How Christ refers to Purgatory in his warning about sinful anger
In his treatment of the Fifth Commandment, Christ’s image of prison implies not necesaarily Hell, but Purgatory—a warning that we must pay the price of rejecting grace.
In his treatment of the Fifth Commandment, Christ’s image of prison implies not necessarily Hell, but Purgatory—a warning that we must pay the price of rejecting grace.
Editor’s Notes
In this section, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ’s warning of prison teaches the reality of purgatory and the urgency of penance
That holy fear rightly motivates immediate reconciliation with conscience, neighbour, and God
Why the pain of purgatory surpasses earthly penance, and yet still falls short of Hell
For more context on this section, and its place in the Gospel and the Liturgy, see the previous part.
See also here:
The Gospel Law as to Anger
The Sermon on the Mount (To the End of the Lord’s Prayer)
Chapter V
St Matt. vi. 20-30
Story of the Gospels, § 32
Burns and Oates, London, 1878
What Christ teaches about contempt, anger, and judgement of others
How Christ refers to Purgatory in his warning about sinful anger
Reference to Purgatory
Christians will naturally see in the language of our Lord a reference to the justice of God as exercised in particular in the prison of Purgatory.
For, in the first place, our Lord might have left the parable sufficiently complete for the general doctrine, irrespective of Purgatory, if He had not gone on to add the solemn words about the prison, and the severe and exact payment which would there be insisted upon. His words are never superfluous or without a special design, and it certainly seems most reverential to Him to suppose that He has added this last clause with a special reference to the severe expiations of Purgatory, which contrast so wonderfully, in their very severity, with the gentle, easy terms upon which penance may be done in this life.
Again, as He did not scruple in His allotment of the punishments for the various grades of the sin of anger to speak of Hell fire, even though in the earlier members of the sentence He had taken the imagery from the punishments inflicted by human tribunals, so it may be supposed that if in this parable He had intended to speak of the torments of Hell He would have used a more direct way of introducing them than the image of the prison.
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