Year A-Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on one detail that comes from the Gospel reading for the 6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A, which, in its long version, is taken from Matthew 5:17-37. The key detail that’s relevant for apologetics is Jesus’ statement that the individual will “be put in prison” and “will never get out till [he has] paid the last penny.” As we argue in this episode, this “prison” is a reference to purgatory.
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Hey everyone,
Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
I’m Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
In this episode, we’re going spend our time on one detail that comes from the Gospel reading, which, in its long version, is taken from Matthew 5:17-37. I’m not going to read the whole passage. Rather, I’m only going to read verses 21-26, which is the part of the passage that’s relevant for our purposes here:
21 “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; 26 truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny.
The key detail that’s relevant for apologetics is Jesus’ statement that the individual will “be put in prison” and “will never get out till [he has] paid the last penny.” As I argue in my book Purgatory is for Real: Good News About the Afterlife for those Who Aren’t Perfect Yet, this “prison” is a reference to purgatory.
To begin, we note that there is an accuser, and that the accused must reconcile with the accuser lest he be justly thrown into prison, suggests that some wrong has been done by the accused.
And since Jesus speaks of the accused being thrown into prison on account of that wrongdoing and having to pay a debt in order to get out, it follows that Jesus teaches that the offender has to pay for his sins, whatever form that payment may take.
But is Jesus referring to a place of repayment only in this life, or is he referring to repayment in the next, which also has implications for earthly affairs? We argue for the latter.
Anyone who reads the Gospels knows that Jesus likes to teach with parables. In those parables, he uses examples from everyday life and common human experience to teach how we are to walk justly in this life, to be sure, but always with our eternal destination in mind. In fact, the next life takes definitive priority in Jesus’ teaching.
Consider, for example, the Parable of the Wedding Feast in Luke 14:7-14. There, Jesus is not only teaching us about how to be humble when we’re invited to dine at table with honorable people, but primarily about that day when we stand before Christ in judgment.
Another example is the Parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13. Jesus isn’t restricting his teaching to being prepared for unexpected events in this life, although that’s part of it. Rather, his ultimate lesson is for us to be prepared for his coming in judgment, whether that’s at the end of our lives or at the end of time.
Given this pedagogy of Jesus, it’s not reasonable for us to read his use of a this-world example of judgment and payment of debts in Matthew 5:25-26 as applying to this life alone. On the contrary, we have every reason to think he’s trying to teach us something about the judgment that matters most: our judgment at death.
Not only does Jesus’ general pedagogy give us reason to think he’s talking about afterlife issues, but there’s also evidence in the immediate and wider context of the passage that gives grounds for a postmortem interpretation.
We can start with the Greek word for “prison,” phulake.[i] It’s used to refer to a physical prison throughout the Bible. But St. Peter does use it for a postmortem prison in 1 Peter 3:19, where he describes the “prison” in which the Old Testament righteous souls were kept before Jesus’ ascension and that which Jesus visited during the separation of his soul and body in death.
By itself, the use of phulake doesn’t do much to support an afterlife interpretation, since it’s used both ways in the Bible: this life and the afterlife. But when this detail is combined with the context of Matthew 5:25, which we argue below refers to the afterlife, it becomes reasonable to conclude that its use here is within the vein of the Christian tradition found in 1 Peter 3:19.
The first contextual detail that supports a postmortem interpretation is Jesus’ teaching about judgment:
You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire (vv.21-22).
Jesus’ reference to the individual being judged worthy of hellfire suggests that Jesus is talking not only about earthly judgments, but primarily about afterlife judgment. The authority to judge someone worthy of hellfire belongs to no judge except God, since God alone has access to the inner movements of the heart (2 Chron. 6:30).
The motif of judgment is also found within the wider context of Matthew 5, and it doesn’t involve judgments made by earthly judges. Rather, it involves divine judgment.
For example, in Matthew 7:21, Jesus warns, “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” He goes on in verses 22-23 to talk about rejecting evildoers “on the day,” the Day of Judgment. See also Matthew 10:15, 11:22,24, and 12:36-37.
Given that Matthew 5:22 speaks of judgment rendered by God, and that the wider subsequent context of Matthew 5 has several references to God rendering judgment on the “Day of Judgment,” it’s reasonable to conclude that the “judge” spoken of in Matthew 5:25-26 refers to God, who will render judgment on the Day of Judgment for each soul.
And since judgment comes after death (Heb. 9:27), we have good reason to think this prison into which the judge casts the wrongdoer refers to a postmortem prison where payment for sins are made.
This motif of judgment provides a rationale as to why the context involves things that pertain to the afterlife and our eternal salvation. For example, Jesus speaks of the kingdom of heaven as our ultimate goal in the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-12). Jesus reveals that it’s possible to be guilty of sin yet still be a citizen of his kingdom, which means there’s such a thing as venial sin (Matt. 5:19). Jesus teaches that our righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees if we want to go to heaven (Matt. 5:20). Jesus teaches about the rewards of heaven for acts of piety (Matt. 6:1). Jesus teaches about “treasures in heaven” (Matt. 6:19).
It would be odd for Jesus to give teachings about the afterlife and our eternal salvation immediately before and after Matthew 5:25-26 but have Matthew 5:25-26 refer only to something that pertains to this life.
Therefore, Jesus’ teaching about judgment and paying debts applies not only to this life. It also applies to next.
Our Protestant friend might object, “Just because it’s a place of repayment after death doesn’t mean it’s purgatory. It could be hell.” There are three reasons to not interpret this “prison” as an everlasting prison.
First, the “prison” in 1 Peter 3:19 is a temporary holding place for the righteous souls there. If Matthew is using phulake in the same sense in Matthew 5:25, which it seems he is, then it would follow that the prison Jesus speaks of is a temporary holding place as well.
Second, the natural reading of Jesus’ statement is that the person who’s being put in the prison can eventually get out, just as a debtor would in the ancient world when he pays all his debt. Notice Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you pay the last penny.”
A possible counter is that Jesus’ statement, “until you pay the last penny,” could mean that the individual will forever pay his debt. The use of the word “until” doesn’t necessarily mean that his payment will eventually come to an end. For example, we don’t say Christ will eventually stop reigning over his enemies just because Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:25, “Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.”
It’s true that the word “until” doesn’t necessarily prove that the debt is payable. It could refer to an eternal paying of an unpayable debt. But such a reading would further require evidence to override the natural meaning of Jesus’ words: once the debtor pays his debt, he can get out of the prison.
Take, for example, the debt owed by the wicked servant in Matthew 18:23-35. The servant in the parable owed the king “ten thousand talents” (v. 24). A talent of silver was equivalent to 6,000 denarii.[ii] One denarius typically was worth a day’s wage. So a single “talent” is worth about 16.4 years of daily wages.
If the servant in the parable owed 10,000 talents, then he owed about 60 million denarii, which is equivalent to about 164,000 years of daily wages. In other words, he owed a debt he could never pay—and not just that he couldn’t in fact pay it off in this life, but that the debt wasn’t payable in principle. That’s the message.
According to the narrative, the king mercifully forgave the servant’s debt. But because the servant didn’t show the same mercy to those who owed him, the king handed the wicked servant over to the jailers “till he should pay all his debt” (Matt. 18:34). Given that it would have been impossible for the servant to pay back ten thousand talents, which according to late Anglican New Testament scholar R.T. France is like saying he owed “zillions,”[iii] and the fact that Jesus’ parables are meant to teach us things with our eternal destination in mind, the “prison” most likely represents hell. Hell is the only state of existence in the afterlife that matches up with a soul having an eternal debt owed and thus an eternal payment of that debt.
Notice that there is evidence in the text itself to suggest that the debt is unpayable, thereby revealing that the prison is not temporary but everlasting. This stands in stark contrast to the debt mentioned in Matthew 5:25-26. There is nothing to suggest that the debt is unpayable. Thus, there is nothing to suggest that the prison is everlasting.
Another stark contrast with Matthew 18 is Jesus’ emphasis on paying the last “last penny.” The Greek word for “penny” is kondrantes, which was worth less than two percent of a day’s wage for a first-century agricultural laborer. Some have suggested that this suggest the debt for the offense is payable, and thus a temporary punishment. For example, St. Jerome writes, “A farthing [penny] is a coin containing two mites. What he says then is, ‘Thou shalt not go forth thence till thou hast paid for the smallest sins.’”[iv]
Given that Jesus speaks of paying the debt without any evidence that the debt is unpayable, like in Matthew 18, and that there is an emphasis on the kondrantes, unlike in Matthew 18, it’s reasonable to conclude that Jesus is referring to a temporary postmortem prison.
Now, someone might suggest that when Jesus speaks of paying off debts in Matthew 5:26 and Matthew 18:34, all he means is that God will see to it that every sin is accounted for.
But this alternative reading fails to consider that God accounts for every sin (down to the last one) for souls in both purgatory and hell. It’s precisely this divine accounting that determines whether a soul ends up in hell or in purgatory.
Therefore, we can affirm that God accounts for every sin (down to the last one) of the soul that’s thrown into the prison spoken of in Matthew 25:26 and still conclude it’s a temporary punishment. God’s account for sin is not the primary issue in these parables. It’s whether the debt is payable or not.
There’s one last thing to consider when interpreting this passage. It was common Jewish belief shortly before the time of Christ that souls in the afterlife were in fact released from the effects of sin. This is supported by 2 Maccabees 12:38-45, where Judas Maccabeus and his soldiers pray that the sins of their fallen comrades would be remitted. Given this Jewish theological milieu, Matthew’s Jewish audience would have been very familiar with the idea of a postmortem temporary prison where sins are paid for. Such a milieu provides further reason to think that Jesus intended this postmortem prison to be temporary, especially when there is nothing in the text to suggest otherwise.
Well, that does it for this episode of The Sunday Catholic Word.
We’re now equipped with some strategies for arguing in support of the doctrine of purgatory from Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 5:25-26.
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I hope that you have a great 6th Sunday of ordinary time.
[i] See Ratzinger, Eschatology, 223.
[ii] See R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publication Co., 2007), 706.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] St. Jerome, in St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels: Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Matthew, Vol. 1, ed. J.H. Newman (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1841), 183; emphasis added.