Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later

There was an old television commercial built around a wonderfully simple warning: “You can pay me now, or pay me later.” The mechanic was talking about preventive maintenance. Spend a little now and avoid a much larger repair later. Ignore what needs attention today, and eventually the neglected problem will demand attention on its own terms.

Some theology may be hiding under the hood.

The analogy has limits. We cannot buy Heaven with suffering, penance, good works, or religious discipline. Salvation is God’s gift. Christ has accomplished what we could never accomplish for ourselves, and no one can earn the initial grace of forgiveness and justification. But grace does not leave us exactly as it finds us. God intends not merely to forgive us, but to transform us.

And transformation requires purification. That purification can begin now. Whatever remains unfinished at death must be completed in those who die in God’s friendship.

Catholic teaching on Purgatory is sometimes reduced to punishment after death, as though Heaven has an unpleasant waiting room for people whose spiritual paperwork remains incomplete. Purgatory is the final purification of those who die in God’s grace and friendship but are not yet perfectly purified. They are saved. Their destination is certain. But something within them still requires cleansing before they can enter the perfect communion of Heaven. Purgatory is not a second chance to repent after death.

Even forgiven sin can leave unhealthy attachments and temporal punishment that require purification. The Church therefore calls us to prayer, penance, works of mercy, and the patient acceptance of trials. Confession forgives our sins; purification heals the disorder they leave behind. The two belong together.

Why wait for Purgatory to do the purifying that grace is offering to do now?

We tend to imagine purification in dramatic terms. We think of great saints, severe penances, heroic sacrifices, persecution, mystical darkness, or extraordinary suffering. Most of us will encounter purification in much smaller denominations.

An interruption. A disappointment. A delay. A duty we did not choose. A person who tests our patience. A desire we cannot satisfy. A criticism we do not think we deserve. A chore that has to be done again. A prayer we do not feel like praying. A Mass we attend when we would rather stay home. A confession that requires us to say aloud what pride would prefer to keep hidden.

Ordinary life produces these opportunities by the dozen. We simply do not call them purification. We call them aggravations.

Yet what makes an aggravation so aggravating? Usually something has crossed our will. We wanted one thing and received another. We wanted quiet and got an interruption. We wanted recognition and someone else received the credit. We wanted comfort and encountered inconvenience. We wanted our schedule and got somebody else's need. We wanted to speak and prudence told us to remain silent.

Again and again, ordinary life places our will against reality and asks a simple question: Must everything go my way for me to remain charitable?

Consider how many opportunities for purification appear in an ordinary Catholic day. You get out of bed to pray when another twenty minutes of sleep would be more pleasant. You go to Mass when you are tired. You remain patient with the person who has told you the same story five times. You perform a household duty that nobody notices. You care for someone whose needs do not fit conveniently into your schedule. You resist the cutting response that formed instantly in your mind.

You pray for someone you do not particularly like. You forgive someone who has never offered the apology you believe you deserve. You fast when food is within reach. You decline a purchase because desire has begun to look suspiciously like attachment. You give without receiving credit. You listen instead of waiting for your opportunity to speak. You accept correction without immediately opening the defense case of Me v. Everybody Else.

You turn away from the temptation that nobody else would ever know you entertained. You finish the duty in front of you before doing the thing you would rather be doing. None of this looks especially mystical. That may be precisely why we miss it.

Much of purification means detaching from self-will. Pride must lose something. Appetite must be denied something. Vanity must go unnoticed. Impatience must wait. Resentment must surrender its claim. Selfishness must yield its seat. These are small deaths. And Christianity has always had a great deal to say about dying before we die.

Christ tells us to take up our cross. The saints speak constantly of mortification, detachment, self-denial, surrender, and conformity to the will of God. None of this means that suffering is good merely because it hurts. Christianity is not a cult of misery. Its value lies in what grace can accomplish when we unite our suffering to Christ’s. Seeking relief or correcting an injustice does not prevent us from offering the suffering we endure along the way.

This is where the Morning Offering becomes far more important than its few familiar words might suggest. A Catholic who begins the day with the Morning Offering places before God the day's prayers, works, joys, and sufferings before knowing what most of them will be. That is remarkable.

We offer the interruption before the telephone rings. We offer the disappointment before the news arrives. We offer the duty before someone asks us to perform it. We offer the pain before the joint begins to ache. We offer the encounter with a difficult person before that person appears. We offer the sacrifice before we know what will be sacrificed.

The Morning Offering gives us an answer to the day’s argument before the day begins. It says, in effect: Whatever comes today, let grace use it.

That does not mean we will enjoy everything that follows. Offering suffering does not require pretending suffering is pleasant. Patience does not mean irritation never appears. Courage does not mean fear vanishes. Charity does not mean difficult people suddenly become delightful. It means the difficulty does not get the final word. Grace does.

There is an important distinction here. Inconvenience does not automatically make us holy, and suffering does not purchase Heaven. Yet good works performed in God’s grace and animated by charity have real merit. God freely enables our cooperation with Christ and rewards the love His grace makes possible. Grace comes first. Our response follows. But our response matters.

God does not force holiness upon us. He invites our cooperation. Every act of patience can loosen impatience's grip. Every act of humility can weaken pride. Every act of generosity can detach us from possessions. Every act of forgiveness can weaken resentment. Every accepted duty can diminish the tyranny of self-will.

Little by little, the soul becomes more capable of saying what Christ said perfectly: Thy will be done. Perhaps that is one way to understand purification during this life. In the duties He gives us and the trials He permits, God offers opportunities to prefer His will over ours. Some are enormous. Most are not.

The spiritual danger lies in waiting for dramatic opportunities while rejecting the ordinary ones. We may imagine that if persecution came, we would bravely suffer for Christ, while becoming furious because someone took our parking place. We imagine martyrdom and cannot tolerate inconvenience. We contemplate heroic sanctity while complaining about the temperature in church.

God may be less interested in the imaginary cross we believe we would carry magnificently someday than in the small wooden one lying across today's schedule.

That brings us back to Purgatory. If Heaven is perfect communion with God, then nothing opposed to that communion can remain. Every disorder must finally disappear. Every attachment that competes with God must be surrendered. Every stain must be cleansed. Every crooked affection must be straightened. For those who die in His friendship, God will complete whatever purification remains. Why refuse the grace He offers to accomplish that work now?

“Pay me now or pay me later” is admittedly imperfect theology. Grace is not for sale, suffering is not currency, and Heaven cannot be purchased. But as an analogy for neglected purification, the old commercial makes its point.

Ignore the maintenance now and the problem does not disappear. Neither does attachment. Neither does pride. Neither does selfishness. Neither does resentment simply because we have learned to live comfortably beside it.

Perhaps everyday inconveniences are some of God’s most overlooked offers of purification. And perhaps we decline far too many of them.

Tomorrow morning the opportunities begin again. Before they arrive, make the Morning Offering. Give God the prayers, the works, the joys, and the sufferings. Then when the first irritation arrives—and it probably will before breakfast—remember what you already did with it. You offered it. Let God use it.

Do not wait for Purgatory to do the purifying that grace is offering to do now.

Pay attention now. Do not leave your purification until later.