Eschatological Notes

We believe in the Church Expectant, Paradise, or the Intermediate State, a state between death and glorification in which the Holy Souls of the Faithful Departed continue to grow in God's holiness and love, to be perfected and transfigured by grace. The work of sanctification begun in our Baptism continues after death, as we enter a place of refreshment, light and peace, in which the Holy Spirit cleanses, purges and purifies our souls to make them more Christ-like in anticipation of their reunion with our glorified bodies in the General Resurrection.The Holy Ghost continues to heal, forgive and divinise us after death by the fire of His love, not in punishment, but in mercy and grace. God calls us to a sweet repose and holy progress in the Life of the World to Come. The Holy Dead continue the process of deification and glorification begun in Baptism and the sacramental life on earth, in which we are more closely conformed to Christ and transformed into the Image and Likeness of God. The Intermediate State is the Larger Life in which we continually grow in God's love and service. The Image of God in man by nature is perfectly restored and repaired and the Likeness to God, virtue, holiness, is increased and intensified unto the Day of Jesus Christ. For these reasons we pray for the Faithful Departed, as they evolve and develop into the full stature of Christ (S. Luke 16.19-31, 23.42-43, Ephesians 4.8-10, II Timothy 1.16-18, I S. Peter 3.18-22, 4.6, Revelation 6.9-11). Saint Gregory of Nyssa teaches we shall eternally grow and develop into the life of God in the land of light and joy in the fellowship of the Saints, as we go from strength to strength and glory to glory, for God is infinite and we are finite beings graced to enter into communion with an infinite Communion of Persons.

Like the Eastern Orthodox, since we are the Orthodox Church of the West, we do not believe in a doctrine of expiation-purgatory, which holds that man must pay after death the penalty due to the committing of sins in this life. Many Western Catholics hold there is a temporal punishment due for sins which must be exacted either in this life or in 'purgatory'. Hence the peculiar medieval doctrine of fire-purgatory as punishment, expiation or penalty, condemned by the Anglican Article of Religion XXII. There is a false doctrine of 'purgatory' and a true biblical and orthodox doctrine of 'purgatory', just as there is a false doctrine of pardons, worshipping, adoration, images and relics, and there is a true biblical and patristic doctrine of pardons, worshipping, adoration, images and relics. The things in themselves are obviously not condemned (for who would condemn, for example, the biblical doctrines of worship, adoration or pardon) but only the abuses and false understandings of the same. The penalty due for sins, the temporal punishment, was borne and redeemed by Our Lord on the Cross of Calvary. Paradise is only the extension of God's ongoing work of sanctification and divinisation, not a form of torture inflicted on man for sin. Paradise, most ironically, may indeed involve pain and suffering, and if it does, it is the pain generated from the sense of personal guilt for sin experienced in the light of God's merciful pardon, and the consequent suffering which arises as we are purified and healed by the fire of the Holy Ghost, a fire which burns and cleanses out of us all that does not belong to God and makes us clean and whole. 'Our God is a consuming fire' (Hebrews 12.29, I Corinthians 3.13-15). Such a state is not unlike our sanctification in this world. Healing sometimes hurts; real growth sometimes hurts; the wounds of sin are finally cured in the Intermediate State. Anyone who has ever had a bandaged sore knows how the wound itches and burns as it heals. The Intermediate State is sola gratia, only grace. In it, the grace of God soothes and caresses as it simultaneously washes and mends. The process unleashed by God's sanctifying love may hurt in this life and in the next, but if it hurts, it only hurts because it works, and works to our ultimate transformation. Thus the refreshment, light, peace and joy of Paradise serve as a comforting and remedial balm for the Holy Souls, and in no way contradict the 'growing pains' likely associated with the spiritual maturity and change brought about by God's grace in the nearer presence of the Lord Jesus before the Resurrection. In no sense does 'purgatory' exist as a temporary or miniature hell, as Saint Thomas Aquinas conjectured, in which men are subjected to punishment for sins. Paradise is fuller communion with God and thus God's life and power, the Love of God which burns on our souls to refine them and make them holy.

The Church is the Communion of Saints, and thus the Holy Dead, the Faithful Departed, and the Saints reigning with Christ in the Church Triumphant, pray for us in communion with us as we in turn pray for them. At the Last Day, all will be raised and judged, and given new bodies like unto Christ's glorious risen Body, and God will be all in all (S. John 5.25-29, S. Matthew 25).