Lesser proclaimed Catholic Truths on all Souls day...:
As almost every Requiem Mass turning into an
instant canonization, most people no longer bother to pray for the departed
souls.
When a person dies, they do not go straight to heaven, unless
they are Saints on Earth. You are doing a great evil to your love ones, if you
don't pray for them. Do not say, my relative is in heaven now! No they are not.
If they are Catholic and died with confession they went to *Purgatory*.
It is our obligation to make sure that person receives the last Sacraments, and
our obligation if we truly love them, to pray so they may get out of the fires
of Purgatory soon. A Holy Mass once a year, its
cruel! Once a Month is not any better.
Think of your time, how will you
like people to pray for you. Remember one second in Purgatory feels like years.
Pray and say many Masses for your love ones. No one goes to heaven not pure.
"I come to tell you that they suffer in
Purgatory, that they weep, and that they demand with urgent cries the help of
your prayers and your good works. I seem to hear them crying from the depths of
those fires which devour them:
"Tell our loved ones, tell
our children, tell all our relatives how great the evils are which they are
making us suffer. We throw ourselves at their feet to implore the help of their
prayers. Ah! Tell them that since we have been separated from them, we have
been here burning in the flames!" *
Poor fathers and mothers, you are being
sacrificed for the happiness of your children and your heirs! You perhaps have
neglected your own salvation to augment their fortune. You are being cheated of
the good works which you left behind in your wills! …*
Poor parents! How blind you were to forget
yourselves! … You will tell me, perhaps: “Our parents lived good lives; they
were very good people.” Ah! They needed little to go into these flames!*
See what St Albert the Great, a man whose virtues
shone in such an extraordinary way, said on this matter. He revealed one day to
one of his friends that God had taken him into Purgatory for having entertained
a slightly self-satisfied thought about his own knowledge. The most astonishing
thing was that there were actually saints there, even ones who were beatified,
who were passing through Purgatory.
Saint Severinus, Archbishop of Cologne, appeared to one of his friends a long
time after his death and told him that he had been in Purgatory for having
deferred to the evening the prayers he should have said in the morning. Oh!
What years of Purgatory will there be for those Christians who have no
difficulty at all in deferring their prayers to another time on the excuse of
having to do some pressing work! If we really desired the happiness of
possessing God, we should avoid the little faults as well as the big ones,
since separation from God is so frightful a torment to all these poor souls!
*Purgatory
and Indulgences.* Here’s the Catholic Church’s official teaching on *how to spring a soul from Purgatory from
November 1-8.*
According to the current Enchiridion
of Indulgences, one can apply a plenary indulgence to a departed soul by
the “visitation of a cemetary” {Coemeterii visitatio} from November 1st
till the 8th (i.e. the octave of All Saints).
Here’s the official text: # 13. Visit to a Cemetery (Coemeterii
visitatio)
An indulgence, applicable only to the Souls in Purgatory, is granted to
the faithful, who devoutly visit a cemetery and pray, even if only mentally,
for the departed.
The indulgence is plenary each day from the 1st to the 8th of November;
on other days of the year it is partial.
In order for the indulgence to be plenary, the following conditions must
also be met alone with the visit and prayers at the cemetery:
1] Sacramental confession within “about twenty days”[1] of
the actual day of the Plenary Indulgence.
2] Eucharistic Communion on the day of the Plenary Indulgence.
3] Prayer for the intentions of the Pope on the day of the Plenary
Indulgence.
4] It is further required that all attachment to sin, even venial sin,
be absent.[2]
Taking young people, particularly teenagers, to cemeteries to
pray for the dead is a wholesome thing. Young people are not usually aware of
their mortality. It’s a good thing to recognize the tombs of the dead…and pray
for them.
Perhaps our culture’s fascination with death and horror movies is
related to the fact that young people are isolated from death and prevented
from attending funerals.
[1] Apostolic Penitentiary, Prot.
N. 39/05/I (18 February 2005).
[2] If the latter detachment from
sin is in any way less than perfect or if the prescribed three conditions are
not fulfilled, the indulgence will be partial only. In accordance with the
canonical norms 34 and 35 of the Enchiridion of Indulgences (1968),
a confessor or bishop can dispense someone of one or two of the norms above.
*Also Catholic lay are allowed to celebrate any number of Holy Masses,
but only 2 Holy Communions at 2 Masses on weekdays (3 on Sundays), as long as
the second intention is strong.*
