Holiness 101

 I was thinking about something I read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

People who die in God's friendship but require purification undergo purification so as to achieve the holiness they need in order to enter the joy of heaven. (1030) This final purification is what our Church calls “purgatory” which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. (Council of Florence, 1439; Council of Trent, 1563; Benedict XII, 1336.)

The Catechism connects this concept of purgatory to Matthew 12:31, where Jesus says "Whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirt will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come."

The logic is simple enough. If something can't be forgiven in the age to come, then a) the Age to come is real and b) things can be forgiven after we die. It is possible, then, that we can come to the end of our lives with incomplete holiness. Holiness is so important and so desired for us by God that Catholics believe in Purgatory, a time after death for learning, training, perfecting in whatever we still lack in holiness. That doesn't sound anything like hell, does it?

But it begs the question, why wait? Why not learn all we can about how to be holy right here, right now, starting today, sort of cutting the line when we reach the Great Entrance to Paradise...?

What would that look like?

(More to come...)