Barbara called in to Father Simon Says after she and her family left Mass shaken. A visiting priest had preached a “fire and brimstone” homily and told the congregation, “everyone in here is going to purgatory.” Barbara said her 13-year-old grandson was especially upset.
Fr. Simon agreed the family had reason to be bothered. “I believe in purgatory,” he said, “and I think purgatory is one of the most beautiful ideas in the Catholic faith.” The problem wasn’t the doctrine. The problem was with the way the priest had explained it.
Fr. Simon reframed purgatory as God’s mercy finishing His work in us. When we die, he explained, we stand before “the light and the love of God,” and “everything in me that isn’t light and love is going to be burned away by the love of God.” That “fire” isn’t meant to terrify: “Love is truly a fire… a fire of beauty and a fire of light and a fire even of joy.”
He emphasized that purgatory is a place of growth. Growth is painful and involves suffering, but in purgatory there is hope, joy, and love because the soul is being drawn into God.
And he was clear about the visiting priest’s certainty, stating that he didn’t think he had the right to say everyone is going to Purgatory. We don’t know the path of each person’s soul. Still, Fr. Simon urged Catholics to take purgatory seriously by praying for the dead, something that is often neglected today.
Fr. Simon closed with this image: Purgatory isn’t “hell’s back porch”. It’s “heaven’s front porch.”
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