Purgatory: A Place of Intense Longing, Love and Hope-Fr. Ambrose Criste, O.Praem

[Music] the following is an e WTM special presentation [Music] so thanks for coming the title of this talk is purgatory and since I thought that's kind of a scary topic I added a suffix to the title a place of intense longing love and hope and it's definitely that so what I'd like to do is first begin with a prayer okay in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen Mary Mother of the church pray for us st. Catherine of Genoa pray for us Blessed John Henry Newman eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them may they rest in peace amen name of Father the Son the Holy Spirit amen so folks I have several things to offer you this morning some doctrine about purgatory in fact my talk is going to be three points of doctrine once we get into the doctrine part and I'm going to intersperse that with some selections from a very very beautiful poem about the holy souls in purgatory by John Henry Newman Blessed John Henry Newman and also some quotations from st. Catherine of Genoa I'll tell you a little bit more about her when we get there and at the end I'll have some practical applications of this doctrine for you that you can take away with you I hope and apply in your life of prayer and then I'll answer some questions if you'd like now I haven't delivered this this talk before so I might have way too much information so if it seems like we're running out of time I'm going to skip around a little bit because I'd like to cover a lot of ground this morning but first I want to read for you a selection from a poem now how many have heard of Blessed John Henry Newman okay nineteenth-century Englishmen convert to the faith tremendous intellect and his writing can be a little bit difficult this poem he wrote toward the end of his life and it's called this it's called a dream of John seus Juran seus is the name of a man who has just died and the poem is a beautiful dialogue between this man's angel and the holy souls in purgatory the angels in heaven around the throne of God and the demons who are attempting Juran seus as he's facing his judgment and I'm going to read for you some of this to begin with it's a little bit like Shakespeare you have to listen to it for a minute before you start to understand you know how that works with Shakespeare you listen to it for a few minutes and then it starts to just click so this is from the dream of John seus and this is his angel his guardian angel speaking to Juran seus who has just died the angel says nor touch nor taste nor hearing hast thou now thou live estill a world of signs and types the presentations of most holy truths living and strong which now encompass thee a disembodied soul thou hast by right no converse with aught else beside thyself but lest so Stern a solitude should load and break thy being in mercy our vouchsafed some lower measures of perception for the belongings of thy present state saved through such symbols come not home to thee nor hast thou now extension with its parts nor power to move thyself nor limbs to move so will it be until the joyous day of resurrection when thou wilt regain all thou hast lost new-made and glorified how even now the consummated saints see God in heaven I may not explicate meanwhile let it suffice thee to possess such means of converse as are granted thee though till that beatific vision thou art blind for even thy purse or II which comes like fire is fire without its light the angel tells the soul that Geron says he tells him that and then Juran seus the soul just died responds like this to his angel Geron sia says his will be done i am not worthy even to see again even to see again the face of day far less his countenance who is the very son in life when I looked forward to my purgatory it was ever my solace to believe that ere I plunged amid the avenging flame I had one sight of him to strengthen me okay so that's John Henry Newman it's very beautiful and we'll have some more of that poem but I have a question for you first who can tell me right now who is in heaven who's in heaven right now who is Mary is certainly in heaven right now we know that not only in her soul but also in her body assumed glorious in heaven right now who else is in heaven the Good Thief st. Dismas so yes so he's an example of a saint in heaven who else is in heaven all the saints that's exactly right Claire all the saints are in heaven and of course God Himself the three persons of the Blessed Trinity even though well no because Christ has a body so Christ is bodily present in heaven in his glorious body assumed into heaven in a place heaven is a place and the Saints are there and God is there of course the mother of God is there st. Joseph is there who else yes God the angels are their present there because they're worshipping God they're the angels are present wherever they're acting because they have no bodies that's an important question because I don't think we often recall that especially if you've been to a funeral in the last few months you go to a funeral right and very often it's a canonization right and we think or sometimes we even speak like that ourself grandma died she's now in heaven how do you know was she a saint when she died the only people in heaven are Saints okay everyone in heaven is perfect sin and final glorification are utterly incompatible we know this from the Holy Scriptures the book of Revelation therefore between the sinfulness of this life and the glories of heaven we must be made pure before we can enter into heaven now that's supposed to happen here on earth you've all heard of the universal call to holiness and the Second Vatican Council did a marvelous job in proclaiming that beautiful truth you and I are called to be Saints and we're supposed to become Saints here on earth before we die so that when we die we can enter into heavenly glory if we're not perfectly sanctified and purified of the penalties do our sins when we die then we can't go to heaven yet but we must be purified of whatever remains of our sinfulness so that then we can enter into heavenly glory and so the Catechism of the church puts it like this this is catechism number 10 30 and 10:31 all who died in God's grace and friendship but still imperfectly purified are indeed assured of their eternal salvation but after death they undergo purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven and the Catechism goes on the church gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect which is entirely different from the punishment of the Damned okay so that's the essential doctrine from the Catechism now we also have some scriptural evidence for this I'm not going to read you these passages because otherwise we would be here all morning I would like to be hurled morning with you but I'll try to keep it to the time limit so Corinthians the first letter to the Corinthians the fifth chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel the twelfth chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel we have the doctrine of purgatory from the very scriptures but we even have it from pre-christian religion that is our big brothers in the faith the Jews they have also a doctrine of purification after death who remembers the letter that the book of the Maccabees we hear this often at funerals some hands yes in the book of Maccabees we know that the Jews prayed for their dead this in fact was so shocking to the Protestant reformers that they just simply removed a book of Maccabees from the Canon of the Scriptures because they had a big problem with the doctrine of praying for the dead in the 16th century so they just took those books out because it's a little bit inconvenient when you have scriptural evidence for something that you don't like so the Jews continued Orthodox Jews continue to pray for the dead who has heard of the mourners Kaddish this is 11 months of prayer for a departed soul after they die of course Orthodox Christians also pray for the dead as would make sense because this is from the very roots of our faith before the separation between East and West so historically Jews Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians have proclaimed this reality of this final purification I do want to read just a few quotations for you from the second century just to demonstrate how powerful and widespread the belief and practice of prayer for the dead was okay so this is the acts of Paul and Thecla one of our most ancient witnesses to Christian life in the second century here's a quotation after the exhibition try FINA again received Thekla for her daughter Falcon Allah had died and said to her in a dream mother you shall have this strange earth ECLA in my place in order that she may pray concerning me and that I may be transferred to the place of the righteous so in other words Thekla who had died appears to her mother and I'm sorry Falcon Allah who dies appears to her mother and says here's someone who's going to take my place in the family simply to pray for me so that I can go to heaven after my purification there's another beautiful story of saints Perpetua and felicity I don't know how many of you have read the ancient account of the martyrdom of st. Perpetua luceat II I heartily recommend that you find that online it's one of the most ancient first-hand accounts we have from the second century written by a woman about the martyrdom of the people around her in the amphitheatre in North Africa it's so beautiful and it's full of mystical visions it's very beautiful let me read to you a little bit of that that very night this was shown to me in a vision this is st. Perpetua writing i Perpetua sawed inequities going out from a gloomy place where also there were several others and he was parched and very thirsty with a filthy countenance and pallid color and the wound on his face which he had when he died Vista dr. vishton ah Cortese had been my brother after the flesh so her blood brother seven years of age who died miserably with disease for him I had made my prayer and between him and me there was a large gap so that neither of us could approach the other and I knew that my brother wasn't suffering but I trusted that my prayer would bring help to his suffering and I prayed for him every day until we passed over into the prison of the camp for we were to fight in the camp show in the amphitheater then I made my prayer for my brother day and night groaning and weeping that he might be granted to me then one day on which we remained in fetters in prison this was shown to me I saw that the place which I had formerly observed to be in gloom was now bright and inequities with a clean body well clad was finding refreshment and he went away from the water to play joyously after the manner of children and then I awoke then I understood that he was translated from that place of punishment that's a beautiful Christian soul in the 2nd century who wrote to us about this prayer for the dead and in her vision she saw her brother was only seven years old I think that drives home for us how important it is for us to pray for the dead even children because of course a seven year old has the use of his free will which means he can commit sins which means that when he dies he has something to answer for by way of paying back the penalty due to that sin okay we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute okay I could read for you many many quotations but let's get into the kind of nitty-gritty of this doctrine and it's really very simple you might think this is a very complicated part a little corner of Catholic life that's very difficult and complicated it's not three simple points about purgatory one that such a place of purification exists after death point point to you that this purification involves some kind of pain 0.3 that that purification can be assisted by the prayers and the offerings by the living in fact as we'll see in a minute the only thing that can help the souls in purgatory are the prayers and satisfactions of the living not even the saints in heaven can help them in that way okay so one purification is necessary after death and that's a tremendous blessing tremendous blessing because if we didn't have such a gift of this purification after death what would that mean it would mean that there are only two choices for us to become Saints on earth perfectly purified and go to heaven or not right so this is a place of great mercy that God gives us the opportunity to be purified and sanctified even if we don't succeed in getting that done here on earth as I said we're supposed to get that done here on earth that would be that would be the ordinary course for a Christian to embrace the life of grace the sacraments prayer and become a saint that's what God intends for us for you and for me so all of that happens the decision about all of that happens at the moment of our particular judgment and all of it will be completed before the final judgment right there are two judgments your individual judgment at the moment that you die and then the final judgment at the end of time when god will bring all things to completion and in the in between that's the time for purification and we really don't know anything about that doctrinally how long souls are in purgatory or how short how briefly we don't know much about the time part of it because of course beyond this world time doesn't mean the same thing that it means on this side of heaven okay a little bit more from the dream of Geron CEA's here's Doron seus who has just died this is for Tim he just walked in this is a poem but from Blessed John Henry Newman I'm reading sections of this very beautiful poem about a departed soul okay so Geron CEA's who has died is about to face his judgement he's being delivered to the judgment seat of God and he hears the heavenly choir around the throne of God sing this praise to the holiest in the height and in the depth be praised in all his words most wonderful most sure in all his ways does anybody know that him the English Catholics sing that is a hymn praised have you heard that song it's such a beautiful song it goes on oh man albeit the quickening ray lit from his second birth makes him at length what once he was and heaven grows out of Earth yet still between that earth and heaven his journey and his goal a double agony awaits his body and his soul a double debt he has to pay the forfeit of his sins the chill of death is past and now the penance fire begins glory to him who evermore by truth and justice reigns who tears the soul out from its case and burns away it stains is that so beautiful that's the angels around the throne of God singing what purgatory is about and so then the departed soul Geron ceases guardian angel tells the soul what the angels were singing about he explains that him and the poem continues like this the angel says they sing of thy approaching agony which thou so eagerly didst question of it is the face of the Incarnate God shall smite thee it is the face of the Incarnate God shall smite thee with that keen and subtle pain and yet the memory which it leaves will be a sovereign fabric to heal thy wound and yet with all it will the wound provoke and aggravate and widen it all the more so what does that mean it means that when a soul leaves the body and goes to its judgment it sees the face of God for a moment and if that soul is not purified looking on the face of God is painful because there's a distance between what the soul can receive and what God is and it feels to that soul like it's being ripped apart that's what the what that's what the pain of purgatory is while the while the remnants of its sins are being burned away as it were but it's precisely the beauty of God's face his glory which is the purifying fire in fact some of the greatest Saints and theologians have stressed that since the soul is in closer union with God then it is here on earth one experience is that so experience is a correspondingly greater joy along with that intense suffering you know in a way we humans are strange creatures we're souls and bodies and our body in a certain sense prevents our soul from experiencing things as keenly it wants to like joy or like suffering now that seems that sounds a little bit strange but actually our body mitigates how much suffering we can endure its kind of contained within our body well after the soul departs the body its sufferings can be much more intense because the body is not there to mitigate that pain but that also means that the joy can be greater it's amazing it's amazing Saint Catherine of Genoa is a amazing mystic who wrote many many things about purgatory she was she received all kinds of visions about what purgatory is like we only have a few Saints in our canon of saints who tell us about purgatory because the holy souls came and visited them she's one of them and oh if you're interested after the talk if you just give me your email I'll send you some more information about this including additional reading like from Saint goth catherine of genoa she wrote this speaking about this joy and suffering saint catherine of genuine god inspires the soul in purgatory with so ardent a movement of devoted love that it would be sufficient to annihilate her where she not immortal the love is so intense it would kill her if her soul weren't naturally immortal illumined and inflamed by this pure charity the more she loves God the more she detests the least stain that this that displeases him the least hindrance that present prevents her union with him really beautiful so the second point that purification of the imperfect soul involves pain okay this is you know it's true even if it's not so pleasant to think about so you know Christ accomplished our salvation on the cross he did that perfectly and completely that's not the same as the way that that salvation and sanctification applies to our soul that's a kind of a process over our life or into our purgatory sanctification involves suffering if you want to learn more about that I'll tell you more about that tomorrow afternoon about sanctification and suffering and st. Paul tells us a little bit about that in the letter to the Romans well purgatory is the final stage of that sanctification and so it has to involve suffering because that's the way sanctification works for us human creatures and like I said that's a great mercy in a way it's the final rush of our sanctification and it happens intensely and hopefully briefly which means that it's intense and painful now the fundamentalist Protestants have a great resistance to this because they they want to focus more on the truth which is true that Christ won our salvation perfectly on the cross that remains true we don't deny that but like I said the way that that sanctification that process of sanctification washes over us through life the way we cooperate with that that's what the fundamentalist Protestant objection denies our suffering and sanctification in no way takes away from the cross does it in no way does it detract from the perfection of Christ's salvation rather the cross produces our sanctification and didn't our Lord say take up your cross and follow me the letter to the Hebrews puts it like this for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than Pleasant later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness okay along with that goes a lot of joy along with the pain and the suffering st. Catherine of Genoa says they can never say that these pains are pains the souls in purgatory so great is their contentment with the ordinance of God which will make their will perfectly United to God in charity now a little bit more from the dream of Doron seus on the purifying quality of this vision of God the fact that it's painful the angel again says to Doron seus there was a mortal who is now above in the mid glory see if you can see if you can guess who he's talking about here there was a mortal who is now above in the mid glory he went near to die was given communion with the crucified such that the Masters very wounds were stamped upon his flesh who is that st. Francis right who received the stigmata and from the agony which thrilled through body and soul in that embrace learn that the flame of the everlasting love doth burn eret transform so the angel is saying look at the example of st. Francis up here in heaven what did his sanctification look like he was given the stigmata by way of transforming him into a saint so great was his pain and suffering on earth and then the angel continues speaking about how the sight of God is what purifies us and the pain that that's going to entail the angel says when then if such they lot thou seest the judge the sight of him will Kindle in thy heart all tender gracious reverential thoughts thou wilt be sick with love and yearn with him yearned for him and feel as though thou couldst but pity him that one so sweet should ever have placed himself at disadvantage such as to be used so vilely by so vile a being as the there is a pleading in his pensive eyes there the pleading in his pensive eyes will pierce the to the quick and trouble thee and thou wilt hate and loathe I self for though now sinless that will field that thou hast sinned as never thou didst feel and wilt desire to slink away and hide me from his sight and yet wilt have a longing eye to dwell within the bounty of his countenance and these two pains so counter and so keen the longing for him when thou seest him not the shame of self at thought of seeing him will be thy various sharpest purgatory ok so you see what's happening there we see God we love him and at the same time we see that we have some work to do and that pains our heart that's basically that that's basically the essence of purgatory and of course the the the way that that works out in the soul is something that the Saints tell us is quite gripping but that's basically the contents of the doctrine and I think Blessed John Henry Newman did a marvelous job in depicting it for us that's why he's a blessed and God willing soon to be a saint himself now for you and for me how does this affect us what can we take away with us this morning well this is where you and I come in because we have a very precious gift that we can offer the suffering Souls the holy souls in purgatory our prayers for them and acts of love for them which is called satisfaction the saints in heaven can't do it only we can do that in fact one of the mystics was shown by the holy souls in purgatory that she doesn't catherine was considered their patron saint while she was alive on earth because she offered her whole life in suffrage for their sins for their satisfaction and like i said the holy saints in heaven and the angels can't do that they appear to the holy souls we know because of again these mystical visions but they can't actually help them with their purification ok prayer for the Saints prayer for the Holy Souls you all know the story about st. Monica right how she prayed for a whole life or Saint Agustin's conversion and that worked and he became a saint and what you might not have heard is the story about how when she was about to die she asked her converted son to offer Mass for her she said and she was dying just in the in the port of Ostia there outside of Rome she said I don't care where you bury me as long as you say Holy Mass for me because she knew that um she would need his help when she got to the other side and faced her judgment and we have a lot of other evidence like I read for you from the acts of Paul and Thecla or from the martyrdom of perpetuo and felicity okay so I want now to I'm just keeping ahead a little bit so I can take some questions before we run out of time I want you to listen for a moment again from Geron ciose to the longing of the soul to be freed of its suffering and then I want you to think he's going to talk about that Juran seus will and I want you to think while you're listening to this what a tremendous act of charity it is to pray for such souls so that their suffering and their waiting will come to an end so while you're listening to Geron CEA's think about how this can inspire us to give to them okay Geron sia says take me away and in the lowest deep there let me be and they're in hope the lone night watches keep told out for me there motionless and happy in my pain alone not forlorn there will I sing my sad perpetual strain until the morn there will I sing and soothe my stricken breast which Nair can cease to throb and pine and languish till possessed of its soul peace there will I sing my absent Lord and love take me away that sooner I may rise and go above and see him in the truth of everlasting day so beautiful so by way of conclusion a few a few practical suggestions for all of us what I've tried to do here in our time together is simply to review those three most important truths of our holy faith about purgatory one that for most Souls purification is necessary after death in order to complete that work of salvation and sanctification that Christ won for us two that the purification that the imperfect soul must undergo involves intense pain three that the prayers of the living and their works of satisfaction assist powerfully these holy souls undergoing purification so practical suggestions to take away one let's be really careful about how we speak about the dead we have a really bad habit in contemporary Catholic life of speaking about the dead as if they are automatically in heaven how many funerals have you been to that basically canonized the departed this is a really I think unfortunate spillover from our separated brethren who speak about celebrations of life who don't have any theology of prayer for the dead the Protestants don't now so they have to come up with some other way of having a funeral right this is trickled over into Catholic life but what does that do it means that our beloved family members friends loved ones people known to us and unknown to us are deprived of prayer it means that there's a whole component of Church the church suffering who need us and we do nothing for them because our Catholic culture has degenerated and we speak about the dead as if they're already in heaven a little story about that there was a Russian Orthodox priest who was a drunkard you know and the the Orthodox can be married unless they're bishops and this priest was a married priest who had a very very terrible alcoholism problem and he spent his life offering their prayers for the dead liturgical prayers for the dead in order to make some money because that's a way that he could get some stipends and this is a great scandal to the faithful because they said this priest is a drunk and so they reported him to his bishop and they said you had to do something about this this is a scandal to the church and so the bishop said any I got to do something about this and so he prohibited the priests from doing anything liturgical officially and so this priest had to stop these prayers these liturgical prayers for the dead well the bishop one night was awakened in his sleep by this horrible tumult and crowd of people all around him ghosts it seemed like and they were just berating him abusing him screaming at him and they said why have you taken our great patron from us restore that priest to his faculties restore his faculties to the priest it's a it's a beautiful story that comes to us from the Christian East that even the prayers of a drunken priest for the dead are powerful and the Holy Souls need them they need liturgical prayer so pray for the dead that's the second takeaway today pray for the dead offer rosaries for them the divine office for them when you pass a cemetery pray for the dead that are that are resting there who need your prayers third have masses offered for the souls of the faithful departed mass is the most powerful gift you can give them it's the most precious thing for them the Holy Souls are just waiting in purgatory for Masse's to be said for them that's you know if one of your family members died fifty years ago half mass had for them why not because you don't know if they're in purgatory or not and I doubt the only the only as I said the only souls we know are not in purgatory our canonized saints they're the only ones that we know aren't in purgatory for certain right because the church says that they're not everybody else it's a guessing game and I promise you also your prayers and and works of satisfaction offered for somebody in particular if that person is not in purgatory believe me our lady will distribute those graces right she's going to take care of that for you fourth offer your trials suffering struggles that you experienced here below for the Holy Souls do you remember what your mother taught you when you were suffering she said offer it up you know offer it up what that means is offer it for the Holy Souls that's the kind of catch phrase in Catholic life that still we hear you know your mother said it my mother did offer it up we can really do that you stub your toe you offer up that you know slam your finger in the door it's it's really it's a wonderful it's a wonderful and gift of our holy faith that we can sanctify all of those things even the struggles v all for charitable works of any kind for the for the holy souls that means you know if you do an act of charity or visiting someone in the hospital or in prison you're doing something good for someone you can offer that act for the Holy Souls the merits of that act that's what we call satisfaction you know you're receiving your family in your home for Sunday dinner that's a great charitable beautiful thing to do you can offer even that for the Holy Souls you can offer everything for the Holy Souls good things to write a kind word to someone here at lunch in a little while sit down with someone you don't know and talk to them as an active Christian Christian charity and offer that act of Christian charity for the Holy Souls okay so conclusion I want to read a little bit more this is the end of the dream of Juran seus because it's so beautiful the angel has one last prayer for this departed soul as the angel is leaving it in purgatory and then going away waiting for it in heaven so the Angels last prayer for Juran seus softly and gently dearly ransom soul in my most loving arms I now enfold thee and over the penal waters as they roll I poised thee and I lower thee and hold thee and carefully I dipped thee in the lake and thou without a sob or a resistance dost through the flood thy rapid passage take sinking deep deeper into the dimers into the dim distance angels to whom the willing task is given shalt end and nurse and love thee as thy as thou liest and mass is on the earth and prayers in heaven shall aid thee at the throne

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Length: 41min 12sec (2472 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 14 2017