All Saints or All Souls? Differences should be black and white

There is no place mentioned in the Bible discussing anything between Heaven and Hell.

It is mentioned LevinFan, though it may be better to think of it as a process rather than a place. Purgation is transitory and not eternal: there is no permanent, eternal place called "purgatory":- although one might justly use the term for the place where purgation takes place.

I don't want to labor the point, but if you have a look at my post #7, I list examples of where purgatory/purgation is described in the Bible.

Hope this is helpful

Ok thread-buddies, I’m off to mass.

Tomorrow is the feast of All Souls: no doubt we’ll get a chance to revisit these topics :0)

I did look at your post. But all of those examples happens on earth while alive.

purgatory is man made to help sinners feel better about sinning

The Mass for All Souls is the Requiem Mass. Ever read through the texts for the Requiem Mass? They don't make you "feel better about sinning". They make you remember your own death, and how you must someday face a righteous God.

Read through this, which is the Sequence for tomorrow in the old rite, any time you're "feeling better about sinning". I guarantee the feeling will go away.

" ... but only as one escaping through the flames.”"

That's the key point to me, those who love Christ won't be able to resist going toward the Father but continuing to him will be the same as passing through flames to escape a burning building. Without knowing Christ, we would be so ashamed of themselves when we see themselves as we really are for the fist time that we'd want to hide the way Adam and Eve wanted to. Once you've accepted Christ, though, you'll be drawn to the Father in spite of the pain heading that way causes.

It also fits with those folks who are revived from near death experiences and say they were drawn toward the light and such, some of whom say they couldn't stand how bright and penetrating the light is and were trying to turn away from it or shield their eyes from it and so on. The Scripture says, "... men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil", perfectly describes that reaction. If someone has that reaction when Christ enters time in his life, they'll have the same one when they're outside of time in the next life. Only those who trust in Christ will be able to resist turning away because they're trusting in the promise of Christ.

Given that this takes place in "no time" rather than in time as we understand it, it's hard to say how we'll experience time and the duration of things. Like people escaping a burning building, though, a short time passing could well seem like a a much longer time to the one escaping through flames.

JMHO

Why do you claim St. Mary of Magdala came to Jesus late? You’re not making that spurious claim that she was a prostitute are you? She was not.

>>are those the Church has identified as Saints.<<

Scripture shows all believers to be saints.

>>Sounds rather strange to me now.<<

It’s not just strange, it’s out and out blasphemy. It denies the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice.

>>If anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, the work of each will come to light, for the Day will disclose it. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire (itself) will test the quality of each one's work. If the work stands that someone built upon the foundation, that person will receive a wage. But if someone's work is burned up, that one will suffer loss; the person will be saved, but only as through fire.<<

That entire chapter is talking to and about the leadership of the church. And it referenced the people they were teaching who did or didn’t maintain the faith. Some fell away because of poor “milk” only teaching and some stayed true to the faith because of “meat” teaching so the leadership would get more rewards if they taught strong “meat” taught Christians. It has nothing to do with purgatory.

White vestments for All Saints Day!

Just know that you are a Catholic and will always be a Catholic.

Why don’t you sit down with a priest you can talk with and get your questions answered?

**All who believe by faith are saints.**

But if you are alive, arne’t you a sinner?

All Saints and All Souls? Differences should be black and white

Durer: Altarpiece of Saints

Yesterday, we discussed the origins of today's solemnity: All Saints. And today, in Masses all over the world, the Church joins together in commemorating and celebrating all of the saints who are enjoying the beatific vision in heaven. Tens of thousands of men and women from all ages, all walks of life and all cultures have been "canonized" (that is, officially added to the Church's list of saints) and we have full confidence that they intercede for us before God's heavenly throne.

The truth is, we don't really know how many saints there are. Estimates are that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have canonized well over 10,000 men and women over the past centuries. But we also know that, for whatever reason, only some of the heavenly company have been made known to us through this official process. This is one reason for today's presence on the Church calendar: to celebrate all of the saints in heaven - even those whose names are not recorded in history.

Who are the saints?

The concept of "sainthood" really isn't that difficult to understand. Through the merits of Christ's redemptive sacrifice on the Cross, we believe that some men and women will be admitted to the eternal life of heaven, where they will spend eternity praising God. All Christians believe that much.

Icon of Orthodox saints

For Catholic (and Orthodox) Christians, however, there is another facet: we believe that death does not sever a Christian from the Body of Christ. In other words, even in death, the Church is united as one body: the Church militant (those of us still here, "fighting the good fight" here on earth), the Church suffering (those in purgatory undergoing final purifications to enter heaven), and the Church triumphant (those in heaven - whom we call "saints").

Since we are all part of the indissoluble and eternal Church, we are called to help one another and pray for one another. This means that we here on earth should pray for those suffering in purgatory and we all ask for the prayers of the heavenly saints. Truth is, life is tough, the devil is real and we need all the help we can get!

In addition to their prayers, the saints also left behind another important legacy: their lives and Christian witness. Some exuded holiness from an early age, but many were quite despicable people before definitively giving their lives over to God. All of these (but especially the latter group) give us hope and set before us an example to be emulated. Truly, we are all called to be saints, and - if we just look - we have many blueprints to follow.

Black or White?

All of that being said, today's feast of All Saints is wholly different from tomorrow's feast: that of All Souls. Today, we celebrate the men and women who have entered heaven; tomorrow, we will remember the souls of our friends and family members who are being purified to do the same. Today, we pray to the saints in heaven with full confidence that they will intercede for us; tomorrow, we pray for the souls in purgatory with full hope that others will do the same for us after we are gone.

There's a big difference between the emphases (and purpose) of the two days.

Medieval depiction of Funeral Mass

Honestly, though, you may be hard pressed to find a difference between the way these two feasts are celebrated in your local parish. Today, the priest will wear white vestments - a liturgical color which denotes heavenly purity and which reminds us of the biblical descriptions of heaven, replete with white-robed saints. Tomorrow, though, you're again likely to see white, but then, the symbol is of baptismal purity. But it's not likely that anyone will bother to belabor or stress the (important) differences between the two uses of white, or even between the theological emphases of the two days.

It wasn't always this way. For centuries, the traditional liturgical color for All Saints' Day has been white. The traditional color for All Souls' Day, though, was black. And despite what you may have been told in the past, black is still an acceptable liturgical color - its just that black vestments fell out of favor over the past 30-40 years and many parishes simply packed or threw them away.

But using white for All Saints and black for All Souls just makes more sense, really: white denotes heavenly purity while black is the traditional Western color for mourning. On All Saints, we celebrate the saints we know to be in heaven. But on All Souls, we mourn and pray for, the souls we hope will be received into heaven. To wear liturgical white on both days is confusing at best, or - at worst - deceptive.

The same hold true for funerals. We've shifted, as a culture, away from our traditional grounding in the reality of sin, the reality of death and the reality of suffering. We try to sterilize and ignore all of them by making funerals less "gloomy" and more light-hearted. Even Catholic funerals have taken a spiritually unhealthy turn from praying for the soul of the dead to "celebrating life" and virtually ignoring anything remotely uncomfortable like the fact that the dead need our prayers. In most modern funeral Masses, the priest chooses to wear white vestments instead of black - an extension of this "think on good" mentality.

It's certainly a good thing to remember the joys of heaven that await the souls that God deems just. Hope is an important Christian virtue! But we can't deny that mourning is proper and healthy ("Jesus wept," remember?) and should be given its symboling place in our funerals in in our annual remembrance of the departed souls: All Souls' Day. To skip over the "black" of mourning and go straight to the "white" of sainthood displaces the virtue of hope. But, more importantly, it does not encourage prayer for the dead, accomplishes a real injustice to the souls of the faithful departed who rely on our prayers.

Priests celebrating Mass in black vestments

Back in Black

But all is not lost. Despite the best (though, perhaps misguided) efforts of some, the baby was not thrown out with the bathwater (though he's barely hooding on the edge of the tub by a fingernail). Slowly but surely, black is making a comeback as a liturgical color. Especially on All Souls' Day, more and more priests are donning black vestments to return an aire of somberness and sobriety to Masses for the dead. In large part, it is the newer generations of priests who are doing this - the same priests who are answering Pope Benedict's call to recover a sense of the sacred in the Church's liturgy, and who are embracing the liturgical changes of Vatican II as being organically connected to all that came before (black vestments and all).

Lex orandi, lex credendi - a Latin axiom which teaches that "how we pray affects what we believe." If we want to be reminded tomorrow that the souls of the dead need our prayers, we should ask our priests to wear black. Come on priests - be rebels! Wear the black!

well, imho it's good to question. The two things we need to remember is
1. what is the core dogma of salvation -- that is the Gospel. purgatory is doctrine yes but not the core dogma of salvation which is freely given grace from God

2. purgatory or the final sanctification, is not a time, not a place, not a period of time but the final stage in our sanctification by the grace of God, by the power of the Holy SPirit through the blood of Christ

the Buddists were offering prayers for the dead

errr... could you explain? As far as I know, Buddhists believe in reincarnation or escaping the cycle of reincarnation -- the dead are just reborn and its all determined by their Karma. They do not pray for the dead as that would make no sense in this philosophy -- you are responsible for your own salvation in Buddhist philosophy and after death are either reborn or attain Nirvana.

In fact, the concept was not even noted in Christian practice until the 2nd Century AD. -- imho that is incorrect. Christian catacombs have inscriptions dating from AD 71. This was a continuation of the Jewish practice of praying for the dead

only was officially adopted in the 16th Centry -- I'm sorry but again that is wrong. You can find it in the documents of the Council of Florence two centuries earlier

False — and you’ve been told so over and over again. The Final sanctification/purgatory is not a punishment and you do not “earn your way out” — rather it is the final stage of sanctification BY God. Only those going to heaven experience this and this is something that God does to the person. Our prayers are to God to aid the person in their final sanctification

>>False — and you’ve been told so over and over again.<<

Now that there is funny! I know that Catholics have been conditioned to believe whatever they are told about what scripture means but me,,,,,not so much.

>> rather it is the final stage of sanctification BY God.<<

I believe that Christ said while still on the cross “it is finished” and I take Him at His word and will add no more requirements than He did.

>> Our prayers are to God to aid the person in their final sanctification<<

Hebrews 10:10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: 12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; 13 From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. 14 For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.

In the Bible, at the moment of Christ’s death — bodies arose from their graves and believers could see them.

Now where do you suppose their spirits were since Christ was the first one into heaven and heaven wasn’t open yet?

They (those spirits) were in a waiting place — and we Catholics call that Purgatory — although it wasn’t named as such.

It’s right there in the Bible.

A question for you — and don’t be cynical in your answer, please.

Do all spirits have to be pure to enter heaven?

Then what happens to our spirits when our bodies are left here on earth (providing we are heaven-bound)? Some of us die with small sins on our souls — and even though Christ died for our sins — we do our part to add to his death on the Cross by doing reparation for those sins.

It’s like breaking the neighbor’s window when you threw a wayward baseball. You admitted to the neighbor’s that you did it — and if you had a good parent — you worked for the neighbors or others to earn money to pay for them to get a new window.

>>Now where do you suppose their spirits were since Christ was the first one into heaven and heaven wasn’t open yet?<<

They were in a place called Paradise. When Old Testament believers died they went to a place called paradise because the veil between the people and God had not been torn. When Christ died that veil was torn asunder which meant that those saved could go into the presence of God. He went down into paradise and released those Old Testament believers to allow them into the presence of God in heaven. That veil remains torn today and those who have been “redeemed” by Christ go directly into the presence of God. The place called paradise no longer exists.

For Catholics to claim that those who are saved must still go into that place deny that the veil was torn for all time. >>Do all spirits have to be pure to enter heaven?

Yes they do and all those who have accepted the full and complete price Jesus paid are.

>>Some of us die with small sins on our souls<<

Not if we have accepted the penalty Christ paid for ALL our sins.

>>we do our part to add to his death on the Cross by doing reparation for those sins.<<

No we don’t “do our part”. To claim so is to deny that Christ’s sacrifice was complete and sufficient for all our sins.

Hebrews 10:10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: 12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; 13 From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. 14 For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. 1 Corinthians 6:11 11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are >b>sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

>>It’s like breaking the neighbor’s window when you threw a wayward baseball. You admitted to the neighbor’s that you did it — and if you had a good parent — you worked for the neighbors or others to earn money to pay for them to get a new window.<<

I do believe that scripture calls that the wisdom of men.

1 Corinthians 2:4 And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: 5 That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Will you be surprised at the moment of your death to find out that the so-called “Paradise” is also “Purgatory?”