THESE are times of tribulations--believable mystics even say we are in the times of the biblical apocalypse--so it’s understandable that putting credence to this, many (unlikely all) would like to be saved. How? The answer from catechists, rightly: by loving God above all.
It’s easy to understand love in the context of family, friends, sexuality....all these involving a perceivable object intertwined with feelings, at times very strong. But how to love an invisible God above all as the Bible and the Church admonish us?
Reading the lives and writings of saints, we get the perception that they must have loved God with much feelings. But there are others, no less worthy of sainthood, who had revealed what they described as “dark nights of the soul” characterized by total lack of emotional involvement, by a dryness they described as spiritual, totally devoid of feelings. Yet, their lives are said to have been devoted to nothing but love for God.
Take, for example, the case of St. Therese of Lisieux, who experienced long periods of such spiritual dryness. She wrote of a diabolical voice telling her thus: “It's all a dream, this talk of a heavenly country, bathed in light, scented with delicious perfumes, and of a God who made it all, who is to be your possession in eternity! You really believe, do you? That the mist, which hangs about you, will clear away later on? All right, all right, go on longing for death! But death will make nonsense of your hopes; it will only mean a night darker than ever, the night of mere non-existence."
But St. Therese opted (that is, with all her will) to love God and continued to do so regardless of lack of feelings for the spiritual.
To understand this love better, we can resort to what Jesus Christ, who is God Himself, told Servant of God Luisa Picarretta, a contemporary of St. Padre Pio who had admitted being an admirer of Luisa (more of her in the next columns).
By the way, it is noteworthy to realize that the Vatican officially published the writings of Luisa. Her follower, who died 57 years ahead of her, was St. Hannibal di Francia who devoted his life to promoting the messages conveyed by Jesus to Luisa. (Yes, her ardent follower was declared a saint ahead of her.)
Jesus told Luisa about love for God: “Don’t you know that all you should care about is to do my Will and know whether you are in It? ... Your Jesus never looks at what the creature feels; many times feelings can deceive her. But rather, I look at her will and what she really wants—and that is what I take.” (May 15, 1938.)
Jesus stressed to Luisa the primacy of love in his message on Oct 16, 1906, as follows: “Ah, [the most glorious souls in Heaven] were not the ones who had done great things, penances, miracles...Love alone is what surpasses everything, and leaves everything behind. So, it is one who loves much, not one who does much, that will be more pleasing to the Lord.”
Said Catholic author and renowned philosopher and engineer Daniel O’Connor, a follower of Luisa: “We must recall that love is an act of the will—not an emotion. You cannot control how you feel, but you can control what you will.”
So there. To know and will what God wants, know the 10 Commandments, read the Bible, and, if you are Catholic, read and take into heart the Catechism of the Church. Then love God by doing, regardless of feeling.
And so to go on with the series on the Manuscript of Purgatory, the historical, Church-approved record of the conversation of the then living Sister Mary of the Cross and her deceased friend Sister Mary Gabriel who was in Purgatory at that time.
Sister Mary of the Cross: Is not the earth itself a Purgatory?
Sister Mary Gabriel: Amongst the people who dwell there some, by voluntary or accepted penance, do their Purgatory on earth because it is truly a place of suffering, but these souls, not having sufficient generosity, go to the real Purgatory to finish what was begun on earth.
Sister Mary of the Cross: Are sudden and unprepared deaths acts of God's justice or of His mercy?
Sister Mary Gabriel: Such deaths are sometimes an act of justice, sometimes one of mercy. When a soul is timid and God knows it is well prepared to appear before Him, He takes it out of this world suddenly to spare it the terrors it might experience at the last moment. Sometimes, also, God takes souls in His justice. They are not for this reason eternally lost, but their Purgatory is much more severe and prolonged than it would otherwise have been since they were either deprived of the Last Sacraments or received them hastily and so were unprepared for their passage into eternity. Others having filled up the measure of their crimes and having remained deaf to all inspirations of Divine Grace are taken by God out of this world so that they may not excite His vengeance still more.
Sister Mary of the Cross: Is the fire of Purgatory like that of earth?
Sister Mary Gabriel: Yes, with this difference, that the fire of Purgatory is a purification prescribed by God's justice and that of earth is very mild compared to that of Purgatory. It is a shadow compared to the furnace of Divine Justice.
Sister Mary of the Cross: How can a soul burn?
Sister Mary Gabriel: By a just and express permission of God, the soul which is the real culprit (for the body only obeys the soul) suffers as if the body were suffering. Have you ever seen any evil committed by a dead body?
(In the next column, more exciting info about what one encounters soon after death. Please remember what the Blessed Mother told visionaries of Garabandal: Many pass through Purgatory, only a few go directly to Heaven.)