The state of grace: baptismal union with God, a continued friendship and relationship; renunciation of serious evil; persistent effort to overcome personal sin; immersion in a communal network of relationships that inspire, encourage, correct and hold accountable.
The state of sin: separation from God by deliberate and free consent to serious sin; a state of isolation, loneliness, resentment, disbelief and despair.
It's pretty binary, our Catholic faith: God or Satan, heaven or hell, sin or grace! The state of grace is pretty graphic in its stronger forms: think of Mother Theresa, John Paul II or any of the great saints! Constant communion with God; effortless acts of generosity, heroism and mercy; fluid forgiveness of the enemy; total trust and surrender; invincible inner peace and strength; eagerness to repent of any wrong-doing and make amends; equanimity in the face of torture and death. The state of sin, when robust, is equally striking: deliberate murderers, drug dealing with children, sexual trafficking of underage girls or boys, torturers, and such. One in the state of sin is already in hell, alone and desolate. One in the state of grace is already in heaven, but with more or less purgatory as there are still sins to be repented and suffering to undergo as part of life's journey.
The problem is that life as we encounter it is not so lucid and bipolar! Most people around us are not noticeably in heaven or in hell; are not in joyous freedom nor in total bondage. They are confusing, complicated, dense combinations of good and bad. They are caught in compulsions, error, emotionally wounds, mimetic contagion, moral confusion, and spiritual blindness; even as they are capable of empathy, gratitude, generosity, contrition, brutal honesty and even heroism. They are wonderful one minute and horrible the next! So...where are they: in the state of grace or of sin?
Here is where the idea of "limbo" could be helpful. It seems that many if not most are in some kind of limbo: neither desolate nor beatific; in constant flux; volatile; unstable in the good and the bad. "Limbo" in the popular, not theological sense, indicates a state of neutrality, of waiting, of inertia. The traditional Catholic understanding of limbo was the place for unbaptized infants who remain in the state of sin and so cannot enter heaven but have not sinned personally and therefore don't deserve the punishment of damnation. At best it is a place of neutrality, without pain or delight; at worst it is a section of hell but without the torture involved. The Church never officially taught this doctrine; it was an opinion advanced and widely accepted. The idea has been held in contempt in Catholic theology since at least the Vatican Council almost 60 years ago. But it hasn't been clearly renounced by the official Magisterium. Official and popular theology commend such infants to the Mercy of God with much hope but no kind of certainty.
My proposal is to refurbish the concept to explain the condition of many souls in this life: an unstable mixture of sin and grace. It would contrast sharply with the traditional limbo which is permanent, unchanging and eternal. This-life-limbo is highly unstable: alternating violently and unpredictably between good and evil. This-worldly-souls-in-limbo are the scene of a colossal spiritual battle between the forces of grace and those of sin; they are in a constant state of tension and conflict; now moving towards God and then away, but always in movement, never at rest. They are "in play." They are in general on the "broad path" that leads to perdition; but they are also the arena where God's grace is at work in deep, hidden, mysterious ways. Similar to the souls in the traditional limbo, many of our contemporaries have a certain innocence: they really don't know what they are doing. They are following the herd and their own passions and seem not to be operating out of deliberation and freedom and so are stuck in a "pre-moral" fog of ignorance, illusion and low-or-no-culpability.
Consider a typical couple that approaches a priest for sacramental marriage. They have been contracepting and co-habitating for years and think nothing of it. They really are clueless! As they approach the sacrament, are they in a state of grace or a state of sin? They are seeking the commitment and sacrament so grace is at work; but they have been mutually violating each other for a long time. That is not nothing to a Catholic priest. We are not to judge another's soul; we leave that to God. But the priest is responsible to evaluate the readiness for the sacrament; to fail in this would be sacrilege. The conservative pastor will see immediately that they are "living in sin" and require abstinence and risk chasing them away from the Church. The liberal will tiptoe gingerly and inoffensively, suggesting pre-marital continence as an "ideal" but making them feel perfectly comfortable and risking presumption and sacrilege. A third alternative: if there is recognition that the couple is in the state of limbo, there may be greater prudence, patience and appropriate rigor in leading the couple gently, but firmly, out of their darkness and confusion. This revived doctrine of limbo has rich pastoral potentialities.
We find a striking image of this reality of "limbo" in Lord of the Ring: before the final battle with the forces of Sauron, Aragorn goes through the Dark Door into the Haunted Mountains where he and his comrades are engulfed in an infernal darkness and encounter the Paths of the Dead. These unliving-undead-ghosts are in some stage of hell-on-earth. With breathtaking courage, Aragorn unveils his identity as The King and calls them back to the vow they had made to his ancestor and then broken with such horrid consequences. Miraculously, they respond to his challenge; prove to be the needed reinforcements to achieve his victory; and are rewarded by restoration to life. These "Dead" are an image of those in this life who are in limbo: they are not really alive in God's grace, but they are not yet eternally damned. But they are largely bereft of hope, vigor, vitality or joy. They are restored by renewal of their vow to the King: is this not a marvelous image of so many today who have lost their baptismal communion with the true King.
And so we see that in this world a few of us are already deeply in heaven and some (hopefully fewer still) deep into hell. But most of us are in purgatory or limbo: purgatory understood here as the entry way to heaven in which we are cleansed of sin by suffering and repentance; limbo understood here as an entry to hell, dark and disordered but less than fully aware and deliberate.
Jesus promised the Church that "the gates of hell would not prevail." My friend Tim pointed out we tend to imagine the Church resisting the powers of hell; but Jesus is saying here that the Church is the aggressor in attacking hell, to rescue souls, and that the defensive gates of hell shall not prevail. This is Balthasar and Speyr's doctrine of the descent into hell. We are to push with Aragorn through the Dark Door, into the Haunted Mountain, and free the desolate souls.Those of us fortunate to live consciously in the love of God the Father, in our full baptismal identity as King (Priest and Prophet) are tasked to call the limbo-souls to their primal bond and covenant with the Father, to challenge them to the battle, to inspire them with longing for the Kingdom of Heaven.
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