“Purgatory is not an invention of theologians,” assures Bishop Demetrio Fernández, Bishop of Córdoba (Spain), in his latest weekly column, titled “Saints and the dead, the afterlife.”
“Purgatory is not an invention of theologians. Purgatory is the ultimate expression of God’s mercy towards us, which makes his love evident and palpable and generates in us by contrast the precious pain of contrition,” the prelate highlighted in the text published in the website of the diocese this October 31.
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“Our sin is instantly forgiven by God in the sacrament (of Confession), but sin has left consequences and scars that will only be healed by the crucible of love,” says the prelate in his column dedicated to the Solemnity of All Saints. on November 1 and All Souls’ Day the following day.
“Purgatory is a response of love without cuts, where our soul is clean and pure to access the presence of God,” continues Mons. Fernández.
“The prayer of the Church for her deceased children, who are still in Purgatory, is constant. They are his favorite children, because they are the ones who suffer the most in that flame of love from God and the human heart in his presence.”
“It is a suffering full of hope, because he already enjoys salvation. But it is a suffering that demands our collaboration and that of all the Saints in their favor,” he highlights.
For the Bishop of Córdoba, November is a “month of Saints and the dead. Month to consider more explicitly what the meaning of our journey through this life is”, remembering that without “God we have brought ruin on ourselves.”
Purgatory or final purification
Numeral 1030 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “those who die in the grace and friendship of God, but imperfectly purified, although they are sure of their eternal salvation, undergo purification after their death, in order to obtain the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.”
“The Church calls this final purification of the elect purgatory, which is completely different from the punishment of the condemned,” numeral 1031 specifies.
“The Church has formulated the doctrine of faith relating to purgatory above all in the Councils of Florence (cf. DS 1304) and of Trent (cf. DS 1820; 1580)”, while “the tradition of the Church, referring to to certain texts of Scripture (for example 1 Cor 3, 15; 1 Pet 1, 7) speaks of a purifying fire.”
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.