The Christian Faith
This section of the website provides more extended teaching on larger content areas, such as the Creed and the Sacraments. It begins with Introduction·to the Christian Faith. More content will be added in due course.
The section entitled Short Talks comprises stand-alone talks and articles on different aspects of the Christian Faith, including the teaching of Jesus, the seasons of the Church’s Year and Feasts and Festivals.·
The Church in Purgatory
This life
This life is something like going to school. You go to school in order to prepare you for your life in the world when your schooldays are over. In school you learn to become a good citizen. In the same way, we are in this world in order to prepare for our life in the next world when this earthly life is over. We have to learn here how to be good citizens of Heaven.
The Church in Heaven
Heaven
Faithful Christians, when they die, go to Purgatory. While we are there our souls will little by little become more healthy and pure, until at last we are fit to live with God in Heaven. Then, when the end of the world comes, we shall be given new spiritual bodies, something like the body of Jesus when he appeared to the disciples on Easter Day, after he had risen from the dead.
The Communion of Saints
Saints
The word ‘saint’ comes from the Latin word ‘sanctus’ which means ‘holy’ and so, when we talk about the saints, we usually mean those holy people who are now in Heaven, such as St Peter or St Catharine.
The word at one time, however, just meant faithful members of the Church who were trying to become holy, and that is the sense in which St Paul uses the word in the New Testament. Thus he begins his letter to the Church people in the city of Ephesus with the words, “To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus” (NRSV, Ephesians 1:1).