Peace be with you!
Once again, we have no video reflection this week. Now Fr. Freeh is afflicted with laryngitis, so it might be a little while before we get the studio sound quality and the voice quality issues resolved. (Hope you’re feeling better soon, Father.)
Christmas is behind us, and we have entered Ordinary Time. Falling between the Baptism of the Lord and Ash Wednesday, and then between Pentecost Monday and the first Sunday of Advent, Ordinary Time is the longest liturgical season of the year. The priest wears green vestments at Mass, symbolic of hope and growth.
As Christians, Ordinary Time is our growing season. Lent and Advent call us to prune away the bad; Easter and Christmas invite us to celebrate our salvation. Ordinary Time calls us to put down roots into the rich teachings of Jesus as we follow His ministry in the readings at Mass, and to live those teachings in the ordinary moments of our lives. To discover that, in living as Jesus taught, we transform our “nothing special” lives into lives of extraordinary grace.
Ordinary Time makes me think about ordinary souls. If you read ahead for Sunday, you’ll find that it’s possible to get confused about God’s calling and His purpose for us. The important thing is to keep trying, with a listening heart and a willing spirit.
I’m a firm believer in the Communion of Saints. And not just of the rockstar, raised-to-the-altars, canonized variety. Don’t get me wrong, I have St. Anthony on speed dial, and send the spiritual equivalent of text messages to a host of heavenly friends.
But I identify most with the Holy Souls in Purgatory. So many Catholics no longer believe in Purgatory, or just simply never think about it. Maybe we just don’t like to think of our loved ones suffering. A lot of people seem to think that upon death, Heaven is like some kind of “come as you are” party. They seem to forget that the Host of the wedding feast insisted we show up in our wedding garments. Purgatory is our chance to be suitably attired to meet our Eternal God, before Whom angels tremble.
Years ago, I read an email about a teenaged evangelical Christian who wrote an essay about what he thought death and Heaven were like. The young man described meeting Jesus in a room lined with card catalog drawers, filled with every moment of his life. Jesus smiled over the good things He’d done. That was the easy part, and over too soon. How hard it was to review with Jesus all his sins and errors. To look in the eyes of Jesus as He wrote in His Precious Blood on the face of each sinful card, “Forgiven.”
I’ve always thought how remarkable it was that a young man who would’ve denied the “Catholic doctrine” of Purgatory had such a clear grasp of its essential character.
Purgatory is for the people who didn’t get everything right, but kept on trying anyway. Who maybe got confused about their call, their purpose, but offered their struggles to find their way to God in an ordinary spirituality of living a holy life as best they could. I think about them quite often, the ordinary people who make up the Church Suffering.
In Hungry Souls — Supernatural Visits, Warnings, and Messages from Purgatory, the author Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, Ph.D, says that devotion to the Holy Souls is inextricably bound up with devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Who loves them even more than we do. And it’s also a sign of personal holiness.
St. Gertrude the Great is an outstanding example of Aardweg’s assertion. A German mystic and learned theologian in the thirteenth century, she was devoted to the Sacred Heart and the Holy Souls, and experienced a series of visions of Our Lord. In one of those visions, she is said to have received Jesus’ promise that whenever anyone recites the following prayer, a 1000 souls will be released from Purgatory:
Eternal Father, I offer Thee 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, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.
I say this prayer often. I honestly don’t know that it works as well for me as it did for St. Gertrude. Maybe that promise was just for her. But I have an honest hope that I am relieving the suffering of my brothers and sisters in Christ…and that I am gaining for myself and all those I pray for, lots of friends in high places. I need their prayers, as much as (if not more than) they need mine.
Pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Ask for their prayers in those “ordinary moments” that in reality are fraught with possibility of salvation or damnation. In this way, members of the Church Suffering and Church Militant can help each other on the way to becoming the Church Triumphant.
Good News Spirituality 