The trouble is, I once had a problem with purgatory, and it creeps back into my thinking when I am not careful. Or, better said, I had a problem with the way purgatory was often presented.

It sounded like if you had enough spiritual credit, i.e. grace, you went to heaven, and if you were bankrupt, you went to hell. But what about the people who have some grace but not enough for heaven? They don’t deserve hell, so where do they go?

Sounded like the Church created a place where they could go and pay off their debt until they were ready for heaven. This place was called "purgatory."

And because of the Communion of Saints, those who are alive can help their brothers and sisters by giving them some of their credit from the Grace Bank to help make their purgatory shorter.

So there it is: purgatory and the custom of praying for the dead And I had a problem with that.

Thank God I finally remembered that when it comes to having a problem with the things of faith the answer is very simple: faith is not about solving problems. Faith is faith.

You have a problem? Shut up and pray. Prayer will lead you to what is clear in the teachings of the Church, and then you can work your way back to it.

I didn’t do that with my first attempt at an article for this issue, and all my old untrue and immature images of purgatory came back to haunt me. Good editors catch that sort of thing. (Thanks, Paulette.)

But why waste all this space telling us all about that, Father? Get to the point!

Well, in fact, that is the point: our "purging-story" happens all along the way, whether we are purged by our editor, our spouse, our children, our parents, our Faith, or Life itself. These small "purgings" all point to that final purging of dying and death, and purgatory is part of that mystery.

But if we are off about what death is and how to embrace dying, then everything about death and dying eventually becomes an illusion.

So it is that in our culture, death and dying are losing their religious significance.

These days at the bedside of the dying and at the wakes and funerals thereafter, we hear less and less about the reality of death, repentance, resurrection in Christ, heaven or hell, the Communion of Saints, or our ongoing union with the dead in the Eucharist.

More and more, people are dealing with death as an illusion, as a well-medicated "leave taking."

What we so desperately need to do is bravely proclaim to the world that death is not simply breathing our last and then being waked in some politically correct fashion until we all meet again.

The dying are involved in something far more intense that just leaving us living folk behind for a while.

They are experiencing a tremendous and traumatic purging. They are, in fact, being purged beyond skin and bones.

They not only need to hear the living tell them that they love them and forgive them and that it’s OK to "go home," but they need to be encouraged by the images and the sounds of the Faith that have brought them this far.

They need help in focusing on God, They need to hear whispered over and over in their ears, very special holy words. Like? Like, "Jesus, I love you." "Lord, have mercy." "Jesus, I love you." "Jesus, have mercy."

Because at the moment of death, that’s all there will be for them: Jesus, the Lord’s love, and the Lord’s mercy.

What a tragedy it is to die with anything else in our ears and psyche!

But if our own thinking about death is in right order, then the Spirit can give us all sorts of powerful images to help us gaze into its depths with new hope and joy.

Believe it or not, it was purgatory which provided me with one of the most powerful, hopeful images of death and dying. Through this revelation, I began to image my own dying as being drawn into an intense fire—not the painful, burning, condemning kind. That’s Hell.

No, a Fire, the heat of which has been the source of our desire for God since the beginning. As Scripture tells us, God is a consuming Fire. So, to be with God, we must become one with him in that Fire.

It’s as if we were wood slowly being consumed, and as long as we are living, we are continually being invited to come closer to the Fire. At the same time, our heart’s deepest desire, often a hidden desire, is to become one with God. There is no way that can happen unless we come closer and closer to the Fire.

Some of us die an inch away from the Fire, and some a mile away, but the Spirit tells us if we have the desire, then the wood can still be consumed—even after we are dead—however long it takes—until the Flame purges us completely, and we have become one with the Consuming Fire.

A strange image of dying, death and hereafter? Well, for me, it is a very hopeful one.

I see more clearly now that if we do not understand the "purging story," purgatory will appear to be some kind of spiritual credit card business tacked on by the Church instead of a wonderful revelation given to the Church by the Holy Spirit about the mystery of death and dying.

And without that astonishing revelation we lose the wondrous connection between us and the dead in the Communion of Saints. We soon forget that all of us—we who are living and we who are dead—are brothers and sisters in the Lord who can help each other along into the purging love and mercy of the Christ Jesus.

What a wonderful gift purgatory is! Who would have thought of anything like this if it had not been for the Spirit revealing it to us? And how blessed we are to know that our death radiates the purging-death of our Redeemer. This knowledge has to affect how we are with the dying, how we wake them and bury them, and how we remember them thereafter.

In whatever way we can help people die in that truth, we unwittingly help others to live in that same truth.

I thank God for the amazing revelation of purgatory, and I delight in saying over and over, especially in this month dedicated to all the dead, "May all of you, through the mercy and love of God, rest in peace (R.I.P.). Amen."