Home Opinion Where most people land: Purgatory

Where most people land: Purgatory

414
0
SHARE

ONE HUNDRED years ago, the entire world was populated by people busy with matters we remain busy with: doing work at home, office, or factories; partying over weddings, birthdays, anniversaries; in frenzy over new practical discoveries in science and technology; awed by people who live in grand palaces, are viewed in theatres, are in power.

Those people, millions of them all over the world, are mostly dead. We replaced them. A hundred years from now, someone else could be writing something like this: that a hundred years ago, people partied with drugs, went gaga over smart phones, dreamt of cars that travelled faster than hurricanes, etc.

Yet who takes seriously the prospects of dying? Prospects of afterlife which, according to Christian and even non-Christian beliefs, is determined by how we had lived on earth?

At one time in one of her modern-day apparitions, the Blessed Mother said it is seldom that people go directly to Heaven. Most pass through Purgatory, she said.

Purgatory. That is the place where many ghosts come from. And, gathering from the Blessed Mother’s statement, most of us will probably land. It is but reasonable for us to seek information about Purgatory. In the Church that Jesus founded, there is no shortage of such information.

In this regard and because Nov. 1 is at hand, I am quoting from the Unpublished Manuscript on Purgatory which was given nihil obstat and imprimatur by Catholic authorities. It is a booklet that recorded conversations between a ghost, a former nun allowed by God to communicate with a nun still alive in a convent in France in the 1800s. It gives a lot of details on purgatorial afterlife.

Here’s a quote from the ghost-nun: “I can tell you about the different degrees of Purgatory because I have passed through them. In the great Purgatory there are several stages. In the lowest and most painful, it is like a temporary hell, and here there are the sinners who have committed terrible crimes during life and whose death surprised them in that state. It was almost a miracle that they were saved, and often by the prayers of holy parents or other pious persons. Sometimes they did not even have time to confess their sins and the world thought them lost, but God, whose mercy is infinite, gave them at the moment of death the contrition necessary for their salvation on account of one or more good actions which they performed during life. For such souls, Purgatory is terrible. It is a real hell with this difference, that in hell they curse God, whereas we bless Him and thank Him for having saved us.

“Next to these come the souls, who though they did not commit great crimes like the others, were indifferent to God. They did not fulfill their Easter duties and were also converted at the point of death. Many were unable to receive Holy Communion. They are in Purgatory for the long years of indifference. They suffer unheard of pains and are abandoned either without prayers or if they are said for them, they are not allowed to profit by them. There are in this stage of Purgatory religious of both sexes, who were tepid, neglectful of their duties, indifferent towards Jesus, also priests who did not exercise their sacred ministry with the reverence due to the Sovereign Majesty and who did not instill the love of God sufficiently into the souls confided to their care. I was in this stage of Purgatory.

“In the second Purgatory are the souls of those who died with venial sins not fully expiated before death, or with mortal sins that have been forgiven but for which they have not made entire satisfaction to the Divine Justice. In this part of Purgatory, there are also different degrees according to the merits of each soul.

“Thus, the Purgatory of the consecrated souls or of those who have received more abundant graces, is longer and far more painful than that of ordinary people of the world.

“Lastly, there is the Purgatory of desire which is called the Threshold. Very few escape this. To avoid it altogether, one must ardently desire Heaven and the vision of God. That is rare, rarer than people think, because even pious people are afraid of God and have not, therefore, a sufficiently strong desire of going to Heaven. This Purgatory has its very painful martyrdom like the others. The deprivation of the sight of our loving Jesus adds to the intense suffering.”

But beyond information about Purgatory, the more important thing for us in this world is for us to help those in Purgatory. They can not help themselves. They had finished their time for earning graces. But those of us still on earth, the so-called Church Militant, can shorten their stay in Purgatory and hasten their path towards Heaven.”

So, let me share the following effective prayer for them, as gathered from St. Gertrude the Great:

“Eternal Father,
I off er You the most precious blood
of thy Divine Son, Jesus,
in union with the Masses said
throughout the world today,
for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory,
for sinners everywhere,
for sinners in the universal Church,
for those in my own home,
and in my family. Amen.”

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here