Pope discusses heaven, hell, and purgatory

Pope John Paul II addressed these three topics in three talks one summer.

“We know that the ‘heaven’ or ‘happiness’ in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity.

“It is always necessary to maintain a certain restraint in describing these ‘ultimate realities’ since their depiction is always unsatisfactory.

“Today, personalist language is better suited to describing the state of happiness and peace we will enjoy in our definitive communion with God.

“The ‘final state’ known as heaven can be anticipated in some way today in sacramental life, whose center is the Eucharist, and the gift of self through fraternal charity,” the pope said.

Hell or eternal damnation “is not punishment imposed externally by God but a development of premises already set by people in this life,” said the pope.

In a theological sense, he continued, hell “is the state of those who definitively reject the Father’s mercy, even at the last moment of their life.”

The pope said that the images of hell that Scripture presents—for example, as a place of fire—“must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness without God.

“Rather than a place, hell indicated the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.”

The pope said that damnation is not attributed to God’s initiative; “in reality, it is the creature that closes himself to his love.”

And the pope said, while damnation remains a real possibility, “we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of whether of which human beings are effectively involved in it.”

Purgatory “does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence.” It is a place of purification. “Every trace of attachment to evil must be eliminated, every imperfection of the soul corrected.”

The pope said that this “state of purification is not a prolongation of the earthly condition, almost as if after death one were given another possibility to change one’s destiny.”

And he said, those “who find themselves in the state of purification are united both with the blessed who already enjoy the fullness of eternal life, and with us of this earth on our way toward the Father’s house.”