Purgatory

[Maccabeus]

I believe in Purgatory etc, as there is solid biblical support for this, it all makes sense[b][i] but if we are so much responsible for our own salvation than why did Jesus really have to die?[/i][/b] How does it all work together?

[cappie]

I'm not too sure this helps. I think the phrase Grace does not cancel out justice takes into account Christ's saving death and our duty to "work out our salvation in fear and trembling" Philippians [b]2:12[/b]

From the encyclical “Spe Salvi” of November 30, 2007

God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope. And in his justice there is also grace. This we know by turning our gaze to the crucified and risen Christ. Both these things – justice and grace – must be seen in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel “The Brothers Karamazov.”

Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened. [...] In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (cf. Lk 16:19-31), Jesus admonishes us through the image of a soul destroyed by arrogance and opulence, who has created an impassable chasm between himself and the poor man; the chasm of being trapped within material pleasures; the chasm of forgetting the other, of incapacity to love, which then becomes a burning and unquenchable thirst. We must note that in this parable Jesus is not referring to the final destiny after the Last Judgement, but is taking up a notion found, inter alia, in early Judaism, namely that of an intermediate state between death and resurrection, a state in which the final sentence is yet to be pronounced.