Deacon Tam Tran

PURGATORY

Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it [on] the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him [on] the last day.” John 6:37-40

November 2nd is all soul’s day, the Gospel clearly talks about Jesus’s mission to save everyone’s souls on the last day. Let’s start with a story of a deacon and a taxi driver.

A deacon and a taxi driver died and went to the gate of Heaven. St Peter stopped both of them at the gate to check their records. After a careful evaluation, St Peter let the taxi driver enter the Heaven and make the deacon wait at the gate.

Since the deacon and the taxi driver lived in the same town and know each other, the deacon said to St Peter: “St Peter! That taxi driver is a wrecked driver, he has no consideration for safety to anyone and put everyone in great danger” St Peter said “My dear deacon, that is precisely the point. Since he is a wrecked driver, everyone who enters his taxi was so afraid of their life and they prayed so hard for themselves and for him. That is why he enters the heaven first. And you my dear deacon, your homily is boring and too long, everyone falls to sleep and that is why you have to wait.

The moral of this story is to emphasize the importance of praying, if there is no body pray for you, then you have to wait at the gate of heaven until you have a sufficient number of people who would pray for you. That leads to another story of how do we get enough people who would pray for you so you can go to haven.

I had the opportunity to read a tiny book called “The Amazing Secret of the Souls in Purgatory – An Interview with Maria Simma” written by Sister Emmanuel of Medjugorje and published in 1997. At the time of this publication, Maria Simma was 82 years old. She lived alone in her little house in Sonntag, a very lovely village in the Vorarlberg Mountain in Austria that was not too far from where the movie “The Sound of Music” was filmed. Maria Simma is a simple country woman who is a passionate Catholic and has a great humility. She does not have much education and lives in real poverty in her little room which hardly had enough space to move around.

In this book, Maria talked about purgatory and many souls that came to her from purgatory either at night or sometimes in the day time and asked her for a favor. In most cases, they ask her to pray for them or have Masses celebrated for them. They also asked her to have the rosary said or make the Stations of the Cross. Sometimes they asked her to suffer for them in a few hours so they can be delivered or go to heaven.

What exactly is Purgatory and why the souls are in there?

Suppose that you are madly in love with someone and that person also madly in love with you. You have never dreamed of being loved so much and you sense that person has a great desire to be with you. And the fire of love which burns in your heart impels you to throw yourself into that person’s arms. But wait! You realize at this moment that you haven't washed for months and months, that you smell bad, your nose is running, your hair is greasy and you say to yourself "No, I just can't present myself in this state. I must go to have a good shower and I will come back."

But the love which has been born in your heart is so intense, so burning, and so strong that this delay for the shower is absolutely unbearable. And the pain of the absence, even if it only lasts for a couple of minutes, is a terrible wound in your heart.

Purgatory is exactly this. It's a delay imposed by our impurity, a delay before God's embrace, which causes intense suffering. It is precisely this burning, this longing which cleanses us of whatever is still impure in us. Purgatory is a place of desire for God whom we are not yet united and it is the soul itself that wants to go to Purgatory, in order to be pure before going to Heaven.

Why can the soul pray for themselves and why they have to ask Mary Simma to pray for them?

According to Mary Simma, when we are living on earth, we can repair the evil that we have done but at the moment of death, the time to earn merits is over. The souls in Purgatory envy us for this opportunity. Even the angels are jealous of us, for we have the possibility of growing for as long as we are on earth.

Mary Simma’s stories really raised a very big question in my mind. How can a simple 82 years old lady with no formal education acquire such solid theological foundation on purgatory and the concept of no merit for all souls in purgatory? Since Mary Simma was not a theologian, I am totally convinced that she must actually see the souls as she tells her stories.

St. John in today’s Gospel clearly told us that Jesus is on a mission given by the Father to save every soul that the Father has created and entrusted to Him. “Everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him [on] the last day.” However, Jesus is no longer here so how does he do that? Jesus needs our cooperation to fulfill his responsibility because we are his instruments. If the souls in purgatory cannot pray for themselves, we have to pray for them.

There are many benefits in praying for the souls in purgatory. When the souls go to heaven as results of our praying for them, they can then pray for us when we are in trouble. Their prayers now become very powerful because they are in heaven. I find that praying the Chaplet of St Gertrude is the most efficient way and the best return on investment of my praying time.

Saint Gertrude was born January 6, 1256 in Germany and she was an orphan and student at the Benedictine abbey in the care of the Abess, Gertrude.  The nuns of her abbey described Saint Gertrude as a loveable and quick-witted. Saint Gertrude had a great devotion to the Holy Souls in purgatory.  She also had the gift of miracles as well as that of prophecy.

During one of her visions Jesus told St. Gertrude that the “Chaplet of Saint Gertrude” prayed on an ordinary Rosary would release 50,000 souls from purgatory each time it is said. The Chaplet was approved and recommended by Cardinal Pahiarca of Lisbon, Portugal in March 4, 1936.

Every one of us will face death sometimes in the future. However, how peaceful would we feel knowing that there are 50,000 souls will pray and wait for us from heaven especially at the moment of our death even we only pray the Chaplet of St Gertrude once. Jesus did promise to release 50,000 souls to heaven when we say it and I strongly believe this is the best “return on investment” of our time because it only takes about 21 minutes to complete a chaplet.

What do you get to lose and what are you waiting for – Pick up the Chaplet of St Gertrude?