All four Gospels make note that Mary was present at the crucifixion and death of Jesus on Good Friday. Matthew, Mark, and Luke note that Mary and other women, in particular Mary Magdalene, “watched from a distance.” Only Luke writes that “some of Jesus’ disciples” were with Mary. Notably, the Twelve were not there, but hiding out of fear for their lives.
John, however, says very clearly that Mary—with Mary Magdalene and the disciple whom Jesus loved—witnessed Jesus’ death “from the foot of the cross,” not from a distance. At the same time, the distinction made between John and the other three evangelists may provide us with significant teaching moments.
On the one hand, Matthew, Mark, and Luke may be understood as historical descriptions since family and relatives, especially women, would not have been permitted up close to the actual place of execution. Executions were “men’s work.” Those executed were stripped of all clothing and died naked. Artists have added loincloths for the sake of Jesus’ dignity. And executioners would not have wanted hysterical family members getting in the way. If you’ve seen The Passion of the Christ, you will remember the shocking brutality of the crucifixion. But the point is that, even at a distance, the fact is that Mary and others saw Jesus crucified and die.
Universal Truths
John’s description has Mary, Magdalene, and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” close enough so that they could hear his words. John’s account is not for the purpose of describing the actual historical scene. Rather, it is to give the early Church a powerful instruction in the relationship of Mary not only to the disciple standing near her, but also to the whole Church. Jesus showed us that his mother was, indeed, the mother to all of God’s children.
In looking at this scene of Jesus’ crucifixion and noting the distinctions between Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s description—and that of John’s—we see an important point in reflecting on Scripture. Sometime people want to put great emphasis on those things that they see and understand as historical. It is essential to understand that God reveals his truth in various ways.
The writer, John, already knew of the other Gospels as they described Mary and the others watching the death of Jesus, showing their dedication and faithfulness to him even in death. The best conclusion to draw is that everything in the Gospels (and all of Scripture) is significant since it is the revealed word of God. Whether it is a fact of history or a manner of teaching that might not be historical, both contain the truth of God’s teaching for us.
Both the devotion of Mary and the women witnessing Jesus’ death—and the gift of Mary as mother to us—are truths we cannot be without.
“Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive powerful graces.”
“I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary.”
“The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies.”
“It will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of people from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.”
“The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall not perish.”
“Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its Sacred Mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise him in His justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just, he shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life.”
“Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the Sacraments of the Church.”
“Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plenitude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the Saints in Paradise.”
“I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary.”
“The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven.”
“You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary.”
“All those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities.”
“I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death.”
“All who recite the Rosary are my children, and brothers and sisters of my only Son, Jesus Christ.”
“Devotion of my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.”
Our Lady’s Rosary Makers was founded in 1949 by Brother Sylvan Mattingly, C.F.X. This Xaverian Brother taught people to make rosaries on the premise that they would make rosaries and distribute them freely to missionaries. Our Mission, set forth by our founder, Brother Sylvan, who envisioned a world in which all God’s children, possessing an instrument of peace and comfort, would work to fulfill Our Lady’s requests at Fatima, to pray the Rosary daily, is to provide those in need of a Rosary with one.
OLRM provides low cost materials, resources, and support in the spirit of Br. Sylvan’s mission and vision. We are a member driven, non-profit, Catholic lay apostolate within the Archdiocese of Louisville. Our diverse and active members spread devotion through the Immaculate Heart of Mary by making and sharing the Rosary with the world’s spiritually needy.
OLRM publishes FREE instructions for making rosaries. How to make a rosary instructions are available for cord and wire rosaries. In addition to these two there are some instructions for variations on these methods. Printable, online, and video instructions of making rosaries are offered directly on this site below.You may also order FREE copies in bulk, or a DVD for $8.50, through our Online Rosary Parts Catalog.
OUR HISTORY
Long haunted by the urgency of Mary’s words at Fatima, Brother Sylvan, C.F.X., decided in May 1949 to do something extra for Our Lady. He began to teach children how to make rosaries for the missions.
Inspired by Our Lady’s words, and having seen letters from missionaries around the world, he knew of the great need for rosaries in the mission fields.
He thought: The missionary can teach his people Christianity, he can offer the Mass for his people, but what happens when he’s off caring for others? With a few rosaries arriving he could now leave a symbol of the Faith to his people. Even though they could neither read nor write, they could pray the rosary.
Letters began pouring in from missions all over the world. The need was really greater than anyone had imagined.
Brother made a trip to Denver to teach ten people there. This group grew and spread the word to others as far away as a small town in Minnesota. Inspired people of Detroit started a group which today sends over 100,000 rosaries a year to the missions.
He set up a small office in a basement room at St. Xavier High School in Louisville, Kentucky and named his slow-forming club “Our Lady of Fatima Rosary Making Club.”. An elderly couple donated $25 for a typewriter to communicate with missionaries and club members.
In 1951 Brother asked Father Bertrand Rapp, newly ordained parish priest, to take over the duties as Chaplain to the Club. On a cold winter night in December, after working all day to build a fieldstone “Grotto for Mary”, Brother Sylvan died.
Father Rapp worked tirelessly to continue Brother’s work. Teaching here, arranging for volunteers somewhere else. He spent his vacations in Rosary Club endeavors, unselfishly working for Mary. By 1954 membership had grown to 2,500 adults and many children in schools across the nation.
With growth came the need for more capacity to serve our members. Brother Sylvan had a difficult time raising that first $25 for a typewriter, and with growth, there were more expenses. Thirty-four thousand dollars for a bead mold; twenty thousand for a die to mold the needed crucifixes and centers. Wire had to be bought in half ton lots for maximum economy. Where does all the money come from?
Our Blessed Mother inspires, but she doesn’t make it easy; yet the answer came simply enough. The deficit is made up by the Club making catalog sales to those rosary-makers who wish to make a nice gift rosary for a friend or relative. The profit from these catalog parts help make up the mission loss.
Annual members dues of $2 help pay for our newsletter, Our Lady’s Messenger, with the remainder going into the deficit fund. Invariably when there is need, someone helps with a small donation; sometimes a large one.
Today the club has grown from its humble origins to be the world’s leading mission Rosary apostolate. A new International Rosary Center was built in 1968. Today the center is more than double its original size. OLRM staff work diligently five days a week processing and filling orders for rosary supplies, as well as, connecting members with missionaries and missions in need of rosaries.
The International Rosary Center houses our operations, showroom, and Our Lady’s Chapel – in which we pray our morning rosary. The Blessed Sacrament is present and we have a monthly Mass on the First Saturday in honor of Brother Sylvan and all Club members
For more than two thousand years, the Christian saints have had great influence worldwide. Now, this new, inspiring collection of biographies reveals the legendary stories, little-known facts, and inspiring beliefs of some of the best loved saints. Full color throughout, each profile includes a biography with patronage and feast dates, along with prayers both to and about the saint.
Our book Ancient & Modern Saints below.part1 and part 2. Enjoy! Barbara and Sandy
We’re happy to announce the opening of Manhattan’s first-ever perpetual adoration chapel here at St. Joseph’s in Greenwich Village! The chapel will serve everyone in the Archdiocese.
The chapel will be open the week of July 30th.
You can now sign up for adoration times throughout the week using the link below. Thank you for helping people encounter Christ during this National Eucharistic Revival!
The History of the Church of St. Joseph in Greenwich Village
The Catholic Church wasn’t established in New York City until the end of the Revolutionary War. While a British colony, New York City outlawed the practice of Catholicism: it was illegal for a Catholic priest to even step foot in New York. St. Peter’s on Barclay Street was the first Catholic Church in New York City, followed by four others: St. Peter’s on Barclay Street (1785), St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mulberry Street (1809), St. Mary’s on Sheriff Street (1826), St. James on Oliver Street (1827), and Transfiguration on Mott Street (1827).
By the 1820’s Greenwich Village was transformed from an actual village outside of New York City into a suburb of the city. Its rural features disappeared as new buildings arose to house its growing population. The Church of St. Joseph was founded in 1829 by Bishop John Dubois to serve the new neighborhood of Greenwich Village.
During Lent I will be gifting Novena App. Please send me your email: sandra@sandradipasqua.com. It will work on all apple products.(Not for android yet)
Praying With the Saints: A novena is a prayer repeated to obtain a requested intention or spiritual grace. Recitation of a novena and adherence to its rules of repetition can be the act of sacrifice necessary to invoke a power greater than our own. It can express one’s willingness to accept divine intervention in the solution of a problem. The repetition of the prayer helps to gradually clear the mind of all distraction in order to put its focus on the requested intention. Not only is it a spiritual sacrifice, but it is also a way to allow the subconscious to face a real problem and to consider solutions for it.
Copy link below to see Novena App on the Apple Store.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward” (Mt 10:41). The word “prophet” appears three times. But what type of prophet? There are some who imagine a prophet to be some type of magician who foretells the future. But this is a superstitious idea and a Christian does not believe in superstitions, such as magic, tarot cards, horoscopes and other similar things. In parentheses, many, many Christians go to have the palms read…. Please…. Others depict a prophet as a character from the past only, who existed before Christ to foretell his coming. And yet, Jesus himself speaks today of the need to welcome prophets. Therefore, they still exist. But who are they? What is a prophet?
Each one of us, brothers and sisters, is a prophet. In fact, with Baptism, all of us received the gift of the prophetic mission (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1268). A prophet is the one who, by virtue of Baptism, helps others read the present under the action of the Holy Spirit. This is very important: to read the present not like news, no… to read it as enlightened and under the action of the Holy Spirit, who helps to understand God’s plans and correspond to them. In other words, the prophet is the one who points Jesus out to others, who bears witness to him, who helps live today and to build the future according to his designs. So we are all prophets, witnesses of Jesus, so “that the power of the Gospel might shine forth in daily social and family life” (Lumen Gentium, 35). A prophet is a living sign who points God out to others. A prophet is a reflection of Christ’s light on the path of the brothers and sisters. And so, we can ask ourselves: Do I, — each one of us – Do I, who am “a prophet by election” through Baptism, do I speak, and above all, do I live as a witness of Jesus? Do I bring a little bit of his light into the life of another person? Do I evaluate myself on this? I ask myself: What is my bearing witness like, what is my prophecy like?
In the Gospel, the Lord also asks to welcome the prophets. So it is important to welcome each other as such, as bearers of God’s message, each one according to his state and vocation, and to do it right where we live – that is, in the family, in the parish, in the religious community, in other places in the Church and in society. The Spirit has distributed gifts of prophecy in the holy People of God. This is why it is good to listen to everyone. For example, when an important decision needs to be made – let us think about this – it is good to pray first of all, to call on the Spirit, but then to listen and dialogue trusting that each person, even the littlest, because they have something important to say, a prophetic gift to share. Thus, the truth is sought and the climate is spread of listening to God and our brothers and sisters where people do not feel welcome because they say what I like, but they feel accepted and valued as the gifts they are.
Let us reflect on how many conflicts could be avoided and resolved in this way, listening to others with the sincere desire to understand each other! So, finally, let us ask ourselves: Do I know how to welcome my brothers and sisters as prophetic gifts? Do I believe that I need them? Do I listen to them respectfully, with the desire to learn? Because each of us needs to learn from others. Each of us needs to learn from others.
May Mary, Queen of Prophets, help us see and welcome the good that the Spirit has sown in others.
An Anglican priest reflects on matters of faith in private life and public discourse.
Happy Easter! Easter marks the high point of the Christian liturgical calendar, when billions of Christians around the world celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the central hope of the Christian faith. Perhaps no one on earth has studied that event and the subsequent responses to it more than N.T. Wright. He serves as senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and is emeritus professor of New Testament at the University of St. Andrews. He has written over 80 books focused on Jesus and his first followers. He is also a Christian and a former bishop of Durham in the Church of England. One of his books, “The Resurrection of the Son of God,” is an exhaustive dive into the scholarship and debates around the resurrection of Christ. I asked Wright to speak with me about his research and this baffling, world-altering claim of resurrection. This interview has been edited and condensed.
Tish Harrison Warren: Your book presents the resurrection of Jesus as an actual, physical, historical event, not simply a metaphor or spiritual experience. Why does the idea that this was an actual event matter to you?
N.T. Wright: I’m well aware that many people — including some in churches — have treated the resurrection and Easter as a general way of talking about the rebirth of hope or a spiritual metaphor. Indeed, in the New Testament, the idea of resurrection is sometimes used metaphorically to talk about a new moral life, a life where everything is going to be different. But in the New Testament, that’s always rooted in the claim that when they’re talking about resurrection, they’re talking about something that actually happened.
In the first century, the word for resurrection, the Greek word “anastasis,” was never about a vague sense of possibility or the rebirth of hope or anything like that. It was always about people who had been bodily dead now discovered to be bodily alive. I’ve shown in great detail in the book that all the early Christians for whom we have any evidence, right through until around 150 years after the time of Jesus, when they’re talking about resurrection, that’s what they’re talking about.
It’s beyond question that when the first followers of Jesus used that language about him, they intended to say something definite about his being bodily alive, albeit in a whole new way. He seemed to have gone through death and out the other side, but into a new world in which he was emphatically embodied. Unless we are prepared to acknowledge that, we’re simply not taking their words seriously.
Then, as now, claiming that somebody was alive again — particularly somebody who made the sort of claims that Jesus made or were made about him — was revolutionary. It was dangerous talk. So if people don’t like dangerous talk, then stay away from Easter is my advice.
There’s a funny line where you write, “The discovery that dead people stayed dead was not first made by the philosophers of the Enlightenment.” That’s obvious, of course, but we sometimes assume that skepticism is a recent phenomenon. How would ancient Jewish audiences and Gentile audiences think about the apostles talking about the resurrection?
Early Christianity was born into a world where everybody knew that its central claim was ridiculous, and the early Christians knew it themselves. It’s not that they thought resurrection might just happen to a few people here and there. But they said it had happened in this case.
This claim seemed absolutely crazy. Ordinary, sober people knew perfectly well that dead people don’t get raised up again.
Many Jewish people for two centuries before Jesus and on for at least the next century believed that in the end, all God’s people would be raised because they believed that the God of Israel, the Creator God, would remake the whole world. But this is about one person being raised from the dead ahead of everybody else.
In the non-Jewish world, there is no evidence that anyone is expecting dead people to come back again. There’s lots of speculation about other places they might go. The Platonic speculation about going off to the Isles of the Blessed and having lovely conversations about philosophy all day. The Stoics believed that there would be a great Phoenixlike conflagration and the whole world would then be reborn.
But most people knew that when you died, that was basically it. That’s why when Paul, in Athens, said this had happened, most of them laughed at him. It didn’t fit their worldview. That’s crucial because you can’t fit the resurrection into the existing worldviews that we’ve got. The resurrection brings its own worldview with it and says, if you’re going to understand the way things are, you start with this and work out. If Jesus really has been raised, then everything is different.
You spend time in the book looking at Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances in the Gospels. It seems that the disciples’ testimony about seeing Jesus matters to you. Why do you trust their testimony?
If you understand how people thought about death and life after death in the ancient world, you will need two strands of converging evidence.
On the one hand, there are extraordinary reports about people going to the tomb of Jesus and finding that there was no body in it. In that world, grave robbery was a common occurrence, so an empty tomb by itself says, “This is odd,” but we can tell some stories about this that are much more credible than the idea that he’s alive again.
However, if at the same time this person turns up and is seen and felt to be bodily alive and speaks to people and cooks breakfast by the shore, then that is totally unexpected as well. Those two things kind of interpret one another. We know many experiences that people have — and I’ve known of experiences like this in our own family — that somebody who recently died will suddenly show up in a room or somewhere, for a moment or two, to people that they have known, then disappear again. They knew about that kind of thing in the first century as well. They had language for that. It was like an angel visiting. There’s a place in the New Testament where the disciples think that Peter has been killed in prison in Acts Chapter 12, and he’s knocking on the door and they say, “It can’t be Peter. It must be his angel.” They think this is a kind of angelic visitation before he goes off to wherever he will go.
You need those two bits of evidence put together and then the testimony makes sense. Otherwise, empty tomb? Somebody has taken the body. That’s what Mary Magdalene thought. Appearances? “Oh, yeah, we know about those. Just go and check in the tomb. You will find there’s still a body there.” But if there isn’t, then we are into something different. So that’s why that evidence is so important.
It seems like these appearances meant something to the apostles themselves. Paul reminded people in his letters that at the time of his writing there were people still living who had seen Jesus after his resurrection.
Exactly. At the beginning of the 15th chapter of Paul’s First Letter to Corinth, he mentions the people to whom the risen Jesus appeared. To Peter and to the rest of the apostles, and various others. And then he says that Jesus appeared to 500 people all at once. And most of them are still alive. The implication strongly being: “You go and ask them. You find out what they saw.” In other words, they can’t all be just making it up or all be deluded.
We have evidence of other revolutionary or messianic movements whose founder or leader was killed by the authorities. In such cases, either the movement died out or they got another leader. The central and undisputed leader of the early Jerusalem Christians was James, known widely as the brother of Jesus. Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian who was in Jerusalem at the time when James was killed in the early 60s, refers to James as “the brother of the so-called Messiah,” i.e. Jesus. But nobody ever suggested that James was the Messiah. Had Jesus stayed dead, this makes no sense. An executed Messiah is a failed Messiah.
Was there a time that you didn’t believe the resurrection occurred? Was there a moment for you or a series of moments over time that tethered you to belief?
I think until I was probably in my middle or late teens, I’d assumed that resurrection was more like a kind of Platonic “going to heaven” hope, souls going to heaven, and that Jesus had to be raised from the dead in order to lead the way to heaven or something like that.
When I was a student studying ancient history in Oxford I read C.S. Lewis’s book “Miracles.”Lewis is very good on the appearances of the risen Jesus and how the people who first saw Jesus did not immediately recognize him. He was definitely embodied but his body seemed to be different. The way they cash that out is that he’s gone through death and out the other side, beyond the reach of pain, corruption, decay or death itself.
That did not comport with the sermons I was hearing in churches, which were more or less, like the hymn says, “You asked me how I know he lives. He lives within my heart.” I realized that actually, that’s not good enough. The gift of the Holy Spirit is the presence of Jesus within your heart. But the truth of the resurrection is a truth about something that actually happened in history.
Let’s say that what the Gospels claim is true: Jesus is risen. It seems that the world keeps going and there’s still oppression, suffering and grief. There’s still death. So what difference does it make that Jesus is raised from the dead?
It’s exactly the same objection that people made right at the beginning, including during the public career of Jesus. He went about saying, “This is what it looks like when God becomes king.” And people would say, well, there’s still an awful lot of bad stuff going on. Caesar is still ruling the world. And Jesus constantly told stories to say, no, this is what God’s kingdom looks like: It’s like a seed that grows secretly. It’s like somebody planting lots of seed and some go bad. But look, there’s a huge harvest coming up over here.
People regularly say, if there really was a God, if he really wanted to sort the place out, then he would come and, bang, it would be done. He would send in the tanks — metaphorically speaking, or perhaps not — and sort out the evil and wickedness in the world. But the Sermon on the Mount says that when God comes to sort out the world the Jesus way, he doesn’t send in tanks. He sends in the poor and the brokenhearted and the hungry-for-justice people and the meek and the people who are ready to suffer for getting the world sorted out. The way the Sermon on the Mount works is exactly the same way that the gospel of the resurrection works. Jesus, risen from the dead, is the planting of that great seed. And now the plant has spread in all directions.
Obviously bad things happen. Bad things happen in and through the church. We all know that. I know that as well as anyone. But all sorts of great and good things do happen. Healing happens, hope happens, and ultimately it all goes back to this single seed of the raising of Jesus from the dead.
How did the resurrection change the disciples’ lives? And is that instructive for how it would change Christians’ lives today?
It’s hugely instructive because even Jesus’ most loyal disciples clearly had not expected him to be raised from the dead. They were flattened by his death. But then his resurrection, plus what happened afterward, which was Jesus doing this very strange thing of somehow bequeathing them his own personal presence, which they came to call the Spirit, or the Holy Spirit. This absolutely revolutionized them. And it’s not just that they were fearful before and completely emboldened and ready to go to the ends of the earth afterward. It’s that the agenda changed.
When Jesus was arrested, one of his closest followers had a sword and was prepared to do battle. But as soon as the resurrection happens, we find that everything has changed and they are embodying Jesus’ agenda, which is to love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. So that when the first Christian martyr is killed, Stephen, in Acts Chapter 7, as he’s dying, he says, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
The deep spirit of Jesus’ way of going about doing God’s kingdom has changed within them because the resurrection has shown them that the way to victory is not by fighting, is not by force of arms, but is by the Way of the Cross and the resurrection which follows. And that is as radical today as ever it was.
Tish Harrison Warren (@Tish_H_Warren) is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America and the author of “Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep.”
I’m sharing this from today’s edition of the New York Times, which I subscribe to.
St. Thomas speculates that those who are in purgatory are more perfect than we insofar as they are not able to sin, but they are less perfect than we insofar as the punishment which they are suffering is concerned.14 In this latter respect, they are not in a state of prayer for us, but rather in a state which requires us to pray for them. But nothing stops them from praising, thanking, adoring, petitioning and the like but Thomas does not develop this notion of their prayer life.
Are the souls in purgatory capable of praying for us?
St. Thomas had taught: “The dead by nature of their case do not know things which take place in this world, especially the interior thoughts of the heart”. . . .15 It would not make sense therefore to think that they could “hear” our prayers and supplicate for us. Also, since they can no longer merit for us, therefore it would mean that we can pray for them but not the reverse.
By the time of the Jesuit theologians Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) and St. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), it became popular among the laity to request prayers from the souls in purgatory. And by the time of the eighteenth century, St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) is teaching that the Church does not officially pray to them because it is not known if they hear us or not but a Catholic can piously believe that “God makes our prayers known to them.”16 Thomas in this context had taught that since the blessed see the Word, he can give them ideas about what is going on in the world but those in purgatory do not see the Word “by which they are able to know what we think or say.”17 So it follows that “we do not implore their assistance by prayer. . . .” But, using Thomas’s other principles, it is not contradictory for God to give infused ideas to souls in purgatory if he chooses just as it is possible for God to permit a soul in purgatory to appear before others on earth to entreat them for prayers and Masses to be said for them.18
Suarez opines that the souls in purgatory are holy and near to God and love us in a general way because they know the dangers we are in and how great then is our need of Divine help and grace.19St. Robert Bellarmine in his work adds to that idea and maintains that the souls in purgatory have a great love of God and their union with him makes their prayers more powerful since they are superior to us in love of God and intimacy of union with him.20 From Thomas’s perspective, even though Aquinas taught that no one can merit for others once dead, his theology of prayer could be applied here in favor of praying to the poor souls without necessarily agreeing with all that Bellarmine asserts:
Nevertheless, God sometimes hears sinners, when, to wit, they ask for something acceptable to God. For God dispenses his goods not only to the righteousness but also to sinners (Matth. V. 45) …, not indeed on account of their merits, but of his loving kindness.21
So, one could say that the prayers of the souls in purgatory may obtain from God a favorable answer of our prayers to them because of the mercy of God both to them and us. It might also be possible that some souls in purgatory could favorably answer our prayers because of their previous merits here on earth. In any case, while the Magisterium remained silent on this question other than tolerating the practice of the people, the new Catechism clearly teaches:
958 Communion with the dead. “In full consciousness of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has honored with great respect the memory of the dead; and ‘because it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins’ she offers her suffrages for them.” Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.
With this last sentence, there can be no mistaking that the Church has approved both the practice of the faithful in this regard and, at least, the conclusions of Suarez and Bellarmine without granting or denying their reasoning. This last sentence of the Catechism does not indicate that any individual soul can necessarily intercede for us, nor does the number in question tell us anything about how the souls would know what to pray for but it does clearly state that they intercede for us and their efforts can succeed. This conclusion leaves theologians free to speculate (and disagree) on the “how” and “what” transpires in purgatory for them to help us.
How poor are the poor souls?
It would seem that in addition to the mysterious sufferings of purgatory, there are its joys as well. First and foremost, no matter what the duration, each soul knows with certitude that he or she is saved. This must be very consoling and give a kind of strength to endure whatever sufferings the soul has to endure. Second, the entire ensemble of gifts which exists in a newly baptized soul exists in purgatory. What this means is that the “poor” souls also possess sanctifying grace, the indwelling of the Holy Trinity, faith, hope, charity, (possibly the infused moral virtues according to Thomists) the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the characters of certain sacraments. Since one can petition God during this period of suffering, though without meriting anything (according to Aquinas), this is a great period for meditation and contemplation still being informed by divine love and possibly infused as well. Therefore, since there are purifying acts of the soul, then the virtue of charity must elicit joy which co-exists with the sorrow for having been negligent in one’s relationship to God while on earth. Third, it would seem reasonable to assume that since all the members of the Church in purgatory are united by infused divine love, they will encourage one another in their sufferings. This too can be a source of consolation. Finally, as one sees himself becoming more rectified interiorly, this must produce joy knowing that at some interval one will be ready to hurl oneself into the abyss of the all-loving God. Perhaps that is the greatest suffering which goes on in purgatory which some mystics have experienced here on earth: a overwhelming desire to be “dissolved” in the Triune God and still not yet being worthy to possess Them in such completeness.
If a soul is brought to heaven from purgatory in part because of the prayers and sacrifices made by a member of the Church on earth, then it follows that such a soul will always be in deep gratitude toward and will also watch over that person with his prayers. For this and other reasons, it becomes evident that part of the growth in one’s spiritual life on earth must include these persons in purgatory in our prayer life. When one is tempted to give up on prayer in general, one necessarily abandons these souls as well. It seems as if this ability or power to help loved ones after death by sacrifices, prayers, Masses and indulgences, is the Triune God’s way, therefore, to keep us from falling away from Them provided we continue to have faith in God’s Word on these matters.
Let’s not forget The Forgotten Souls in Purgatory. Pray for them.
This item 1210 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org.
The pope said that all pastoral activities “will be fruitless unless we put Jesus at their center and fall down in worship before him.”
“Like the Magi, let us fall down and entrust ourselves to God in the wonder of worship. Let us worship God, not ourselves; let us worship God and not the false idols that seduce by the allure of prestige and power … let us love God and not bow down before passing things and evil thoughts, seductive yet hollow and empty.”—Pope Francis
The Three Kings
Caspar
Caspar is sometimes identified as the King of Tarsus and is represented as an old man with white hair and beard. He wears a green cloak and crown and is the first to kneel in adoration of the Christ child. Caspar is often associated with the gift of gold (though this is sometimes Melchior).
Melchior
Melchior is the middle-aged King of Arabia and brings the gift of frankincense from his homeland. He is portrayed with brown hair and beard, wearing a gold cloak
Balthasar
Balthasar is the young black King of Ethiopia and wears a purple/blue cloak. Balthasar is traditionally associated with the gift of myrrh.
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