What does Matthew 12 32 say about purgatory?
In The City of God, St. Augustine uses verse 32 to prove that there is a Purgatory after this life. Because it would be pointless to say, shall not be forgiven ... nor in the coming world, if there were no remission of sins in the coming world.
Roman Catholic Christians who believe in purgatory interpret passages such as 2 Timothy 1:18, Matthew 12:32, Luke 23:43, 1 Corinthians 3:11–3:15 and Hebrews 12:29 as support for prayer for purgatorial souls who are believed to be within an active interim state for the dead undergoing purifying flames (which could be ...
The Catholic Church holds that "all who die in God's grace and friendship but still imperfectly purified" undergo a process of purification, which the church calls purgatory, "so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven".
The term purgatory refers to the purification of the elected souls before entering Heaven. According to the Roman Catholic and medieval Christian beliefs, this state of existence is considered a punishment to prepare the souls for Heaven.
Matthew 12:32, NIV: "Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."
The answer is that you won't find the specific word “purgatory” in the Bible. But the concept is surely there — the notion of a period of purification after death before one is worthy to enter heaven.
The classic Protestant argument against Purgatory, aside from the lack of biblical support, is that Jesus' death eliminated the need for any afterlife redress of sin. Catholics reply that divine mercy doesn't exonerate a person from the need to be transformed.
The First Means of avoiding Purgatory is manifestly to remove the cause which sends us there, which is sin. It may not be easy to refrain from all sin, even the smaller sins, but every ordinary Christian can, by the frequent use of the Sacraments, easily abstain from mortal sin.
A Spanish theologian from the late Middle Ages once argued that the average Christian spends 1000 to 2000 years in purgatory (according to Stephen Greenblatt's Hamlet in Purgatory). But there's no official take on the average sentence.
Purgatory is the process, after death, of burning out the last of our attachments so that we can enter Heaven 100% freed of everything to do with sin.
What sins put you in purgatory?
Dante's version of Purgatory is extraordinarily detailed and, in some key respects, strikingly original. First, he imagines Purgatory as being divided up into seven terraces, each one corresponding to a vice (in the order that Dante sees them: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice and Prodigality, Gluttony and Lust).
“He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (I John 5:12) And there is no second chance – no purgatory. We die once – in Christ or not in Christ. We are not in Christ through the church nor through baptism.
The Holy Souls in Purgatory undergo purification suffering of love. The purifying suffering of love is called “satispassion.” Since the Holy Souls can't be purified by their own efforts, they atone for their sins by undergoing purifying suffering which re-establishes holiness and justice.
New Testament passages
Matthew 12:30-32: "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
Let me offer a definition at the outset. Blasphemy against the Spirit—the unforgivable sin—is ongoing hardening of your heart against the Holy Spirit who is trying to lead you to repent of sin and believe in Christ.
- A believer can lie to the Holy Spirit. ...
- A believer can grieve the Holy Spirit. ...
- A believer can quench the Holy Spirit. ...
- A nonbeliever can resist the Holy Spirit. ...
- A nonbeliever can insult the Holy Spirit. ...
- A nonbeliever can blaspheme the Holy Spirit.
Today purgatory can refer to any place or situation in which suffering and misery are felt to be sharp but temporary. Waiting to hear the results of a test, or whether you got a good job, can be a purgatory. And an endless after-dinner speech can make an entire roomful of people feel as if they're in purgatory.
The other planets are individualized in the Bible only by implication. The worship of gods connected with them is denounced, but without any manifest intention of referring to the heavenly bodies.
Catholics and many other Christians venerate the saints as ongoing examples of what a life generously open to God's grace can look like in a great variety of circ*mstances. Jesus was a celibate, first-century man—and fully God—who faced certain situations and challenges that no longer exist in the 21st century.
Not only Catholics believe in this final purification, but the Eastern Orthodox do as well (though they often do not use the term "purgatory" for it), as do Orthodox Jews.
Do Catholics need to believe in purgatory?
Christian love knows no boundaries and goes beyond the limits of space and time, enabling us to love those who have already left this earth." Therefore, not only the belief in purgatory but also the spiritual duty to pray for the souls there remains part of our Catholic faith.
On the other hand whosoever comes into God's presence must be perfectly pure for in the strictest sense His "eyes are too pure, to behold evil" (Habakkuk 1:13). For unrepented venial faults for the payment of temporal punishment due to sin at time of death, the Church has always taught the doctrine of purgatory.
There's suffering involved as we look at Our Lord and are purified of final chaff (I Corinthians 3:11-15) but He wipes all tears from our eyes and brings us to the Father's House. We need not fear the fire of purgatory, for it is a good thing “to die in God's grace and friendship (CCC1030).”
Sous can be released from Purgatory by: Prayer, Penance and Good Works done on behalf of the Souls in Purgatory. Ideally, in doing these there may be Self-sacrifice involved. Very often the Faithful and those who Grieve offer or have Masses offered for the Souls in Purgatory.
St. Gertrude the Great was a Benedictine nun and mystic who lived in the 13th century. According to tradition, our Lord promised her that 1000 souls would be released from Purgatory each time it is said devoutly.
