The Holy Souls

November 2013 FGO by Bro. Jason Rhoad:

 

 

The month of November is dedicated to the holy souls in purgatory, so I thought it would a great time to go over what the Church teaches about this doctrine. It is safe to say that purgatory is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and most often challenged teachings of the Church. Even among Catholics, it is a source of confusion.

 

Let us begin by explaining what it is not. Purgatory is not a second chance. It is not somewhere we can go after we die that gives us a second chance to be saved. At the moment of our death, we will face our particular judgment and we will know immediately what our eternal destination will be. Purgatory is also not an eternal third place where people go who are not good enough to go to heaven, but not bad enough to go to hell. At the end of time when Christ returns and time gives way to eternity, purgatory will no longer exist. Only heaven and hell will remain.

 

So what is purgatory then? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it this way "purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven," which is experienced by those who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified" (CCC 1030). This purification is necessary because scripture teaches us in Rev 21:27 that nothing unclean shall enter heaven. Yet we know that we are all sinners and sin is incompatible with heaven. Therefore we must be perfectly purified after death, but before entering heaven. The Church gives the term purgatory (from the root word purge) to explain this process of being purified after death.

 

One of the common objections against this teaching is that the Catholic Church invented the doctrine later on. The only trouble with that is that the objectors can’t agree on just when that occurred. In fact, any date that is proposed for its invention can be debunked by pointing to evidence of its teaching earlier than the proposed date. It is true that the term “purgatory” may not have appeared right away, but that has no bearing on the belief that is behind the term. The Church was teaching about final purification after death and the need to pray for the dead before the word purgatory came to be used to describe this reality. Nor does the fact that the word is not in the bible have any bearing on whether or not the teaching is present there. For instance, the words bible, trinity, and incarnation are not in the bible either. But all Christians agree that their underlying truths are all there, even if better words to describe those truths weren’t used until later.

 

The fact of the matter is that prayers for the dead go back to the earliest of Christian times. The writings in the catacombs of Rome dating to the 1^st and 2^nd centuries clearly show that the early Christians were employing this practice. If the deceased were in heaven, they would need no prayers and if they were in hell, no prayers could help them. All throughout the early centuries of Christianity, we see evidence of this teaching. For instance, in the 4^th century, we see St. Monica asking her son Augustine to offer masses for her soul once she dies.

 

Another key piece of evidence that this teaching goes back to the earliest of Christian times is the fact that at no point do we ever see protests against it. We know that the early church and the church throughout the centuries certainly challenged new teachings. They wanted do know if a teaching was something that was believed by their ancestors or if it was made up later on. Was this something handed down from the Apostles? Surely purgatory would have been considered a big time change if it had not been believed from the beginning. Yet, we see no protests. It was not uncommon for councils to be called to settle disputes like this. But we see absolutely no evidence of dispute at all.

 

But what about the bible? Is purgatory scriptural? This can actually lead to a larger discussion about the fact that nowhere in the bible does it say that everything to be believed and practice has to be explicitly taught in the pages of scripture. But even so, the answer is yes, purgatory is indeed scriptural. In Mt 12:32 Jesus refers to the sinner who will not be forgiven in this age or in the age to come. This implies that one can be freed from the consequences of their sins after death. Also in Mt 5:26, Jesus refers to the sinner who will not be released until he has paid the last penny. Perhaps a clearer reference to this reality comes from Paul in 1 Cor 3:15. Here we see Paul describing the day of judgment and how ones works are tried after their death. What happens to the righteous man if his works don’t pass muster? “He will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” This loss can’t refer to hell because no one is saved there. And he can’t be in heaven because there is no suffering (fire) there. So where is this man? The Catholic doctrine of purgatory is the only thing that explains this passage.

 

We know too that belief in prayers for the dead pre-dates Christianity. The Jews also practiced this before the time of Christ. We see in 2 Maccabees 12:43-45 a direct approval of prayer for the dead: “"In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.”

 

This verse so clearly teaches the doctrine of purgatory that at the time of the reformation, the reformers removed this book of the bible from their version of scriptures in order to avoid believing in the doctrine. It is clear that purgatory was a teaching that has its roots in the OT and was believed in from the earliest of Christian times. The Catholic Church did not add this teaching at some point in its history. Rather, it was the Protestants who changed on this doctrine that had always been believed by Christians and by Jews before them. So armed with this knowledge, let us not forget our brothers and sisters in purgatory. The church triumphant in heaven, the church suffering in purgatory, and the church militant here on earth are all one church. We should always then, especially during the month of November, remember the holy souls in purgatory in our prayers and in our acts of penance. One day, if we persevere and leave this world in God’s friendship, it will be us who will want and need the prayers of those still on earth to aid in our purification. So let us never cease to offer ours for those there now.

Lazarus and the Rich Man . . . and us

October FGO by Bro. Jason Rhoad of Council 8123 in Hartsville.

A recent Sunday Gospel reading told the story of Lazarus and the rich man. We are all familiar with it. Lazarus was the poor man who was lying by the door of the rich man. The rich man ate well each day, while Lazarus would have been happy to get the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Lazarus dies and is carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham. When the rich man dies, he is in torment. We then see an exchange between the rich man and Abraham where the rich man pleads for mercy and then asks for help for his brothers so they don’t end up where he is.

 There is so much in this Gospel passage. What I want to focus on is perhaps one of the main and most obvious (but perhaps most overlooked) lessons in the story. That is simply that both men died. In fact, the line that struck me the most was “the rich man also died and was buried”. It is almost an afterthought, spoken in a very matter of fact way by Jesus after he had just told what happened to Lazarus when he died. The point that is made here is that no matter what, we all die, and then comes the judgment. It doesn’t matter if we eat sumptuously each day and dress in fine linens, or if we are poor and eat scraps, we all die. One of the formulas used on Ash Wednesday helps us to keep this fact in the front of our minds, “remember man that thou art dust, and to dust you shall return”.

I’m reminded of a story from the life of St. Thomas More, the great English martyr from the 16^th century. He refused to sign the oath acknowledging King Henry VIII as the head of the Church in England. He was arrested and put in the tower of London. While imprisoned, the Chancellor Thomas Cromwell came to visit Thomas to try to convince him to sign the oath. He did so for political reasons, not because he had any interest in saving Thomas’ life. Cromwell knew how well respected More was in England and that if he would sign the oath, many in England who had reservations about the King’s newly self-ordained position would likely capitulate. Cromwell was the opposite of Thomas More. He had lied and manipulated his way to his position as Chancellor. More refuses to sign the oath of course and as a last ditch plea Cromwell tells him how foolish he is because this will cost him his life. Thomas then tells Cromwell, “the only difference between you and I, is I’ll die today, and you tomorrow”.

 To me, that this is the central message of this Gospel passage. No one gets out alive. We will all die and face judgment. Even if we are blessed with 100 years of life on this earth, it’s nothing. That is like a blink of an eye in the context of eternity. Jesus clearly teaches us in this parable that how we treat our fellow man, not how much or how little we have, has much to do with our eternal destination. This flies in the face of the message the world sends us in today’s culture. The message that says, “he who dies with the most toys wins.” Jesus clearly shows us in this parable that that is simply not the case.

 Shifting gears just a little, I always like to try to tie in Church teaching when I can. We can see in this passage some evidence in support of a doctrinal teaching of the Church concerning purgatory. We assume that Lazarus is in heaven and the rich man is in hell. But is that necessarily the case? Can souls in hell communicate w/ those in heaven? No. Yet we see the rich man conversing with Abraham. Perhaps Lazarus and Abraham are not in heaven, experiencing the beatific vision, because Christ has not yet died, opening the gates of heaven. The righteous were sometimes referred to as being “in the bosom of Abraham”, just as Jesus refers Lazarus as being in this passage. But there is still no evidence that those in hell could talk to those in the bosom of Abraham. So is it possible the rich man is somewhere other than hell? There is no Church teaching on this, so I don’t want to give the impression that the Church uses this passage as support for its teaching on purgatory, but the rich man does something rather interesting that may be a clue that he is not in hell. He makes intercession for his brothers who are still alive. Can someone who is in hell intercede on behalf of others? No. So is it possible then, that the rich man is in purgatory? We can’t say for sure, but we can say that there must be a 3^rd place. Communication can’t take place between heaven and hell, so therefore there must be a “place” or state of being in the afterlife that is neither heaven nor hell. That is clearly demonstrated in this parable from Jesus.

This is one of my favorite Gospel passages. It is so rich with lessons for us. I’d encourage you to go back and read it again to see what may be waiting there for you to discover. I love the last line, “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.” How many people today remain unconvinced, even though someone did rise from the dead? One day we too will rise from the dead and our resurrected bodies will join our souls in heaven or in hell. We have Moses and prophets. We have more than that as well. We have Jesus and His Apostles and all the saints throughout the ages. So we have even less excuse than the rich man. So pray then that we might persevere to the end and when our time comes we be carried by angels to join with Lazarus in the Kingdom of heaven.

Catholics on the Road to Emmaus

FGO from 13112 Business Meeting on October 8, 2013. It's based on this article, although the content is adjusted for time and an adult audience.

Abel, Abraham, Melchizedek

"Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance, and to accept them, as you were pleased to accept the gifts of your servant Abel the just, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim."

FGO from the September 10, 2013 business meeting.

Winning the Right to Be Heard

September FGO by Bro. Jason Rhoad:

There is an old and familiar quote attributed to the great saint Francis of Assisi: "Evangelize always, and when necessary, use words." Whether or not he actually ever said that, the meaning is clear. We are to live our lives in a way that reflects Christ to others. Put another way, our actions should speak louder than our words. That way, when the time comes for us to use words, people will have a reason to listen to what it is we have to say.

Throughout the past 2000 years, missionaries have traveled all over the world doing just that. They didn’t just get off the boat in some foreign land and begin expounding upon the finer points of the Immaculate Conception. Rather, countless Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans wanted to bring to those who had never heard it, the simple truth of the Gospel. That is, that God exists and He sent His son Jesus Christ to earth to die for our sins that we might spend eternity with Him in heaven. But in order to be able to deliver even that synthesis of the Gospel, first they had to win the right to be heard. How did they do it?

In many times and places, when strangers showed up it was usually not good news. Typically new people showed up to do things like take the resources from the place, to rape, pillage, and plunder, or to outright take over a new land. So you can imagine that often times, those attempting to spread the truth to new lands were not always met with open arms. Most of the religious order priests who would be part of the missionary contingent would have taken the traditional vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Why is that important? Because over time, it would help to calm the fears of the native population. Are they here for our women? Well no, they have taken vows of chastity. Are they here to take our resources? Well no, they have taken a vow of poverty. Are they here to take us over? No, these men have themselves vowed obedience to others, so they must not be interested in power. So why are they here? Over time, the missionaries won the right to be heard. They lived their lives in a way that eventually lead the natives to stop being threatened by their presence and then ultimately open to the message they had come to deliver. This was not easy of course. It often took many years and history is littered with examples of those who paid the ultimate price while trying to bring the Gospel to others. But ultimately their success is born out. People from all over the world have become Christians and joined the Catholic Church because of their witness. In fact, places like Africa and Asia are now increasingly repaying the favor to the west by sending us priests.

Essentially nothing has changed. If we want to bring others to Christ, we have to live our lives in a way that wins us the right to be heard. Even the best logic won’t stand up if we don’t imitate Christ in our daily lives. We may not have to travel to the ends of the earth anymore, but there are plenty of people on our own block (and indeed in our own homes) who need to light of Christ.

One modern day example is an incident involving Mother Teresa. She was invited to speak to a group of students and faculty at Harvard University. Harvard is not unlike many other institutions of higher learning these days in that it is not always friendly and open to certain traditional points of view concerning morality. But Mother Teresa spoke for over an hour, focusing largely on the evil and injustice of abortion and how a country as great as America could not remain so blind to this horrific scourge on society. At the end of her talk, she received a standing ovation. You see, her reputation preceded her. By the way she lived, she had won the right to be heard. And who knows, she may have even changed a few minds that day.

Now that may seem like an extreme example, but living a life of holiness is what we are all called to. With God’s grace, we can do it. And when He leads us to share our witness with others, to help them come home to Christ and His Church, the lives that we lead can win us the right to be heard as well. Evangelize always, and when necessary use words. When it is necessary to use words, those words will carry much more weight if the people we are talking to know that they aren’t just words, but are words backed by lives lived in the cooperation of God’s grace. This doesn’t mean that we have to be perfect before we can share our faith with others. Just that we humbly and joyfully try to be the people God calls us to be. If we genuinely do that, God will do the rest.

Are You Saved?

 FGO by Brother Jason Rhoad:

Chances are, you have been asked that question at some point in your life. If not, chances are real good that you will be asked. But the real question is: Do you have a good answer to the question? Typically, the questioner has a somewhat different view of salvation as compared to what the Catholic Church as always taught. Usually what they really mean, is “don’t you wish you had an absolute assurance of salvation?

As with most Protestant teachings, we have to be careful not to paint with too broad of a brush. There is quite a range of views about salvation out there. That in itself is a bit telling. Often times in my discussions with people, the notion that all Christians agree on the essentials comes up. I usually respond with something like this. “Do you consider salvation an essential?” I then proceed to point out that there is terrible disagreement among Christians on the topic of salvation. What do we have to do to get it? Can we lose it once we have it? Is faith alone all that is required? Does baptism have anything to do with it? As you might suspect, there are as many answers to these questions as there are denominations. I mention all this just to point out that this topic is not unlike any number of others that divide Christians. But I want to focus on a particular viewpoint on salvation that is quite popular in this part of the country. That is, Once Saved Always Saved.

Two major pillars of the Protestant Reformation are Sola Scriptura (The Bible Alone is the sole rule of faith) and Sola Fide (Salvation is by faith alone). It is an offshoot of this second pillar that we will examine here. According to the OSAS teaching, once a person accepts Christ as their personal Lord and savior, they then have an absolute assurance that when they die, they will go to heaven. They may well lead a good and holy life after accepting Christ, but it is not a condition for salvation. Indeed nothing they do, no sin they commit, can ever undo their salvation, even if they want it to. The thinking goes like this: There is nothing we can do to earn our salvation, therefore there is nothing we can do to lose it. That sounds reasonable enough, until we take a closer look.

We would agree that there is nothing we can do to merit salvation. We are saved by God’s grace, which is a free, unmerited gift. There is nothing we can do to earn it. There is no criteria like, if you do this many good deeds, etc. you go to heaven. Only Christ’s perfect sacrifice on the cross and the grace that flows from it is enough to be able to reconcile man to God. But it in no way follows that once we receive an unmerited gift that we have to keep that gift forever. Our free will is still intact and we can choose to do any number of things with a gift given to us. We can give it back, misplace it, destroy it, give it to someone else, take it back to the store, etc. We can even forfeit something we are given by later displeasing the one who gave it. For instance, when someone has been given a special position but is later stripped of the position due to mismanagement.

What about when we turn to scripture? We find there Adam and Eve, who received God’s grace as unmerited as any of us. But they most definitely did do something to demerit that grace. Through their disobedience, they lost the grace they had been given. So while it sounds nice to say that since we did nothing to get it we can do nothing to lose it, it simply does not hold up scrutiny.

Elsewhere in scripture, there is the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke chapter 15. The Prodigal Son was in his father’s house, and the father in the parable is representative of God the Father. Then, the Prodigal Son leaves his father’s house and goes and lives a sinful life. In the end, though, he repents and returns to his father. After he comes back, the father says this of him in verse 24: “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”

To be dead is to be unsaved, and to be alive is to be saved. Notice very carefully, though, that the father says the son is alive “again.” In other words, the son was alive, or saved, when he was in his father’s house at the beginning of the parable; was “dead,” or unsaved, when he left his father’s house and lived in sin; then was alive again, saved again, when he repented and returned to his father’s house. Alive, dead, alive again. Saved, unsaved, saved again.

These are merely two of many examples from scripture that point out the fallacy of OSAS. The argument can be furthered via practical example. Take for instance, someone who professes Christ as his savior at age 14. For ten years, lives an exemplary Christian life. He then gets married and starts a family. Eventually though, he begins to grow lukewarm. He succumbs to temptation and cheats on his wife. He stops going to church and eventually comes to believe that God doesn’t even exist. Does a decision he made at one point in his youth trump every other decision he ever makes? A typical response to this is that the person was never really saved in the 1^st place. To which I answer, what kind of assurance is that? He thought he was. What if he’d have died during the 10 year period following his salvation experience before falling away? If he was never really saved, would he have gone to hell, even though he thought he was saved?

I once asked a Baptist friend of mine, are there people who think they are saved but are really not? He said yes. I said, are you one of those people? Oh no, he said, I know I’m saved. See a problem here?

So what does the Church teach concerning salvation? Simply put, if we persevere to the end, and die in a state of grace, we will go to heaven. If we die in a state of mortal sin, we will go to hell. And we leave the judging to Christ. We do not judge ourselves. Paul puts it best in 1 Cor 4:4, “I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not there justified. It is the Lord who judges me. In 1 Cor 9:27, Paul admits that even he could fall away. “I pummel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified.”

I have heard and read of many occasions where Catholics were talked into leaving their faith because the Church does not teach an absolute assurance of salvation. I can certainly sympathize. I wish the Protestant doctrine of once saved always saved were true. But unfortunately, it simply isn’t. That doesn’t mean that we are to go around terrified of whether or not we will get to heaven. Indeed we can be assured that if we remain in God’s grace, He will be true to His promises. Furthermore, Christ gave us the sacraments, particularly reconciliation, to impart in a visible and real way, His grace upon us. But as scripture, practicality, and the constant 2000 year authoritative teaching of the Church informs us, more is asked of us than a one time acceptance of Christ. So as Paul tells us in Philippians 2:12, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."  

Jesus and Elijah

FGO from the August 13, 2013 meeting, based on this written bit.