Friday column for All Souls Day and purgatory

I write for November 2, All Souls Day. I was raised in a most traditional Roman Catholic background, and this day was stressed as part of a piece with All Saints Day. I am now a Protestant pastor, and one of the doctrines on which some of us disagree is the doctrine of purgatory as shared with some older Protestant traditions.It deals with a basic religious desire: we want to arrogate to ourselves the decision to who is in heaven or hell. Basically, purgatory is seen as an intermediate, in-between state after death. The saints among us, in a blessed relationship with God and others, enter into heaven after death. Those on the opposite end of the spectrum are to suffer the pain of separation from God or perhaps annihilation or in some views, eternal punishment, in Hell. Given the long practice of prayers for the dead, purgatory seems to be an emerging notion. (One of the spiritual works of mercy we were taught was to pray for the living and dead). It also reflects a sense about holiness, that some of us, many of us, would require a continuing transformation of our orientation toward life and the good to be able to bear the sacred precincts. OK, if you insist, some of us would sully the purity of heaven: just go through jokes on St Peter in the receiving line of entering heaven. The doctrine has been reformed within the Roman Catholic Church in Vatican II and following years. Purgatory did reflect a fundamental issue about heaven itself. If Hell was to be seen as punishment, after a sort of criminal trial of one’s life, then was heaven a sort of civil court award, for good behaviors? Heavenly crowns for good deeds started to morph into a pre-condition for entering Heaven. So, purgatory developed a sense of doing time as well as being purified before entering heaven. This seemed to be particularly aimed at a sense of satisfying the demands of justice ofr venial sins, the disorder and disordered acts that we all struggle with in our lives. Indulgences were for acts beyond their intrinsic goodness; they could be vehicles to use as credits for time served in purgatory for ourselves or others. They could help balance the ledger. (Again, this is the older model here described, and through a Protestant prism).When I was a boy in Catholic school, we learned math through indulgences. “If one obtained 3 days indulgence from purgatory when you entered church and dipped one’s hand in the holy water and made the sign of the cross, how many days would one enjoy away from purgatory if one went to church the whole week?” I am convinced that one of the reasons, Catholic school kids do well on standardized tests is their early exposure to big words. Not only were there discrete indulgences, one could obtain a plenary indulgence for a particularly meaningful good deed. I recall my confusion when I tried to consider how one could obtain more than one plenary indulgence. How could one add to a surfeit of grace? In the end, most Christians struggle with the entire idea of salvation. We find it so hard to perceive that first it is about the whole of our existence, in this world and the world to come. Second, it is a gift of God’s grace for us. It is better perceived as healing sin sick souls than in a frame of reward and punishments. It is more than a ticket to heaven; it is entry into a new way of life in this world, a new way of seeing God, each other, and ourselves.It is a recognition that we are part of the same family; we are all in the same boat. God is constantly at work for that healing for all God’s children.