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How many of us still believe that there is a Purgatory? Raise your hand if you do. How many do not believe there’s a Purgatory? Raise your hand. What is Purgatory? That’s what I want to talk about today.

The notion of Purgatory comes from this word purgation. The word purgation is to purge us from all sin. That is what we hear about in the first reading, this refiner who sits before the fire, purging everything else except the silver. It’s a powerful image, the refiners fire. Yet we’re probably not familiar with it because not many of us have experienced this. However, I got to go down a fabulous journey in YouTube and learn all about refining silver. It’s fascinating.

What is beautiful is that the very phrase in the first reading, that the refiner sits by the fire as he’s refining. Watching it on YouTube was fascinating because they’ll start off with 20 pounds of material and out of this 20 pounds, at the very end, they will have 12 grams of silver. Just this tiny little bit of silver from 20 pounds of raw matter. 

What happens with that raw matter is that it is taken and broken into pieces. It is hammered until it is shattered into the smallest pieces that you can get. Then there is a fire that is started and in the middle of the fire is what’s called a Crucible. And the Crucible is a piece of pottery that will not heat so that it stays cool while everything else in it melts. Then they take all this broken down non-refined material and they place it in the Crucible and begin to fan the flame of fire. The refiner sits right there, and he watches as all of this turns into this molten lava, and you see it begin to see it kind of boil up. As it is getting hot, all the impurities begin to come to the surface; it’s called dross. What the refiner does is sit there and scoop the dross off the pure silver. It takes numerous times of firing and allowing this dross to come forward, but the refiner is continuously there keeping the fire going and taking away the dross. The dross would be all the different materials, all the different other metals that might be in there until the silver remains. 

Once the silver remains, the refiner knows when it is finished because he can see his reflection in the silver. It is a beautiful image for what purgation is and for what Purgatory is. 

God desires that we all become pure in this life. He wants to see His face in us in this world. The hope and the plan of God is that we become Saints right here on earth. Not all of us are probably at that point of complete purification in our lives, but Jesus sits with us constantly allowing us to be purified, continuously removing the dross from our lives. 

If you think about that big mass of Earth and all those other materials that are that are in there, it is like the sin that we carry. God wants to purify us from that so we can be pure and holy and good. 

If we don’t have that completed in this life, God is so merciful that He gives us this chance after we die, and that’s Purgatory. Pope Benedict said that purgatory is God’s last, greatest gift to us because it takes away all of that sin, all of those impurities, so that we can finally see God face to face and He can see His image and us. 

In the first reading, the refiners sit by the fire, purifying and refining. Then we hear in the second reading too, that Jesus undergoes this test so that He may be like us in all things but sin. Crucible is the thing that holds the metal while it’s being purified. Same beginning of the word as Crucifix. So, when Jesus was crucified, He went into the Crucible of suffering. As he suffered and died on the cross, He became one with our suffering. 

All of our lives there is suffering. Each one of us right now is probably suffering with something. One of the big questions of life is, “Why do we suffer? What purpose does my suffering have?” The primary purpose of suffering is that it purges us. Suffering is what puts us into the Crucible and when we are surrounded by those flames here on earth, the purification begins to happen, but Jesus is right there. He’s right there with you, sitting by the fire, allowing us to be purified, removing the dross. 

I want you to think about those two images. First, this huge clump of the 20 pounds of Earth that represents the sin. In each of us there is so much sin in our lives that needs to be removed. So, you have sin, but you also have the suffering. What is the suffering in your life right now? Can you realize that when God brings the two of those together there is a purgation that happens. There’s a purifying that happens. Our suffering is like the flames that cause us to melt into what God wants us to be. 

Not only does Jesus sit by the fire. There is a beautiful phrase that Simeon says to Mary in the Gospel today. He says to Mary, You yourself a sword shall pierce.” Why is her heart pierced? Because Mary sat right there by the fire. She stood right by Jesus as He was crucified, as He suffered and died. After He was taken from the cross, she would hold her dead son in her arms. She watched Him be crucified. She watched him be placed in the Crucible. She’s also there with each one of you. Loving you as we live this life. Constant purification is happening to us. The suffering brings about the purity that we need, and it helps us let go of our sin. Jesus is there the whole time. As the refiner sits by the fire, Jesus sits by you. Mary also sits with you. 

As we celebrate this Eucharist, and we come forward and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord into us, we are entering into that fire. We are receiving that very Crucible into us. Suffering is not pointless. Your suffering is a very part of the process of purification. So, we pray that we may experience in this life, that we may become pure and good and holy before our God, but also knowing that doesn’t happen. He’s going to give us another chance to take away our sins, to be purged before we enter eternal life.