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.
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