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Hello all:

I wonder if any can help me with someting I read once regarding purgatory and the Eastern Church. I read that there is a medieval Russian text (apparently, ="rossijskij) text called "Khozhdenije Bogorodicy po Mukam", as I recall, which in English would be something like "The Mother of God's Walk through the Torments". This text testifies to an Eastern acceptance of purgatory even after the Great Schism, despite disavowals of the doctrine by some present-day controversialists.

Does anyone know of this, or better still, have it, whether in English or Russian or Church Slavonic?

Regards,

John McAlpine

Dear John,

Hello my old friend. Welcome to the forum. Although I am totally unfamiliar with the tradition you mention or the Ukranian Church for that matter (that's what they get for letting an Armenian on a "Byzantine" Forum), I would like to take a stab at answering your question from a general "Eastern Christian" perspective.

First off, I would say that no Eastern Christian believes in "purgatory." The word "purgatory," comes from Latin. (Being you speak, read and write Latin as well as Slavonic, I'm sure I don't need to tell you this). Our Churches' Traditions are not Latin so, it follows that we would not use this word to refer to the belief.

But I don't think any Eastern Christian on this forum would deny that we pray for our dead and believe these prayers are efficacious for those asleep in the Lord before the final day of judgement. To do so would violate the very prayers of our Churches.

Yet, I think it is safe to say that "how" it is efficacious is a Mystery. Many writers of East and West have explored this mystery and some have even tried to define it. This "how," ofcourse, has been explained differently by different writers.

Certainly the Latins and Eastern Christians do not have identical explanations and developed traditions regarding this process. Yet, certainly there are similarities.

As long as the the ancient Churches respect each other's developed beliefs, I think it is enough that we agree in praying for those asleep in the Lord. Looking at the new "Catechism of the Catholic Church," it seems Old Rome herself is content with what our friend Al Kresta referred to as a "very tame" explanation of this process.

Its great to hear from you. Welcome to the forum! I'm sorry if I got off the track of what you asked. I hope some of those on this forum, steeped in Slavic tradition, will address your specific question.

Trusting in Christ's Light,

Wm. Der-Ghazarian Wolfe

John,

Welcome to The Byzantine Forum. I am sure that one of our regular participants will be familiar with the text "Khozhdenije Bogorodicy po Mukam". Please be patient as not everyone gets to read the Forum on a daily basis.

Since you�ve raised the topic, I should note that Byzantine Catholics do not have a developed doctrine of purgatory so it is not surprising that other Eastern Christians don�t either. Byzantine theologians never go beyond a simple acknowledgement of a soul�s journey of purification upon death. In the East this journey is often likened to as an ascent to the Father that lasts until the Final Judgment. In the Divine Liturgy we offer the �bloodless sacrifice� for �patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and every righteous spirit made perfect in the faith�, and even for the Virgin Mary herself. The state of the blessed is, for us, not one that is legal and static but it rather an ascent into the entire communion of saints. We on earth are already initiated into this communion of saints by virtue of our baptism. Prayer for those who have died is efficacious.

There are numerous theological explanations of the journey of the soul after death in our Church. The �Toll Houses� understanding is the most common explanation but it does not rise to the level of doctrine.

If one boils down the Latin doctrine of purgatory to its base one will find that the essentials of our two theologies are the same.

Admin

Dear John, one English translation on this subject that is available is "The Journey Beyond Death" that (used to be, anyway) available from Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville (N.Y.). This is an English translation from Russian and Slavonic by Archimandrite Panteleimon. This is a selection of a larger work, "Eternal Mysteries Beyond the Grave" also published by Holy Trinity.

"Journey Beyond the Grave" is a collection of three accounts of private revelation regarding the afterlife. The first of these is an account of the twenty torments after death revealed to the monk Gregory, disciple of the holy monk St. Basil the New who lived in the first half of the tenth century.

Gregory learned through his vision about the hour of death and the passage through twenty torments of a woman he called Theodora, who related her experience of these torments to Gregory in his vision.

Subdeacon Randolph, a sinner

Hello Ghazar, Administrator, and Subdeacon Randolph:

Thanks for your kind postings! Sorry, I used the Latin word "purgatory" just for brevity, and by it I meant to subsume the the Western idea and Eastern understanding as well. I have always said, as the Holy Father recently pointed out, that purgatory is not a place, but a state, and this especially because, unlike heaven and hell, there never were and never will be any bodies there, and it is a body that needs space. This state will one day end - certainly at least at the end of time it will cease to be, and there will be only heaven or hell.

Yes, Administrator,I liked your Eastern characterization of purgatory: "In the East this journey is often likened to as an ascent to the Father that lasts until the Final Judgment." In fact I have explained the Latin doctrine the same way, using the parable of the Prodigal Son: that son's purgatory consisted exactly in his agonizing approach to his Father. Though his Father was entirely forgiving and welcomed him back without reservations, his own memory of his sin provided his torments, which (paradoxically) grew worse the closer he got to his loving Father, and the purer he therefore became the closer he drew to that Father. The "flames" of purgatory that we Latins love to talk about are really nothing less than God's burning love for us; what other kind of flames could burn a soul anyway? I was looking for a corroboration for all this, and now you have provided it to me by giving the testimony of the East! Thank you.

Yes. I quite agree that the two traditions are essentially the same, that there is a state of purification after death, and that the souls of the departed can be helped by our prayers. My interest in the "Theotokos' Walk Through the Torments" also goes to another idea, viz., that the souls in purgation are not alone, but are visited sometimes by their angels and by the saints. It seems that for all we know, without our bodies (which provide us with the only powers of communication we can prove we have) after death we will be entirely incommunicado, left to our own spiritual powers, the intellect and the will, the memory and the imagination, unless God or the angels provide us with some power of telepathic communication. So, unless our incarceration is relieved by visits we will be completely alone: imagine this forced meditation on our own sins! No wonder it is called "the worm that dieth not".), I like the idea that in our poverty then we will be visited by some of our loved ones, especially Our Lady and the angel guardian that was so close to us in life. What do you as Easterners think of these ideas?

Regards,
John McAlpine

Well put John! Your reflections on what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls "The Final Purification" and what many Eastern Christians term "The Final Theosis" are profound.

You also present a fascinating question. I look forward to more discussion of the question you raise.

In Christ's Light,

Wm.

Mr. Mc Alpine,

I used to listen to a CD in Slavonic(I can't remember the name of it) while I cleaned and prepared our chapel for Liturgy.In the CD jacket it told that the Mother of God wished to see the tormented souls I think ?it said in hell. No one would show her but she finally asked her son and he granted her this. She was so move to pity that
1. She insisted that those in heaven the angels & saint pray for them.
2. That between Pascha & Pentecost they were given relief of their torment.

I wonder if that Chant CD had something to do with what you are talking about.

Nicky's Baba

Dear Mr. McAlpine,

Actually, we will have our bodies forever. Both the Catholic and Orthodox Church teach that the resurrected body of Jesus Christ will endure for eternity. The 2nd Person of the All-Holy Trinity will never be seperated from His body and soul. When He was conceived in the womb of the Theotokos, He chose to remain in that state forever so that we could be united to His deity. If he ever "removed" His body then we as humans would no longer be partakers of the Trinity and thus divine life. The humanity of Jesus is our only link to divine life.

Likewise, every human will be bodily resurrected at the Last Day, either to glory or perdition (depending on his or her choice). St Paul in 1 Corinthians and St John in the Revelation teach that there will be a new heaven and a new earth and that we will exist there forever in our resurrected and glorified bodies.

God has not called us to be Casper the friendly ghosts. He designed man to be body and soul and wishes us for to remain that way for eternity. Death is unnatural and is remedied by the bodily resurrection of Jesus, who is the firstfruits of resurrected humanity.

So yes we will have teeth, hair, eyelashes, and toenails for all eternity, just as our King and Priest Jesus Christ does.

Welcome to the board and thanks for the interesting thread.

yours in Christ,
Marshall

That�s sort of walking into a Chinese restaurant and ordering ravioli and expecting that the chef will know exactly what you are talking about.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1

Why would you want to limit the power and mercy of God? If we in this world are �surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses� it only makes sense that during the journey to heaven we will also be surrounded by these same witnesses. We cannot know exactly what that journey will be like but we know that we can communicate through prayer. Our prayers help those who have died and we are joined to them by their intercessions. In the Paschal Troparion we sing �Christ is risen from the dead, by death he conquered Death and to those in the graves he granted life�. Death has been trampled down. Death is no more. Nothing can destroy our relationship with one another in the communion of Saints. We will never be alone. God is always with us.

Hello Administrator and all:

Regarding my use of the term "purgatory," it seems that there is some kind of allergy to it around here! But there's no need for this, since we have already shown and admitted that the Western and the Eastern ideas are not essentially different (despite the Latin name) and I do not insist on more than the defined doctrine anyway.

By no means do I limit God's power or mercy! I know well that He is everywhere, and that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses as well.
But, . . . we can't see them or sense them, can we, because they're not detectable by our senses.

So what happens when we no longer have even our senses? How will they be detectable then? Certainly not by any power of ours. And that's my point: then we will be naturally incommunicado, UNLESS, as I said, unless God or the angels give us an ability to communicate. You say that we will pray, and of this I have no doubt, but prayer doesn't altogether satisfy our natural need for communication and fellowship. So, I think that this loneliness to come is a natural basis for our purgation. We may very well be, as it were, left to ourselves a bit to meditate and come to terms with our faults, just as those in prison here on earth are. But we will be visited, as it were, by our angels and the saints, especially those close to us in life. That's why I wondered about the Khozhdenije Bogorodicy po Mukam, the Theotokos' Walk Through the Torments.

Thanks for your attention.

Regards,
John

The Administrator wrote:
<<Why would you want to limit the power and mercy of God? .... it only makes sense that during the journey to heaven we will also be surrounded by these same witnesses. . . . we know that we can communicate through prayer. . . . We will never be alone. God is always with us. >>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello Nicky's Baba and all:

I think it might be the same thing! If not, it's still close enough to be in general what I'm looking for. Too bad you don't have the name.

I think the word "hell" is a mistranslation, though. I'm guessing that it must be the Russian/Slavonic word "ad", which is the Slavic form of the Greek "Hades". Since "Hades" is the Hebrew She'ol, meaning the underworld in general, this word "hell" in a modern English translation would be misleading. I think what we see here is the undeveloped Catholic doctrine of purgatory. It would make no sense to pray for those in hell who are eternally estranged from God and who are not united to us in charity, would it?

What say you all? Tahnks for the information.

Regards,

John McAlpine

Nicky's Baba wrote:
<<
I used to listen to a CD in Slavonic . . .In the CD jacket it told that the Mother of God wished to see the tormented souls I think ?it said in hell. No one would show her but she finally asked her son and he granted her this. She was so move to pity that
1. She insisted that those in heaven the angels & saint pray for them.
2. That between Pascha & Pentecost they were given relief of their torment.

I wonder if that Chant CD had something to do with what you are talking about.

>>

John,

Yes, there is a need to avoid the use of the term purgatory when discussing this issue with Eastern Christians. For us �purgatory� is a reference only to the Latin Catholic theological perspective and all it entails. It simply does not describe our theology and we have the right not to use the term in our theological language.

What you are asking, as a new member of our household, is for us to abandon our own theological language in favor of yours. You have walked into the Chinese restaurant I mentioned earlier and asked that you be served ravioli. The chef has told you that he does not make ravioli but that he has Chinese dumplings which have the same essentials but are prepared differently with different spices. You have said, �whatever, they�re really funny looking ravioli so I insist that you Chinese people start calling them ravioli in my presence�. You have come into an Eastern Christian internet community and told us not to speak as Eastern Christians because there is no need to and that we ought to speak as Latin Christians (as if Latin theology was somehow better than Byzantine theology). That is exactly what the Holy Father has asked Latin Catholics not to do.

Admin

Cannot resist the impulse to point out that the famous Boston area chef, Joyce Chen, made a fortune marketing pot-stickers as "Peking ravioli".

Dear John McAlpine,

"Purgatory" came into being in the West much later in time, around the 1200's.

It isn't really a question of what the East or West calls the same thing.

In fact, the East has a totally different view of where souls are following death and before the Second Coming of Christ.

At the Council of Florence, the Greeks were positively astounded that the Latins had developed the afterlife into "states" or "places."

One could go to hell, heaven, purgatory and some mentioned "limbo" for unbaptized infants.

And all this was foreign to the Greeks and indeed would have been foreign to the Eastern Fathers.

Purgatory is rooted in the medieval Latin notion regarding the forgiveness of sins.

While eternal punishment is remitted through confession and absolution, temporal punishment remains, as you know.

Penance and mortification is what can remit temporal punishment, as can indulgences.

Any temporal punishment (as well as venial sins) that are not remitted, must be suffered in purgatory after death.

That is a line of legalistic thinking that is terribly foreign to the East!

Spiritual exercises, prayer, fasting, good works etc. are things we engage in throughout our life on earth, until our dying breath, to acquire the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness.

This Spirit of Holiness transfigures our fallen nature, a fall that we suffered with Adam in Original Sin.

Penance is seen as a "medicine" not a "punishment" required to satisfy God's anger or whatever.

After death, we do not go to heaven or hell, but to their forecourts. We will only enter into either after the Second Coming of Christ when we will be reunited with our bodies.

We do not accept a "purgatorial fire" and at the Council of Florence the Latin Church did not require the Greeks to accept this.

Our prayer for the departed can help bring them closer to God.

But then again, Masses offered in honour of Saints also bring them joy in heaven and we pray also for the Mother of God and the Saints in every Liturgy as their relationship in God and to God is a dynamic one that will continue always in increasing depth and union.

Also, this is a part of the Latin eschatology and purgatory was never infallibly declared an article of faith by Rome. It is a theological and legalistic tradition of the West that has no place in Eastern eschatology.
Alex

Hello Alex:

I was amazed and tickled, by the way, that you know about King Kenneth. Are you part Scot, by chance! If you look up my clan in the authoritative books they will tell you that there is even an account that St. Patrick was of our clan: all the stories say he had a Roman father, but one says his name was Calpurn(ius), which gives one of our name's etymologies. On St. Patrick's day this story is worth something.

You say that "purgatory was never infallibly declared an article of faith by Rome". I'm not sure, though, what you mean by "purgatory", the name or the concept. The Latin term just means "cleansing" or "purification", so it's not so much a place as a state, as the pope has recently said. I don't think it is a place at all, since there are no bodies there, and it's only bodies that need space. With regard to the fate of most of us I can agree with your statement, "After death, we do not go to heaven or hell, but to their forecourts." Indeed, purgatory could then be the forecourt, the "mudroom" of heaven, which "nothing unclean" can enter.

But the Council of Trent did teach that there is a cleansing state and that the souls detained there can be helped by our suffrages: ". . . .purgatorium esse animasque ibi detentas fidelium suffragiis . . . iuvari."(Denz.983) The Councils of Lyons and Florence, the latter attended by the Greek hierarchy, also taught that there is a state of purification: "The souls of those who depart this life with true repentencs and a love of God, before they have rendered satisfaction for their trespasses and negligences by the worthy fruits of penance, are purified after death with the punishments of purification."

At the end of time this state of cleansing will cease, and there will be only heaven and hell. I disagree with you though, when you seem say that no one can go to heaven until the end of time/Second Coming. The angels and some human souls (all canonized saints) are there already, and the bodies of Our Lord and Our Lady (and anyone else whose body might also have been taken from this earth) are there as well. So it seems heaven must be a place? What do you think?

The Catholic Catechism cites Pope Benedict XII's dogmatic definition of 1336, Benedictus Deus (DS 1000; cf. LG 49.): By virtue of our apostolic authority, we define the following: According to the general disposition of God, the souls of all the saints... and other faithful who died after receiving Christ's holy Baptism (provided they were not in need of purification when they died,... or, if they then did need or will need some purification, when they have been purified after death,...) already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgement -- and this since the Ascension of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ into heaven -- have been, are and will be in heaven, in the heavenly Kingdom and celestial paradise with Christ, joined to the company of the holy angels. Since the Passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ,
these souls have seen and do see the divine essence with an intuitive vision, and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature.
I take this to be an infallible and irreversible Catholic teaching binding on all Catholics of East or West.

You insist that the Latins and "the East" have entirely different concepts on the afterlife, but other Easterners here disagree, so I am a bit confused. The objections you mention, viz., "state" versus "place", alleged Latin "legalism" versus Eastern "theosis(?)", "punishment" versus "medicine", etc., do not seem to be mutually opposed concepts, but rather supplementary concepts. "Limbo" was never more than a hypothesis thought necessary by many to preserve Our Lord's clear teaching that "unless one is baptized of water and the Holy Spirit he shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." You are right, the Church never made it a de fide teaching.

When you say that "'Purgatory' came into being in the West . . . around the 1200's" you are speaking of the clarification of the earlier and constant belief of both East and West. This belief is most easily shown by references in Scripture, esp. the Macchabees text, and the constant belief in prayers and suffrages for the dead that the Church in both East and West inherited from late Judaism and has never wavered on. For me this belief by the East shows an essential identity with the doctrine of purgatory. I can't see how prayers and suffrages for the dead cannot mean that these souls must be in a state where they need these prayers and suffrages, and such a state would be essentially the same as purgatory, however we embellish it, would it not?

I am curious that you say "And all this (i.e., the Western belief in purgatory, etc.)was foreign to the Greeks and indeed would have been foreign to the Eastern Fathers." I am wondering why you say only the Eastern fathers? Would not Western fathers be equally as authoritative for you in establishing your position?

You are right that the ecumenical councils of Lyons and Florence, out of respect for the Greeks, many of whose bishops attended and participated, did not teach that there is a fire, but only defined that there are some purifying punishments.

Thanks for your informative post.

John McAlpine