Saint Benedict tells the students in his school to live
in fear of judgment day and have a great horror of hell. Yearn for everlasting
life with holy desire. Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die.
Hour by hour keep careful watch over all you do aware that God’s gaze is upon
you, wherever you may be. As soon as wrongful thoughts come into your heart,
dash them against Christ and disclose them to your spiritual father.[1]
Saint Benedict is not being morbid. He is being realistic. None
of us have an inkling of an idea of when death will find us.
The good abbot is insisting that keeping watch over one’s
soul is something that requires constant vigilance … day by day, hour by
hour. This vigilance is not something to be neglected. Neglect of vigilance
in this matter leads to presumption. Presumption is a serious
sin. The sin of presumption draws us deeper into the darkness of sin and
further separates us from God who has provided every necessary means for us to
remain close to him in a state of grace.
I am continually reminding myself of the pressing necessity
to follow the admonition of Saint Paul where he wrote, “Carefully study to
present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly handling the word of truth.”[2]
I am continually reminding myself of the necessity that I
have to study and know the Sacred Scriptures, to study and know Sacred
Tradition, to study and know the catechisms [old and new] of the Church.[3]
It is, after all, these three working together that secure our faith and safely
transport us toward our eternal destination. To neglect these three, or any one
of the three, is to flirt with disaster both now and in eternity. As an Oblate
of Saint Benedict, The Rule of Saint Benedict, takes its place with the three
aforementioned. The last chapter of The Rule points me to the teachings of the
Early Fathers of the Church that lead to the very heights of perfection.
I am discovering that my attention is being drawn more and
more to the historic Sainted examples from the past. Their examples beckon to
me.
They cause me to honestly examine my life in the light of
their examples. They refuse to allow me to accept complacency and tepidity as
norms that define me. They invite me to yield myself to a greater and deeper
actualization of the Deposit of Faith … especially in the Sacraments … and most
especially in the Sacrament of Penance where sin is defined, its nature
understood, confession of it is made, and absolution for sin is received.
What then? What once confession is made, absolution
received, and some small pittance of a penance performed? Do I then go on with
life without any significant conversion of life that reflects penitence
and true contrition? No. The ongoing surrender to the work of conversion on my part has only just begun.
“If any one saith
that after the grace of Justification has been received, to every penitent
sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out
in such wise that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be
discharged, either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the
entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven can be opened to him – let him be anathema.”[4]
I always wondered about what Jesus was talking about when he
said, Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last
penny.[5]
Nothing in my Protestant upbringing or Bible College training for pastoral
ministry adequately addressed this business of paying the last penny. Purgatory,
this place for finishing up what we neglect to do while in our physical bodies,
supplied an answer to the unanswered question.
The Church plainly teaches that all who die in God’s grace
and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their
eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve
the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. The Church gives the name
Purgatory to this final purification of the elect. The belief in this final
purification [and prayers for the dearly departed being purified] is rooted in
Judaism. Believers in the first centuries held to the belief in Purgatory. Church
Councils affirmed the necessity of honoring the memory of the dead by offering
prayers in suffrage [above all the Eucharistic sacrifice], so that once finally
purified they would attain the beatific vision of God.[6]
The concept of Purgatory would not have been strange
teaching to the ears of Benedict or to any other Christian living in the 6th
Century. A number of early Church leaders wrote homilies and dissertations
interpreting 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 as a reference to purification after death. Perhaps
Benedict’s insistence upon conversatio morum for his students figures into
the Benedictine scheme as a means to mitigate the demands of divine justice
before gaining access to heaven?
Pain and suffering are conditions that none of us want to
think about.
It is bad enough that we experience them in our earthly
physical lives. We really do not want to think about pain and suffering in a purely
spiritual everlasting sense [Hell] or in a purely spiritual temporal sense
[Purgatory]. Yet, for all our objections and rejections, the Last Four Things
[Death, Judgment, Heaven or Hell] still loom before us. “For all of us must
appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense
for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.”[7]
What we do, how we live in this life, has a definite
determination on what we will experience in the afterlife.
-- to be continued --
[1]
Holy Rule 4:44-50
[2] 2
Timothy 2:15, Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition
[3] As
Catholics we believe that the Church is supported by three legs represented as
Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and Magisterium.
[4] CANON
XXX. SESSION VI OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, Council of Trent, 1545 – 1563, This
19th Ecumenical Council convened in response to the Protestant Reformation. The
work of this council was so effective and long lasting that the next major
Church council did not happen until the First Vatican Council in 1869.
[5]
Matthew 5:26
[6]
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraphs 1030, 1031, 1032
[7] 2
Corinthians 5:10
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