As “Undas” nears, this piece on our dear departed loved ones.
The intention is likely to console, but when we greet a departed one on his birthday on Facebook by saying “Happy birthday in Heaven”, there are good chances we make the departed sadder where he is. Afterall, we don’t pray for one who is already in Heaven; we pray to him.
This could be the probable purgatorial case of loved ones who have already “died”, unless they passed on as a martyr or some kind of a living saint. Credible private revelations to mystics tell us that most people who cross the veil into the afterlife pass through Purgatory and stay there for a good number of years, in some cases even up to the end of the world unless they are helped by earthlings.
In Medjugorje where the Blessed Mother has been appearing since 1981, visionaries were allowed to witness Purgatory.
Visionary Vicka, who offered tremendous physical sufferings so as to release some from Purgatory, recalled as follows:
“Purgatory is an endless space of ashy color. It was quite dark. I could feel people strangling and suffering there. The Blessed Mother told us we should be praying for souls stranded in Purgatory. She said only our prayers and sacrifices can release them from that place...The people there are helpless. They are really suffering.
“ We can be like Jesus a little bit if we just do some voluntary penance for the souls in Purgatory, especially for the ones who are abandoned by their families on earth...I am aware of their suffering. I know some of their torment. I know how desperately they need our prayers. They are so lonely that it is almost sickening to remember those moments I was there. It is really a great joy to do penance for the poor souls because I know how much it helps them.
“And many of our family members who have died desperately need our prayers. The Blessed Mother says we must pray courageously for them so that they might go to Heaven. They are powerless to help themselves.”
Another Medjugorje visionary, Mirjana, also wrote about Purgatory as follows;
“There are several levels in Purgatory. The more you pray on earth, the higher your level in Purgatory will be...The lowest level is the closest to hell, where the suffering is the most intense.
“ The highest level is closest to Heaven, and there the suffering is the least. What level you are on depends on the state of purity of your soul. The lower the level the people are on in Purgatory, the less they are able to pray and the more they suffer. The higher the level a person is in Purgatory, the easier it is for him to pray, the more he enjoys praying and the less he suffers...
“The Blessed Mother has asked us to pray for the souls in Purgatory. They are helpless to pray for themselves. Through prayer, we on earth can do much to help them. The Blessed Mother told me that when souls leave Purgatory and go to Heaven most go on Christmas Day.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself underscored the need for earthlings to help the souls in Purgatory. The words of Jesus on this was recorded by mystic Maria Valtorta, (1897-1961), a martyred soul from Italy, and a member of the mendicant Third Order of the Servants of Mary. She directly transcribed, with her own handwriting, the many visions of the life of Jesus she had received, filling some 9,000 pages in four years. At times, she wrote non-stop for 18 hours without interruption.
Her writings, published in volumes known as Poem of the Man-God and later The Gospel as Revealed to Me, was endorsed by St. Padre Pio and reportedly confirmed as authentic by the Blessed Mother herself in one of her recent apparitions.
Since her death, saints, beatified people, cardinals, bishops, theologians and renowned biblical scholars, as well as many lay people, took lively interest in her work. Pope Saint Paul VI offered her complete work to the archiepiscopal seminary of Milan when he was the city’s archbishop. Blessed Maria Teresa of Saint Joseph was particularly intimate with Valtorta and exchanged numerous letters with her.
Valtorta’s writings are full of biological, geological, astronomical, topographical and cultural details and at least 18,000 of these details have been proven true by experts.
On praying for the dead, Valtorta quoted Our Lord Jesus, as He talked to the shepherds who had once visited Him as soon as he was born in Bethlehem, thus:
“And if the dead need our prayers, it is not necessary to be near their bones to pray for them. Bones? What are they? A proof of the power of God Who made man with dust. But nothing else. Also animals have bones. But the skeletons of all animals are not so perfect as a man's skeleton.
“Only man, the king of creation, has an upright position, as a king over his subjects, and his face looks forwards and upwards without having to twist his neck; man looks upwards, towards the Abode of the Father. But they are still bones. Dust which will return to dust. The eternal Bounty has decided to assemble them again on the eternal Day to give even a greater joy to the blessed souls. Just imagine: not the souls only will be reunited and will love one another as and even more than they did on the earth, but they will rejoice also seeing one another with the same features they had on the earth: dear curly-haired children, like yours, Elias, fathers and mothers with loving hearts and faces like yours Levi and Joseph.
“Nay, in your case Joseph, it will be the day when at last you will see the faces for which you feel nostalgia. There are no more orphans, no widows among the just, up there...
“Prayers for the dead can be said anywhere. It is the prayer of a soul for the soul of a relative to the Perfect Spirit, Who is God, Who is everywhere. Oh! holy freedom of what is spiritual! There are no distances, no exile, no prisons, no tombs...
“There is nothing that can divide or restrict in painful impotence what is outside and above the chains of the flesh. You will go with your better part, towards your beloved ones. And they will come to you with their better part. And the whole effusion of loving souls will rotate around the Eternal Fulcrum, around God: the Most Perfect Spirit, the Creator of everything that was, is and will be, Love that loves you and teaches you how to love...” (End of quote.)
And so if we mark the birthday of a departed loved one, the better greeting is “I offer prayers for him.” To greet the departed with the assumption that he is already in Heaven could be a way to deprive him of help as he languishes in Purgatory, unable to protest against our useless happy greeting.