Bulletin Q&A Article, published 4-9-23:
At the end of the world, will there be a battle between Jesus and evil? Or will he just come to save us and he’s already won the battle? Will there still be purgatory for people who aren’t quite ready for Heaven when that time comes?
Happy Easter everyone! Christ has conquered death and we have the hope of our resurrections when He returns on the Last Day and a promise of a new heaven and a new earth. What exactly will happen on that day is not exactly clear, but the Bible gives us many hints and the Church gives us a better understanding.
We know that before it happens that there will be a time of apostasy and lawlessness. In the Catechism we read: “Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh” (CCC #675).
Jesus will put an end to the lawless one, not with a great battle, but with His mere presence and the breath of His mouth: “then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord [Jesus] will kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of his coming” (2 Thes. 2:8).
With regard to Purgatory, I turn to speculation because I could not find this question addressed anywhere. We must first remember that time is an earthly concept. When Jesus comes again it will be the End of Time. We are faced with many questions. Does time exist in Purgatory, or in the eternity of Heaven? Does the purgation, purification, and punishment for sins take place in an instant of earthly time? We don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t seem that there will there be night and day in the new Heaven and the new earth. So what would it mean to spend time in Purgatory at that point? We hear in scriptures that when Jesus comes again, that those who have already died will rise first: “For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thes. 4:16-17). At the final judgement, those who have died previously will have received their particular judgements and their final destination, Heaven or Hell, is already determined. What about those going to Heaven but still in Purgatory? And those who are still living when Jesus returns will meet Him to receive their judgement. And some of those going to Heaven might still need to pass through Purgatory for purification as well. In the absence of any meaning to the concept of time, it would seem reasonable to me that any remaining purgation that is needed could occur, essentially instantaneously, concurrent with the Final Judgement.