Transcript

When we die and our soul separates from the body, our souls go immediately f- to God for its particular judgment.

And if we haven't been perfectly purified of our sins yet, but we still died in God's friendship in a, in a state of grace, then it's then that we go to purgatory.

Purgatory is a place of suffering where there is a purifying fire that, that burns away our sins so that our love for God is made perfect and we can be eternally joined with him.

When I was becoming Catholic, I questioned the whole understanding of purgatory.

There was Purgatory wasn't an idea that I was brought up with as a Methodist.

But over time, as I studied it, I, I began to realize that the doctrine of purgatory is, is really a great manifestation of God's mercy and God's love.

God and sin are mutually exclusive.

They cannot exist together.

And therefore, if we die with, with venial sin on our soul that we haven't been purified of, then it's important and it's necessary that that sin be blotted out, burned out of us, so that we can be joined with God.

Moreover, purgatory reminds us that God loves us so much, so much, and that He wants each and every soul to be with Him eternally in heaven.

And purgatory is the way that He compensates, in a sense, for our weaknesses of the flesh, the ways that we've sinned, and allows us to be purified even after our death so that we can have that eternal union with Him in heaven.

Early on in the process of deciding to pursue becoming Catholic, my son, who had converted to Catholicism a couple of years ago, sent me a message given by a Protestant minister on C.S. Lewis's belief in purgatory.

And I didn't ask my son to send me this.

I didn't want to hear about purgatory.

I wasn't ready for it.

And it, it sort of upset me because now I felt like I had to listen to this message.

So, I listened to it, and the fact that it was C.S. Lewis was the comfort.

The idea that purgatory is a real thing, that took some time to get used to.

But now that I'm understanding more about holiness in the Catholic Church and the call to be holy, it's a relief to know that if I am not holy by the time I die, there's a place where called purgatory, and that's where all the kinks will get worked out of, of my life.

So, I've now found it to be actually very comforting because otherwise, in Protestantism, you've got two options, heaven or hell.

That's it.

And again, there's just something missing in that.

It, it just doesn't really complete the picture.

And so, I'm gradually becoming Catholic, I'm gradually embracing the teaching on purgatory, and it's gradually becoming a comfort.

I once wrote a book about hell.

You can imagine how people thought of that.

They thought maybe I was some fire eater that took delight in thinking about things, talking about things that were horrible.

And in fact, it even got listed online as a horror novel, though I never intended it to be that.

I borrowed the storyline from Dante's famous Inferno, his, his vision of hell.

Why would I write about hell?

Why would I write a whole book that, in fact, is not really about hell.

It's just set in hell, but it's about God's goodness, His forgiveness.

The reason I think is this, that, that someone once said, Hell is the final guarantee that what we do really matters.

It's the final guarantee that what we do really matters.

If, if there is no hell, if everything is heaven, or reincarnation, or we, we cease to exist after we die, if that's all that there is, then it doesn't really matter what we do.

We all end up in the same place, in the same condition, the same destiny.

But it really does matter what we do.

What we do changes us.

What we do shapes and forms us.

What we do takes us in a certain direction.

And if that final direction is away from God, away from the source of life, and goodness, and peace, health, wisdom, love, everything good, then what we've done is taken ourselves to hell.

My thoughts on, uh, my mortality has changed, uh, significantly since I became Catholic.

Um, I'm not as fearful, and because of the outstanding role models in the saints and their, and their approach to death.

And also, the encouragement through the pr- uh, prayers to the Holy Mother, uh, to pray for us at our hour of death.

And, and also, for divine mercy, that we, we can we're promised mercy of the Lord at, at our death.

I had and then also, we had after we were, were confirmed, we had about four, uh, awesome examples of Catholics who, um, who were strong Christians.

Our one our another neighbor, he said to us, at death, he was he folded his hands and he said, I'm gonna be okay.

And he was so confident.

You could see it in his face.

My godmother, sadly, um, five months after we were confirmed, she was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer.

And when we went to see her, she was in a coma, or almost coma, and her eyes never opened.

And she was so peaceful, extremely peaceful.

She just car- just gently squeezed our hand, and very gently lifted Guy's hand to her lips and kissed them .

but she was such an, in her, her Christian life, which is awesome.

So she's an example of the mercy and love of Christ.

In addition to that with di- Divine Mercy, my sister, not a Catholic, had purchased a, un- unbeknownst to me, a, a figurine of the Divine Mercy.

And at three o'clock, the Divine Mercy hour, she ha- happened to be taken off of life support.

And through the Divine Mercy prayer that I, I firmly believe, at, and tw- thirty minutes later, she had passed.

So I am So the saints and my Catholic friends and, um, the prayers have increased my, li- have lessened my fear, my f- my fear of dying.

In fact, I look forward to being with, with our Lord one day.

Someone once said, I think it was C.S. Lewis, that, that the gates of hell are all locked on the inside.

It is not as if God throws sinners into hell, and some terrible punishment, but that they basically have chosen that themselves.

That they have decided they would rather live their own way and live in misery, than to live God's way face-to-face with him in heaven and joy.

And so for me, hell is an important thing to talk about.

The house of the world is on fire, and somebody had been better be shouting, It's on fire.

So I don't mind if people look at me askance sometimes for talking about hell, writing about hell, because I know that it's an act of mercy on God's part to tell us, What you do really, really matters in the end.