¡LET'S NEVER IGNORE THESE TRUTHS ABOUT PURGATORY!

 

WHY SUCH A PROLONGED ATONEMENT?

The reasons are not difficult to understand.

1.     The malice of sin is very great. What seems to us a small fault is actually a serious offense against the infinite goodness of God. It is enough to see how the Saints repented of their faults.

Our tendency is to be weak, it is true, but God generously offers us abundant graces to strengthen us; he gives us the light to see the seriousness of our faults, and the necessary strength not to fall into temptation. If we still fall, the fault is all ours. We do not use the light and strength that  God generously offers us; we do not pray, we do not receive the Sacraments as we should.

2.     An eminent theologian remarks that if there are souls who are condemned to Hell for all eternity for mortal sin, we should not be surprised because other souls must be held for a long time in Purgatory. There are those who have deliberately committed countless venial sins, some of which are so serious that at the moment of committing them the sinner hardly knows whether they are mortal or venial. Also, they may have committed some mortal sins for which they had little repentance and did little or no penance. Guilt has been remitted by absolution, but the penalty due for sins will have to be paid in Purgatory.

Our Lord teaches us that we must be held accountable for every word we say and that we will not leave prison until we have paid every penny. (Mt 5:26).

The Saints committed few and slight sins, and even so, they repent and do severe mortifications. We commit many and very serious sins, and we repent little and do little or no penance.

VENIAL SINS:

It would be difficult to calculate the immense number of venial sins that we commit.

1) There is an infinite number of faults in love, selfishness, thoughts, words, acts of sensuality, also in hundreds of variants; lack of charity in thought, word, deed, and omission. Idleness, vanity, jealous, warmish and other uncounted fouls.

2)    There are sins by omission that we do not pay for. We love God so little, and He cries out hundreds of times for our love. We treat him coldly, indifferently and even with ingratitude.

He died for each one of us. Have we thanked him properly? He remains day and night in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, awaiting our visits, eager to help us. How often do we go to Him? He longs to come to us in Holy Communion, and we reject him. He offers Himself for us each morning on the Altar at Mass and gives oceans of grace to those who attend the Holy Sacrifice. And some are so lazy that they don't go! What a waste of thanks!

3)   Our hearts are hard and full of self-love. We have happy homes, splendid food, clothing, and an abundance of all things. Many of our neighbors live in hunger and misery, and we give them little, while we live in waste and spend on ourselves unnecessarily.

4)     Life was given to us to serve God, to save our souls.

Many Christians, however, are content to pray five minutes in the morning and five at night!! The rest of the 24 hours are dedicated to work , rest and pleasure. Ten minutes to God, to our immortal souls, ¡to the great work of our salvation! Twenty-three hours and fifty minutes to this transient life! Is it fair to God?

Our works, our breaks and sufferings should be done for God!

So it should be, and our merits would of course be great. The truth is that today few think about God during the day. The great objective of their thoughts is themselves. They think, work and rest to satisfy themselves. God occupies a very small space in their days and their minds. This is a snub to his Loving Heart, which always thinks of us .

 

AND NOW, THE MORTAL SINS:

 

5)   Unfortunately, many Christians commit mortal sins during their lives, but, although they confess them, as we have already said, they do not make satisfaction for them.

  Venerable Saint Bede believes that those who spend a large part of their lives committing serious sins and confessing them on their deathbeds may end up being held in Purgatory until Judgment Day.

Saint Gertrude in her revelations says that those who commit many serious sins and who have not done penance do not enjoy any suffrage of the Church for a considerable time. All those sins, mortal or venial, accumulate for 20, 30, 40, 60 years of our lives. Each and every one must be atoned for after death.

¿So is it any wonder some souls have to be in Purgatory for so long?

 

 

 

CHAPTER 4:  WHY AND WHAT TO PRAY FOR THE BLESSED SOULS IN PURGATORY?

The great Commandment of Our Lord Jesus Christ is that we love one another, genuinely and sincerely. The First Great Commandment is to love God above all things. The second, or rather the corollary of the first, is to love our neighbor as ourselves. It is not advice or a mere wish of the Almighty. It is his Great Commandment, the basis and essence of his Law.The truth contained in this is so great that He takes everything we do for our neighbor as a donation, and as a rejection of Him when we reject our neighbor.

We read in the Gospel of Saint Matthew (Mt 25:34-46), the words that Christ will address to each one on the Day of Judgment.

Some Catholics seem to think that their Law has fallen into disuse, because these days there is selfishness, self-love, and no one thinks of others, but of self- aggrandizement.

"It is useless to observe the Law of God these days," they say, "everyone must look out for himself, or you sink."

There's no such thing! God's law is great and will forever have the force of law. Therefore, it is necessary more than ever, and it is our duty and our best interest to fulfill it.

 

WE ARE MORALLY OBLIGATED TO PRAY FOR THE BLESSED ANIMALS.

 

We are always obliged to love and help the other, but the greater the need of our neighbor, the greater and stricter our obligation. It  is not a favor that we can or cannot do, it is our duty; we must help each other.

It would be a monstrous crime, for example, to deny the dispossessed the food necessary to keep him alive. It would be awful to refuse help to someone in great need, to pass by and not reach out to save a sinking man. We must not only help when it is easy and convenient, but we must make any sacrifice to help our brother in difficulty.

  Now, who can be more in need of charity than the souls in Purgatory? What hunger or thirst or suffering on this Earth can compare with your most terrible sufferings? Neither the poor, nor the sick, nor the suffering that we see around us need such urgent help. We still find good-hearted people who are interested in the suffering of this life, but we hardly find people who work for the Souls in Purgatory!

  And who can need us more? Among them, in addition, may be our mothers, our fathers, friends and loved ones.

 

GOD WANTS US TO HELP THEM.

 

They are the dearest friends. God wants to help you; He wants to have them close to Him in Heaven. They will never offend him again, and are destined to be with him for all eternity. It is true, the Justice of God demands atonement for sins, but through an amazing dispensation of His Providence, it places in our hands the possibility of assisting them, it gives us the power to alleviate them and even to free them. Nothing pleases God more than helping them. He is as grateful as if we helped Him.

 

OUR LADY WANTS US TO HELP YOU:

 

Never, never has a mother on this earth loved her deceased children so tenderly, no one ever consoles as Mary seeks to console her suffering children in Purgatory, and have them with her in Heaven. We will give you great joy every time we take a soul out of Purgatory.

 

THE BLESSED ANIMALS OF PURGATORY RETURN US A THOUSAND FOR ONE:

 

But what can we say about the feelings of the Holy Souls? It would be practically impossible to describe their boundless gratitude to those who help them! Filled with an immense desire to repay the favors done for them, they pray for their benefactors with a fervor so great, so intense, so constant, that God cannot deny them anything. Saint Catherine of Bologna says

:"I have received many and great favors from the Saints, but much greater from the Holy Souls (in Purgatory)."

When they are finally released from their sorrows and enjoy the bliss of Heaven, far from forgetting their friends on earth, their gratitude knows no bounds. Prostrate before the Throne of God, they do not stop praying for those who helped them. By their prayers they protect their friends from danger and protect them from the demons that haunt them.

They do not stop praying until they see their benefactors safe in Heaven, and they will forever be their dearest, most sincere and best friends.

If Catholics knew how powerful protectors they secure themselves just by helping the Blessed Souls, they would not be so reluctant to pray for them!

 

THE BLESSED SOULS IN PURGATORY CAN SHORTEN OUR OWN PURGATORY:

 

Another great grace that we obtain by praying for them is a short and easy Purgatory, or their complete remission!

San Juan Masías, a Dominican priest, had a wonderful devotion to the Souls in Purgatory. By his prayers, he got (mainly by the recitation of the Holy Rosary) the liberation of one million four hundred thousand souls!!! In return, he obtained for himself the most abundant and extraordinary graces. Those souls came to console him on his deathbed, and accompanied him to Heaven.

This fact is so true that it was inserted by the Church in the bull that decreed his beatification.

Cardinal Baronio recalls a similar event:

He was called to assist a dying man. Suddenly, an army of blessed spirits appeared on the deathbed, comforted the dying man, and dispelled the groaning demons, in a desperate attempt to achieve their death.

ruin. When the cardinal asked them who they were, they replied that there were eight thousand souls that this man had freed from Purgatory thanks to his prayers and good works. They were sent by God, they explained, to take him to Heaven without spending a single moment in Purgatory.

  Santa Gertrudis was fiercely tempted by the devil when she was about to die. The demonic spirit reserves a dangerous and subtle temptation for our last minutes. As she could not find a clever enough assault on this Saint, she thought of disturbing her beatific peace by suggesting that she was going to spend a very long time in Purgatory since she had wasted her own indulgences and suffrages in favor of others. souls. But Our Lord, not content with sending her Angels and the thousands of souls she had liberated, went in Person to drive away Satan and comfort her dear Saint. He told Santa Gertrudis that in exchange for what she had done for her blessed souls, he would take her straight to Heaven and multiply all her merits hundreds of times.

  Blessed Enrique Suso, of the Dominican Order, made a pact with another brother of the Order by which, when the first of them died, thesurvivor would offer two Masses each week for his soul, and other prayers as well. His companion happened to die first, and Blessed Henry immediately began offering the promised Masses. He continued saying them for a long time. In the end, sure enough that his saintly dead friend had reached Heaven, he ceased to offer the Masses. Great was his repentance and consternation when the dead brother appeared before him suffering intensely and complaining that he had not celebrated the promised Masses. Blessed Henry replied with great regret that he had not continued with the Masses, believing that his friend would surely be enjoying the Beatific Vision, but added that he always remembered him in his prayers. "Oh brother Enrique, please give me the Masses, expected.