God's face. Figuratively speaking, being in the Lord's presence in this imperfect state would melt our faces off; we couldn't withstand it. To flip that around then, our souls can only exist in that perfect union with God once perfected.
Death = Soul not ready.
Heaven = Soul ready.
So there is some kind of gap there which needs an explanation. The Catholic answer to that gap is purgatory.
The other subject we got into was Catholic salvation theory. As before, please go look this up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the official teaching-- do not take my ramblings as official! Maybe some day I can do a "deep dive" and cite lots of courses, but for now my own understanding will have to suffice:
Catholics have this notion of being in a "state of grace". We also differentiate between what we call "venial" sins and "mortal" sins. A third concept is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which I will not go into here, as that's probably a whole series of blog posts just by itself!
To tie all of those together from a high level though-- again, please check the Catechism for the details:
A venial sin is a "slip up"; like, someone cuts you off in traffic and you curse at them-- then right away, you're like "Shoot-- sorry God, I didn't mean for that to happen, it just slipped out." It's still a sin, but it's not the kind of sin which will sever our relationship with God, when it was a momentary accident and we're authentically contrite.
A mortal sin is one where we say, "You know what God, I know this action I'm about to do is sinful, and you know what? I just don't really care, I'm going to do it anyway." Mortal sins actively turn us away from God, to the point where they can and do sever that connection with the Lord: they remove us from a "state of grace".
As Catholics, we do not presume to know God's judgement: how could we? Only God knows His judgements! But what we do know is that, if we commit a mortal sin, are unrepentant, have not gone to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and confessed that sin, and we die in a car accident while in this condition, our souls are in grave peril.
Again, this isn't like some kind of mathematical formula-- we can't know God's judgement! But we had best be careful to not commit mortal sins, and if we have, to confess them and receive absolution as soon as possible. Further, receiving the Eucharist before that happens is compounding the mortal sin with a second one.
Catholics also believe in "culpability"-- to make an extreme example, if the Jungle Book kid who was raised by a pack of wild pineapples slaughters the neighboring tribe and has literally never even heard of God, it's still a grave sin to have murdered, but there is this founded notion that a factor of culpability will go into God's "judgement mixer". To what degree, only God knows-- but it is "a thing".
Heaven is being joined to God's love perfectly and eternally.
Since love is a voluntary, reciprocal act which requires giving by two or more discrete persons, if we repeatedly tell God we don't want an eternal relationship with him by persistently turning away from Him, then we won't have that relationship! We said "no" to it!
God wants us to buy that plane ticket, but ultimately it's our choice. Satan is constantly trying to get us to put the ticket through the paper shredder. If we are authentically contrite, God will give us a new ticket-- but then Satan will tempt us to the paper shredder again, and again, and again. This is where an active prayer life becomes indispensable.