Baptism
Among the means of avoiding
Purgatory, pride of place must be given to those which, directly or indirectly,
draw their efficacy from the Sacraments instituted by Christ.
The first of the Sacraments,
Baptism, effaces all sin and all punishment due to sin. Thus, baptized infants
who die before attaining the use of reason, and adult neophytes who die so soon
after Baptism that they have not committed the least sin, will not know
Purgatory but will pass straight to Heaven.
Knowing this sovereign power of
Baptism and affrighted by the awful penances imposed by the early Church for
sins committed after its reception, many catechumens of the first centuries put
off their Baptism as long as possible. They waited almost till the moment of
death. Against such a gross exploitation of the divine mercy, the Fathers of
the Church often protested in their homilies. There is a remarkable similarity
between the discourses which they directed against such laggards and those
which we hear today directed against the faithful who attempt to defer their
confession or their reception of Extreme Unction till the last minute. In both,
the reasoning put forward is almost the same.
Today, in the mission countries,
where catechumens abound, Baptism can send directly to Heaven a certain number
of privileged souls. Surprised by mortal sickness before having finished their
instruction, they receive the Sacrament in extremis with the right
dispositions and their souls appear before the Sovereign Judge in all the
purity of baptismal innocence. For them, there is no Purgatory.
Those who have kept themselves from
all mortal sin after their Baptism, and come to the end of their lives with the
simple faults and the sins of human frailty, may very well escape Purgatory,
because the punishment incurred by the faults in light and can easily be set
aside by the reception of the Sacraments, the gaining of indulgences, and by
acts of the love of God. (Martin Jugie, The Truth About Purgatory and The
Means to Avoid it [Westminster, Ma.: Newman Press, 1949; repr., Manchester,
N.H.: Sophia Institute Press, 2022], 149-50)
