The just shall be in everlasting remembrance;

He shall not fear the evil hearing.

 

Absolve, O Lord, the souls of the faithful departed from every bond of sin, and by the help of Thy grace may they be enabled to escape the avenging judgment, and to enjoy the happiness of eternal life.

 

Because in Thy mercy are deposited the souls that departed in an inferior degree of grace,

Lord have mercy.

 

Because their present suffering is greatest in the knowledge of the pain that their separation from Thee is causing Thee,

Lord have mercy.

 

Because of their present inability to add to Thy accidental glory,

Lord have mercy.

 

Not for our consolation, O Lord; not for their release from purgative pain, O God; but for Thy joy and the greater accidental honor of Thy throne, O Christ the King,

Lord have mercy.

 

For the souls of our departed friends, relations and benefactors,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those of our family who have fallen asleep in Thy bosom, O Jesus,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those who have gone to prepare our place,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For priests who were our spiritual directors,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For men or women who were our teachers in school,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those who were our employers or employees,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those who were our associates in daily toil,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For any soul whom we ever offended,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For our enemies now departed,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those souls who have none to pray for them,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those forgotten by their friends and kin,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those now suffering the most,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those who have acquired the most merit,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For the souls next to be released from Purgatory,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those who, while on earth, were most devoted to God the Holy Ghost, to Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament, to the holy Mother of God,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For all deceased popes and prelates,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For all deceased priests, seminarians and religious,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For all our brethren in the Faith everywhere,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For all our separated brethren who deeply loved Thee, and would have come into Thy household had they known the truth,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those souls who need, or in life asked, our prayers,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

For those, closer to Thee than we are, whose prayers we need,

Grant them light and peace, O Lord.

 

That those may be happy with Thee forever, who on earth were true exemplars of the Catholic Faith,

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.

 

That those may be admitted to Thine unveiled Presence, who as far as we know never committed mortal sin,

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.

 

That those may be housed in glory, who lived always in recollection and prayer,

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.

 

That those may be given the celestial joy of beholding Thee, who lived lives of mortification, self-denial, and penance,

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.

 

That those may be flooded with Thy love, who denied themselves even Thy favors of indulgence and who made the heroic act for the souls who had gone before them,

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.

 

That those may be drawn up to the Beatific Vision, who never put obstacles in the way of sanctifying grace and who ever drew closer in mystical union with Thee,

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.

 

Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord,

And let perpetual light shine upon them.

 

Let us pray:

 

Be mindful, O Lord, of all Thy servants and handmaids who are gone before us with the sign of faith and repose in the sleep of grace. To these, O Lord, and to all who rest in Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, a place of refreshment, light and peace, through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.

 

this prayer discovered here

 

In Rome, there is a church called the Church of the Suffering Souls (address: Parrocchia Sacro Cuore in Prati-Lungotevere Prati 12-Roma, which is a short distance from the Vatican). In this church there is a small museum called the Holy Souls Museum with relics, prayer books, clothing and table tops that were touched and scorched by the holy souls that were allowed to leave Purgatory and return to their family or fellow religious and beg them for Masses and prayers. 

 

ROME (Reuters) - If you end up in Purgatory after you die, never fear. Just remember to send a message to those surviving you, care of a riverside church in Rome.  The Church of the Sacred Heart houses one of the world’s most unusual and smallest museums — a collection of signs sent from beyond the grave by souls stranded in Purgatory.

 

Scorched fingerprints on prayer books, handprints burnt on wooden tables, and singed pillowcases and shirt sleeves seem to be the Purgatory equivalent of paper and pen.

 

“Most of our visitors are motivated by curiosity. But faith is the key to understanding the relics,” says Roberto Zambolin, the church’s tour guide.

 

Catholics believe spirits, stuck between heaven and hell until they have atoned for their sins, can hasten their entry to paradise if family and friends on earth pray for them.  And some Purgatory residents obviously felt their loved ones needed a gentle reminder.

 

Branding an imprint of his left hand on to a light-brown wooden table was one 18th-century friar’s way of reminding colleagues to say more masses and speed his soul to Heaven. On a single day in 1731, the deceased Friar Panzini not only marked the table, but burnt a handprint onto paper and twice clutched at the sleeves of a nun’s tunic, leaving scorch marks. Panzini’s spiritual smoke signals are a taste of what’s on display in a bare room, dubbed the Little Purgatory Museum, off to the side of the church.

 

While most tourists to Rome flock to the Coliseum or the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel or the Trevi Fountain, some stray off the beaten track to the quiet and unassuming museum to ponder the mysterious relics, gathered from all over Western Europe.

 

The museum is said to get about 4,000 visitors a year — young, old, Italians, foreigners, believers and non-believers.

 

Peering at four fiery fingerprints emblazoned on a prayer book, Austrian students debated the validity of the relics. “I believed in Purgatory before, but seeing these relics reinforces my faith, said a twenty-five year-old, but his 19-year-old friend was more hesitant. “I’m not sure what I think. They are certainly spooky but even if it’s not true, it’s a good story, said the 19 year old..

 

The museum, about 100 years old, was the brainchild of Victor Jouet, a French priest who traveled to Belgium, France, Germany and Italy, scooping up relics to display in his gothic church on the banks of the Tiber.  Jouet died in the museum’s only room in 1912, surrounded by his treasures, but the collection lives on despite a discussion in the late 1990s about whether to close it.

 

“We realized that most visitors were not Christians but those interested in the paranormal, or in some cases the devil, said the museum curator.  “The Church didn’t want to encourage something that wasn’t to do with faith. But in the end the decision was made to keep it open. The collection does start discussions about Catholic ideas,” he added.

 

And although most of the fiery signals date back to the 19th century or earlier, he doesn’t think the lack of modern-day signs has any significance.  “We don’t get any new objects sent to us, but we don’t need new signals to believe in Purgatory today.”

 

The existence of Purgatory is defined as a dogma of the Church by both the Council of Florence and the Council of Trent. Thus it is obligatory for all Catholics who wish to remain in communion with the Church to accept and believe in the existence of Purgatory. The Council of Trent further defined that the souls detained in Purgatory are able to be assisted by the faithful on earth especially by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - see Council of Trent Session XXV.

 

We do not fully realize the advocates we have in the Holy Souls in Purgatory and once they have joined the Father in Heaven they are eternally grateful to us here on earth for the prayers and sacrifices we make on their behalf, praying for our needs continually before the Throne of God..

 

St. Alphonsus Liguori says that though the Holy Souls cannot merit for themselves, they can obtain for us great graces. They are not, formally speaking, intercessors as the Saints are but, through the sweet Providence of God, they can obtain for us astounding favors and deliver us from evils, sickness and dangers of every kind.

 

1. obey the Lord and His Church,

2. love our neighbor,

3. express our unity with the other members of God’s family,

4. help purify people in Purgatory,

5. help those in Purgatory go to Heaven,

6. face death and thereby become more aware of reality,

7. express and strengthen our faith in the power of prayer,

8. receive the benefit of the prayers of those in Purgatory (Catechism, 958),

9. rejoice, for all those in Purgatory have given their lives to Jesus and will go to Heaven,

10. purify ourselves so that we will go directly to Heaven and skip Purgatory, or lessen our time in Purgatory,

11. share in the pouring out of God’s mercy, and

12. enter more deeply into the mystery of God’s love and His plan of salvation.

 

Excerpted from the March and April, 2007 Newsletter

 

 

   The earliest account of the life of St. Christina the Astonishing comes to us courtesy of the 13th century Dominican, Thomas de Cantimpré¹, who wrote the lives of several holy men and women from the diocese of Liége. The tales of Christina’s wild exploits might have been dismissed as an example of the medieval imagination run amok, were it not for the eyewitness account of Cardinal Jacques de Vitry, a man considered, then and now, to be a reliable and sober character.

 

   Christina was born in the town of Saint-Trond in 1150. She was orphaned at fifteen, along with her two sisters, and worked as a shepherd, growing closer to God over the years. In the process of this contemplation, she seems to have neglected her body’s need for sustenance; as Cantimpré writes, “she grew sick in body by virtue of the exercise of inward contemplation and she died.”² Later hagiographers attribute her apparent death to a seizure. In any case, she was carried to the church for the funeral Mass, where her first marvel was to occur. Right after the Agnus Dei, she flew up out of her coffin like a bird and perched herself in the rafters of the church (it was said that she desired to escape the stench of human sin). The priest finished the Mass with remarkable equanimity, and then made her come down (this is the scene depicted in my painting). She reported that she had been to Hell, and had recognized many people there. She was then shown Purgatory, and recognized many more. After this she was taken to Heaven where she was offered the choice of remaining with God, in one-ness with Him, or returning to earth in order to suffer the torments of the damned on behalf of the souls she had seen in Purgatory, who would then be released. She chose the unselfish course, and so startled her mourners by returning to life in the little church.

 

  Thereafter her life is reported as one astonishing event after another; she climbed trees to perch on the tiniest branches with the birds, she prayed balanced on hurdles or curled up into a ball, she would roll in fire and cry out in agony, yet remain un-roasted, she climbed into ovens and threw herself under mill-wheels, where she would be carried around in the water yet suffer no apparent injury. One time a priest, who did not know her, was so frightened by her appearance that he refused to give her Communion; she raced wildly through the streets, leaped into the Meuse, and swam away. Many thought she was possessed by devils, and tried to capture her, but she always managed to escape. A man once broke her leg in the process of subduing her, and tied her to a pillar for safety, yet she slipped out into the night and lived in the tree tops for some time, nourished by milk dripping from her virginal breasts. She survived as a homeless woman, dressed in rags, and generally terrifying people.

 

  It seems that Christina’s soul and body coexisted uneasily, as demonstrated in an account told by a priest who secretly trailed after her one day when she entered a church to pray. He concealed himself behind a pillar and observed her bitterly throw herself before the altar and cry out “O miserable and wretched body! How long will you torment me…Why do you delay me from seeing the face of Christ? When will you abandon me so that my soul can return freely to its Creator?” The answering accusation came from the same mouth, “O miserable soul! Why are you tormenting me in this way? What is keeping you in me and what is it that you love in me? Why do you not allow me to return to the earth from whence I was taken…?” Then, before his eyes, a loving reconciliation took place; she seized her feet in both hands and kissed their soles fervently, saying “O most beloved body! Why have I reviled you? O best and sweetest body, endure patiently…”³ These moments of joy were few and far between in the time she spent as a mendicant in the town and forest, though her last few years were lived peacefully enough in the convent of St. Catherine, where the prioress reported that she was perfectly obedient, if peculiar.

 

 

   Cantimpré interprets these sufferings and wonders as evidence of the turmoil Christina had agreed to endure for the sake of souls in limbo. Many modern “diagnosticians”claim that her actions were those of an anorexic, an hysteric, a grievously ill and misunderstood young woman. Butler’s Lives of the Saints⁴ is curiously silent on the question of why she did the things that she did, merely noting that these things did happen. Her contemporaries, both in the priesthood and the laity, were certainly divided as to whether she was a madwoman or a prophet.

 

  Christina of Liége has been a saint in popular tradition almost from the time of her death, although no formal beatification ever took place. She stands out from the canon, as Compass editor Tony Staley⁵ points out, because her life, alone among the others, is not held up as an example to be followed. Her role as the patron saint of madness, mental disorders, mental handicaps, and mental health caregivers might suggest that she herself was of unsound mind. She may indeed have been mad, or she may have lived a curiously blessed life in the grip of holy ecstasies, dazzled by the revelation she had seen. A further possibility accommodates both of these explanations; here we can understand Christina as a fragile vessel who simply shattered in the face of God.

 

  But of what use could such an impossible creature be to the world around her? What spiritual gifts did she give to her community? What saintly purpose did she serve, that revealed her astonishing happenings to be the work of God and not the work of devils? It seems that she served the people of Liége as a wailing manifestation of their hidden consciences, laying bare their dark secrets and vices. Driven to live as a beggar, if she received food from an unjust person, she would bear the burden of the almsgiver’s sins; the food, once swallowed, would cause her to be wracked with pain, publicly and noisily. The townspeople may have felt a certain sullen gratitude for this service (particularly when someone else was the target), but there were notable members of the society who loved her greatly and without resentment. The Count of Looz thought very highly of her and accepted her rebukes humbly. When he lay dying, he had her brought to his bedchamber so that he could unburden his conscience to her. He told her every sin he had committed from the age of 11 to this, his dying day, but Cantimpré hastens to add, “He did this not for absolution, which she had no power to give.”⁶ Ahem.

   Whatever the explanation for her adventures (and whether or not she did in fact give absolution to the dying Count), Shaley convincingly argues that her life serves to remind us to value the scorned and disruptive members of our society and to treat them with respect.

 

 

   Though her life is not held up as an exemplary one, Christina has inspired many poets and creative people. This unadorned tribute comes from the musician Nick Cave:

 

Christina The Astonishing

 

              Christina the Astonishing

              Lived a long time ago

              She was stricken with a seizure

              At the age of twenty-two

              They took her body in a coffin

              To a tiny church in Liége

              Where she sprang up from the coffin

              Just after the Agnus Dei

              She soared up to the rafters

              Perched on a beam up there

              Cried, “The stink of human sin

              Is more than I can bear”

              Christina the Astonishing

              Was the most astonishing of all

              She prayed balanced on a hurdle

              Or curled up into a ball

              She fled to remote places

               Climbed towers and trees and walls

              To escape the stench of human corruption

              Into an oven she did crawl

              Christina the Astonishing

              Behaved in a terrifying manner

              Died at the age of seventy-four

              In the convent of St. Anna⁷

 

   Jane Draycott and Lesley Saunders bring us a collection of poems in the book, “Christina the Astonishing,” in which they seem to give themselves over to the wonder of her life, without looking so hard for the whys of her behavior:

 

How Saint Christina sang

 

              Then she stopped spinning and sang.

              No-one could imitate the sounds that came from deep in her chest

              nor make sense of the syllables; no breath came from out of her nose or mouth,

              but it was like angels singing - Thomas de Chantimpre

              think of it like a Mongolian trance-chant

              sung on the bottomless in-breath

              like a journey along the silk road

              being rolled back past the dust-heaps

              and broken walls of frontier towns, back

              past the one remaining window made

              of a slice of lapis lazuli and the still wind-chimes

              back into the rib-cage, the swaddle, the chrysalis

              or find in your mind an Inuit song

              sung by one by two sister-twins

              like the ice-night and the eery not-sun lights

              hologramming on the sky’s retina

              breathing down each other’s wind-pipes

              the in-out of the ice-sheet across the eyelids

              the sound-harpoon in the blank ice-pool

              see, she does not cloud the mirror

 

 

Salvation as a Diving-Suit

 

              The opera of her breathing fills the whole village

              and even on the hillside they can hear her enlightenment

              bubbling like a narghile in the mouth of God.

              From inside the helmet she watches the others swim.

              Shoals of bishops and other big fish nose at the glass

              manifesting the dark markings of their consciences.

              Saved for sure, she has to be weighted down to the sea-bed

              of the market square. But sinning’s smell seeps in at the seams,

              a slow inundation of children’s hair and used bank notes.

              Her visor is cloudy with what she knows - she reels up

              to the light, to the air that is promised, the towers of silence,

              the blue, the sky, the burial. Walking in space.⁸

 

 

Irish poet Mary O’Donoghue brings us this irreverent version of the story:

 

Christina the Astonishing

 

              The windows steamed over with grief

              Exhaled from a chockful church.

              Men at the back,

              Fists ensconced in pockets,

              Harrumphed clear their throats.

              Women loosened bonnet ribbands,

              Blubbed and snotted

              Into cologned handkerchiefs.

              Toddlers took refuge

              In serge skirt folds

              And wauled their contribution.

              The woman aboard the bier

              Stirred, sat up, strutted by her elbows,

              Wiggled out a hair-pin

              From her coffin coiff

              And clipped her nostrils shut.

              She spoke in a sinusitis voice

              To her muggy troupe of mourners:

              Ye folks have got to end

              This dependence on garlic

              To flavour the cooking,

              Neutralise bee-stings

              And quash gumboils and carbuncles.⁹

 

 

Here is the poet Jill Alexander Essbaum’s curious and compassionate insight:

 

Whispers of the Kingdom

 

              When everything she touched

              seemed to turn up paper or pain

              she forged a new self

              from tufts of moss and the inaugural ash

              found at the stations of the cross, saying

              anything that is too much me,

              I must strip away.

 

              How lucky then, for her hands.

              They learned to knit without needles

              or yarn, and in the distance

              between being lost and being saved,

              she fashioned for herself an invisible shawl

              resembling feathers, and it fit around her

              just well enough that when offered a drink

 

              from the fugitive cup of all things living and dead

              she flew up above it, to the crossbeams

              and the lamps, to next and to hide

              as if a hermit mockingbird, having no part

              of our troubles and making no sense

              to our sadness, and singing, always

 

              singing nearer to thee.

              Grace, I will watch her with wonder from below,

              summing carefully each of the marigold praises

              to tumble from the seam of such a woman’s lip,

              and tending her every need as if she were me.

              As if she were me.¹⁰

 

 

And, finally, a treasure by James Reidel:

 

Christina the Astonishing

 

              Liege, around 1172 . . .

               Her nails nearly tore from her blue fingers

                 as she clawed to the rafters.

              There she inhaled in great draughts,

              The sweet afterburn of beeswax candles,

                 and held over her face

              The handful of cave wind brought back from Hell.

              She twisted like a swallow through trusses and out

                 of reach of the priest,

              Who leapt for her foot as white as the exposed wood

                 of our Mary’s chipped toe,

              The train of her shroud hung from a beam

              Like bell rope down to what was her dung,

              Standing on their hind legs.

 

              Their ears turned red pressing them to the first

                 oven’s brick,

              From hearing her praying (and their names) up the flue

              Until there was nothing but the snap of cloth

              Sailing from tree to tree,

              Going to the smell of bread she would mine like ore.¹¹

 

 

   My own image of St. Christina was first shown at the annual ArtQuake festival held at the Friends Meeting House on 15th Street, where it was received with interest and Friendly questions. I have started a second painting of another scene in her life, further exploring the sometimes harmonious and sometimes tense relationship she had with the clergy of Liége, when her understanding of God’s will conflicted with their wish that she live a quiet and peaceable life and not be so troubled or troubling. With my paintings, I hope to add, visually, to the poems that Christina Mirabilis has already inspired.

 

__________________________________________

¹The Life of Christina the Astonishing, by Thomas de Cantimpré, translated with introduction and notes by Margot H. King, assisted by David Wiljer

©1999 Peregrina Publishing Co

 

²Ibid

 

³Ibid

 

⁴Butler’s Lives of the Saints, edited by Michael Walsh

© Burnes and Oates,1991

 

⁵Tony Staley, The Compass

Catholic Diocese of Green Bay

1825 Riverside Drive

P.O. Box 23825

Green Bay, WI 54305-3825

E-Mail: diocmail@gbdioc.org

 

⁶The Life of Christina the Astonishing, by Thomas de Cantimpré, translated with introduction and notes by Margot H. King, assisted by David Wiljer

©1999 Peregrina Publishing Co

 

⁷Nicholas Cave, “Christina the Astonishing”, from the album Henry’s Dream, Mute Records, STUMM 92, 1992

 

⁸Christina the Astonishing, by Jane Draycott and Lesley Saunders, prints and drawings by Peter Hay, Two Rivers Press, paperback ISBN 1-901677-07-9

 

⁹“St. Christina the Astonishing”, by Mary O’Donoghue

 

¹⁰“Whispers of the Kingdom” from Heaven, Middlebury College Press

© 2000 Jill Alexander Essbaum, (winner of the Katharine Bakeless Nason Poetry Prize)

 

¹¹“St Christina the Astonishing” ©2002 James Reidel, first published in the Pierian Springs poetry journal.

 

this article discovered here

This rosary consists of four decades (40 beads) in memory of the forty hours which Our Lord is thought to have spent in Limbo. There are also the 5 introductory beads as on the Dominican Rosary.

 

On the large beads say:

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual Light shine upon them; may the souls of the faithful departed, through the Mercy of God, rest in peace.  Amen.”

 

On each small bead is said:

“Sweet Heart of Mary, be my salvation.”

 

The final prayer is as follows:

V. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.

R. And let perpetual light shine upon them.

V. May they rest in peace.

R. Amen.

V. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

R. Amen.

V. May the love of God and the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ bless us and console us and gently wipe every tear from our eyes:

R. Amen.

Conclude with DE PROFUNDIS (Psalm 130)

 

Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice.

Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.

If Thou, O Lord, shalt observe iniquities; Lord, who shall endure it?

For with Thee there is merciful forgiveness:

and by reason of Thy law, I have waited for Thee, O Lord.

My soul hath relied on His word; my soul hath hoped in the Lord.

From the morning watch even until night, let Israel hope in the Lord.

Because with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him plentiful redemption.

And He shall redeem Israel from all her iniquities.

 

Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord,

and let perpetual light shine upon them.

Let us pray.

O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful, grant to the souls of Thy servants departed the remission of all their sins, that through our pious supplication they may obtain that pardon which they have always desired; who lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.

 

this prayer discovered here

O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful, grant unto the souls of Thy departed servants full remission of all their sins, that through the help of our pious supplications they may obtain that pardon which they have always desired. Thou Who livest and reignest world without end. Amen.

 

V. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.

R. And let perpetual light shine upon them

V. May they rest in peace. Amen.

 

this prayer discovered here

 

The great saints throughout the centuries have understood well the importance of praying for the Holy Souls in purgatory, or the “Church Suffering.” There may not be a single chosen soul upon whom the Lord has not impressed His desire that spiritual help be given to those languishing in purgatory!

 

This charity — issuing into a lifelong dedication to the Holy Souls — dilates the heart with love for God, and for our neighbors both in purgatory and here on earth.

 

St. Padre Pio, true “champion” of the souls, once added that: “The Holy Souls are eager for the prayers of the faithful which can gain indulgences for them. Their intercession is powerful. Pray unceasingly. We must empty purgatory!”

 

St. John Vianney, the Cure D’Ars, taught that  ”if one knew what we obtain from God by the intercession of the Holy Souls, they would not be so much abandoned.  Let us pray a great deal for them; they will pray for us!”

 

And St. Margaret Mary Alacoque of the Sacred Heart revelations had a special devotion for the Holy Souls and accepted the charge of suffering for them. Said this saint, “How my soul was replenished with joy when speaking to those souls and seeing them immersed in glory as in a deep ocean!”  She requested them to pray for us and in reply heard:  ”An ungrateful soul is not to be found in Heaven.”

 

How does the doing of penance in this world compare to the suffering in purgatory?

 

St. Catherine of Genoa gives us the answer:

 

“He who purifies himself from his faults in the present life satisfies with a penny a debt of a thousand silver pieces,” she said, “and he who waits until the other life to pay his debts consents to pay a thousand silver pieces for that which he might have paid before with a penny!”

 

Hear likewise the consoling words of St. Ambrose:  ”All that we offer to God in charity to the dead is changed into merit for ourselves, and we shall find it increased a hundredfold after our death…

 

“Generosity towards the departed is always repaid; it finds its recompense in all kinds of graces — the source of which is the gratitude of the Holy Souls and Our Lord, Who considers as done to Himself whatever we do for the Suffering Souls.”

 

St. Catherine of Bologna testified, meanwhile, that she obtained many graces and benefits by the holy souls that she could not obtain even through the intercession of saints in Heaven.

 

St. Gregory? He said that there are thousands of instances from which we may learn how effectively the Holy Souls can help us in distress, illness, danger of war and death. St. Leonard of Port Maurice labored for the Holy Souls with all his strength. He preached so fervently and so powerfully for the Holy Souls that wherever he went generous alms where give him for Holy Masses (the most powerful means to help souls reach God) which were offered for the Holy Souls. Said he:  ”If you deliver one soul from purgatory, you can say with confidence, ‘Heaven is mine’.”

 

We, the church Militant, have been given awesome power and privilege to deliver the Holy Souls in purgatory. Charity and gratitude not only demand that we pray for the faithful departed, but it is also for us a very positive duty which we, in God’s justice, are bound to fulfill.

 

Nothing pleases God more than praying for the Holy Souls. God is more pleased with us if we pay our debts here on earth because of His paternal desire to receive us without delay in His home.

 

We must pray for all the souls in purgatory in general, and in a special manner for the souls of our parents (to the fourth generation), family members, friends, enemies, benefactors. Let us in a special way offer a very great part of our suffrages for priests, consecrated religious, and non-believers as they are the most abandoned souls.

 

St. Charles Borromeo tells us:  “Who is without an interest in purgatory? Who has not, somewhere, a treasure buried in that dreary grave? And had they none, were they of the few who have never lost a friend, should their interest in purgatory be any less strong and deep since God’s friends are there and God desires them elsewhere?”

 

By Susan Tassone

 

[resources: Susan Tassone's book are here; for Gregorian Masses and other aids for the souls, see also here]

 

 

[see also: The roots of All Souls Day and Be sure to pray for dead, whom you will see again]

 

this article discovered here

 

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines purgatory as a “purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven,” which is experienced by those “who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified” (CCC 1030). It notes that “this final purification of the elect . . . is entirely different from the punishment of the damned” (CCC 1031).

 

The purification is necessary because, as Scripture teaches, nothing unclean will enter the presence of God in heaven (Revelation 21:27) and, while we may die with our mortal sins forgiven, there can still be many impurities in us, specifically venial sins and the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven.

 

 

When we die, we undergo what is called the particular, or individual, judgment. Scripture says that “it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). We are judged instantly and receive our reward, for good or ill. We know at once what our final destiny will be. At the end of time, when Jesus returns, there will come the general judgment to which the Bible refers, for example, in Matthew 25:31-32: “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” In this general judgment all our sins will be publicly revealed (Luke 12:2–5).

 

Augustine said, in The City of God, that “temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment” (21:13). It is between the particular and general judgments, then, that the soul is purified of the remaining consequences of sin: “I tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the very last copper” (Luke 12:59).

 

 

One argument anti-Catholics often use to attack purgatory is the idea that the Catholic Church makes money from promulgating the doctrine. Without purgatory, the claim asserts, the Church would go broke. Any number of anti-Catholic books claim the Church owes the majority of its wealth to this doctrine. But the numbers just don’t add up.

 

When a Catholic requests a memorial Mass for the dead­, that is, a Mass said for the benefit of someone in purgatory ­it is customary to give the parish priest a stipend, on the principles that the laborer is worth his hire (Luke 10:7) and that those who preside at the altar share the altar’s offerings (1 Corinthians 9:13–14). In the United States, a stipend is commonly around five dollars; but the indigent do not have to pay anything. A few people, of course, freely offer more. This money goes to the parish priest, and priests are only allowed to receive one such stipend per day. No one gets rich on five dollars a day, and certainly not the Church, which does not receive the money anyway.

 

But look at what happens on a Sunday. There are often hundreds of people at Mass. In a crowded parish, there may be thousands. Many families and individuals deposit five dollars or more into the collection basket; others deposit less. A few give much more. A parish might have four or five or six Masses on a Sunday. The total from the Sunday collections far surpasses the paltry amount received from the memorial Masses.

 

 

Fundamentalists may be fond of saying the Catholic Church “invented” the doctrine of purgatory to make money, but they have difficulty saying just when. Most professional anti-Catholics, ­the ones who make their living attacking “Romanism”­ seem to place the blame on Pope Gregory the Great, who reigned from A.D. 590–604.

 

But that hardly accounts for the request of Monica, mother of Augustine, who asked her son, in the fourth century, to remember her soul in his Masses. This would make no sense if she thought her soul would not benefit from prayers, as would be the case if she were in hell or in the full glory of Heaven.

 

Nor does ascribing the doctrine to Gregory explain the graffiti in the catacombs, where Christians during the persecutions of the first three centuries recorded prayers for the dead. Indeed, some of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament, like the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity (both written during the second century), refer to the Christian practice of praying for the dead. Such prayers would have been offered only if Christians believed in purgatory, even if they did not use that name for it. (See Catholic Answers’ Fathers Know Best tract The Existence of Purgatory for quotations from these and other early Christian sources.)

 

 

Whenever a date is set for the “invention” of purgatory, you can point to historical evidence to show the doctrine was in existence before that date. Besides, if at some point the doctrine was pulled out of a clerical hat, why does ecclesiastical history record no protest against it?

 

A study of the history of doctrines indicates that Christians in the first centuries were up in arms (sometimes quite literally) if anyone suggested the least change in beliefs. They were extremely conservative people who tested a doctrine’s truth by asking, Was this believed by our ancestors? Was it handed on from the apostles? Surely belief in purgatory would be considered a great change, if it had not been believed from the first­ so where are the records of protests?

 

They don’t exist. There is no hint at all, in the oldest writings available to us (or in later ones, for that matter), that “true believers” in the immediate post-apostolic years spoke of purgatory as a novel doctrine. They must have understood that the oral teaching of the apostles, what Catholics call tradition, and the Bible not only failed to contradict the doctrine, but, in fact, confirmed it.

 

It is no wonder, then, that those who deny the existence of purgatory tend to touch upon only briefly the history of the belief. They prefer to claim that the Bible speaks only of heaven and hell. Wrong. It speaks plainly of a third condition, commonly called the limbo of the Fathers, where the just who had died before the redemption were waiting for heaven to be opened to them. After his death and before his resurrection, Christ visited those experiencing the limbo of the Fathers and preached to them the good news that heaven would now be opened to them (1 Peter 3:19). These people thus were not in heaven, but neither were they experiencing the torments of hell.

 

Some have speculated that the limbo of the Fathers is the same as purgatory. This may or may not be the case. However, even if the limbo of the Fathers is not purgatory, its existence shows that a temporary, intermediate state is not contrary to Scripture. Look at it this way. If the limbo of the Fathers was purgatory, then this one verse directly teaches the existence of purgatory. If the limbo of the Fathers was a different temporary state, then the Bible at least says such a state can exist. It proves there can be more than just Heaven and Hell.

 

 

Some Fundamentalists also charge, as though it actually proved something, “The word purgatory is nowhere found in Scripture.” This is true, and yet it does not disprove the existence of purgatory or the fact that belief in it has always been part of Church teaching. The words Trinity and Incarnation aren’t in Scripture either, yet those doctrines are clearly taught in it. Likewise, Scripture teaches that purgatory exists, even if it doesn’t use that word and even if 1 Peter 3:19 refers to a place other than purgatory.

 

Christ refers to the sinner who “will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (Matthew 12:32), suggesting that one can be freed after death of the consequences of one’s sins. Similarly, Paul tells us that, when we are judged, each man’s work will be tried. And what happens if a righteous man’s work fails the test? “He will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:15). Now this loss, this penalty, can’t refer to consignment to Hell, since no one is saved there; and Heaven can’t be meant, since there is no suffering (”fire”) there. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory alone explains this passage.

 

Then, of course, there is the Bible’s approval of prayers for the dead: “In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin” (2 Maccabees 12:43–45). Prayers are not needed by those in Heaven, and no one can help those in Hell. That means some people must be in a third condition, at least temporarily. This verse so clearly illustrates the existence of purgatory that, at the time of the Reformation, Protestants had to cut the books of the Maccabees out of their Bibles in order to avoid accepting the doctrine.

 

Prayers for the dead and the consequent doctrine of purgatory have been part of the true religion since before the time of Christ. Not only can we show it was practiced by the Jews of the time of the Maccabees, but it has even been retained by Orthodox Jews today, who recite a prayer known as the Mourner’s Kaddish for eleven months after the death of a loved one so that the loved one may be purified. It was not the Catholic Church that added the doctrine of purgatory. Rather, any change in the original teaching has taken place in the Protestant churches, which rejected a doctrine that had always been believed by Jews and Christians.

 

 

Why would anyone go to purgatory? To be cleansed, for “nothing unclean shall enter [Heaven]” (Revelation 21:27). Anyone who has not been completely freed of sin and its effects is, to some extent, “unclean.” Through repentance he may have gained the grace needed to be worthy of heaven, which is to say, he has been forgiven and his soul is spiritually alive. But that’s not sufficient for gaining entrance into heaven. He needs to be cleansed completely.

 

Fundamentalists claim, as an article in Jimmy Swaggart’s magazine, The Evangelist, put it, that “Scripture clearly reveals that all the demands of divine justice on the sinner have been completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It also reveals that Christ has totally redeemed, or purchased back, that which was lost. The advocates of a purgatory (and the necessity of prayer for the dead) say, in effect, that the redemption of Christ was incomplete. . . . It has all been done for us by Jesus Christ, there is nothing to be added or done by man.”

 

It is entirely correct to say that Christ accomplished all of our salvation for us on the cross. But that does not settle the question of how this redemption is applied to us. Scripture reveals that it is applied to us over the course of time through, among other things, the process of sanctification through which the Christian is made holy. Sanctification involves suffering (Romans 5:3–5), and purgatory is the final stage of sanctification that some of us need to undergo before we enter heaven. Purgatory is the final phase of Christ’s applying to us the purifying redemption that he accomplished for us by his death on the cross.

 

 

The Fundamentalist resistance to the biblical doctrine of purgatory presumes there is a contradiction between Christ’s redeeming us on the cross and the process by which we are sanctified. There isn’t. And a Fundamentalist cannot say that suffering in the final stage of sanctification conflicts with the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement without saying that suffering in the early stages of sanctification also presents a similar conflict. The Fundamentalist has it backward: Our suffering in sanctification does not take away from the cross. Rather, the cross produces our sanctification, which results in our suffering, because “[f]or the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).

 

 

Purgatory makes sense because there is a requirement that a soul not just be declared to be clean, but actually be clean, before a man may enter into eternal life. After all, if a guilty soul is merely “covered,” if its sinful state still exists but is officially ignored, then it is still a guilty soul. It is still unclean.

 

Catholic theology takes seriously the notion that “nothing unclean shall enter heaven.” From this it is inferred that a less than cleansed soul, even if “covered,” remains a dirty soul and isn’t fit for Heaven. It needs to be cleansed or “purged” of its remaining imperfections. The cleansing occurs in purgatory. Indeed, the necessity of the purging is taught in other passages of Scripture, such as 2 Thessalonians 2:13, which declares that God chose us “to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit.” Sanctification is thus not an option, something that may or may not happen before one gets into Heaven. It is an absolute requirement, as Hebrews 12:14 states that we must strive “for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”

 

NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors. Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004

 

IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827 permission to publish this work is hereby granted.

+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004

 

this article discovered here