Spirit of the Lenten Season

There are two guiding principles for the observance of Lent. During this season, the faithful are to grow in their love of Jesus Crucified, and they are to practice extra penance for their own and other people's sins. Both aspects of Lent deserve some explanation.

Love of Jesus Crucified. The spirit of Lent is the spirit of Christ Crucified. Therefore, whatever enables us to better understand Christ's Passion and Death, and deepens our responsive love for His great love toward us should be fostered during the Lenten season. Some recommendations:

1. Meditation on the Gospel narratives of Christ's Passion.
   
2. Spiritual reading of books like Goodier's Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Abbot Marmion's The Way of the Cross, Edward Leen's Why the Cross?, Fulton Sheen's Seven Words on the Cross.
   
3. Recitation of prayers like Soul of Christ Sanctify Me.
   
4. Besides making the daily Way of the Cross, encouraging others to make the Stations at least on Fridays during Lent.
   
5. Having some symbol of Christ's Passion, like the crucifix or picture of the crucifix within easy eye vision to remind us of the Passion at odd moments of the day.
   
6. Having some short aspiration which is recited (at least mentally) a few times during the day, like, "My Jesus Crucified," or "Heart of Jesus, obedient unto death, have mercy on us."
   
7. Occasionally reciting the Litany of the Precious Blood.
   
8. Spending some extra time before the Blessed Sacrament, asking Our Lord to grow in the understanding of His continued Passion now in the Church, which is His Mystical Body on earth!
   
9. Making an occasional entry into one's spiritual journal about, "How much the Passion of Christ means to me."
   

Reparation for Sin. In practicing penance, we should keep in mind that there are two levels of reparation we are to practice, for our own and other people's sins. We are to expiate the guilt incurred by failing in one's love for God. And we are to repair the harm done by disobeying the will of God.

On the first level, our penance should be the practice of a deeper and more generous love for God

• By making acts of divine love.
  
• By doing our ordinary work with more selfless love for God.
  
• By putting our heart more sincerely into whatever we are doing, and periodically telling our Lord we are doing it out of love for Him.
  
• By deciding before Lent, what form(s) of charity I will practice towards those with whom I live or work. There is no more pleasing love of God, as expiation, than the selfless love of others whom God puts into my daily life.
  
• By going through the spiritual and corporal works or mercy, and selecting one or more on which I wish to concentrate during Lent, as my form of penance-as-love, offered to the loving but offended God.
  

On the second level, our penance should strive to endure some pain in order to expiate the sinful pleasure that is always the substance of sin. This can take on a variety of forms, and no two people are the same in this matter. The following are merely examples.

• More frequent reception of the Sacrament of Penance during Lent.
  
• More frequent attendance at Mass.
  
• Less time spent in eating, or eating less food, or getting up earlier than usual.
  
• Sacrifice of some hours per week that would otherwise have been spent in watching television, listening to the radio, reading secular newspapers, magazines, or fiction.
  
• Walking, instead of driving, and walking upstairs instead of using an elevator.
  
• Doing without some delicacy at table, or not eating between meals.
  
• Getting up promptly in the morning, and retiring in good time at night.
  
• Answering letters or writing to persons who would appreciate hearing from us.
  
• Gauging one's time in telephone conversation or conversation in general.

-- A Brief History of Lent by Fr John A Hardon, SJ

Written for the Marian Catechist, 1989

We serve others best when we do most for their souls

"WHEN did Christ redeem the world? When He died on Good Friday. How did Christ redeem the world? By His Passion and Death on Calvary. Why do we make the Sign of the Cross? To remind ourselves we have been redeemed by the Cross.

Of course we know that Christ, the First Apostle, was sent by the Father to save mankind by every word and action He performed during His visible stay on earth. But it was especially by His sufferings that we were delivered from sin and mainly by His Cross that we were saved.

We need to recall these truths in our day, when activism is being honored far beyond what it deserves. Some people feel “useless” because they are no longer as “active” in the service of others as they formerly were or as they would like to be.

They may suffer in a variety of ways: with some draining disease or crippling disability; with a natural, but no less painful, weakening of their bodily powers as they advance in years; with the awful sense of being no longer needed after decades of active service in the priesthood, religious life, single state or in rearing a family. Or the Lord may touch them early and they are disabled or confined or gravely handicapped in the prime of life.

No matter. The number of such persons in our society is large, and larger than most people would ever suppose. What they need to be told is that they can actually do more for others now than they ever could before.

Why should this be so? Because we serve others best when we do most for their souls. And we do most for their souls when we obtain graces from God for their numerous spiritual needs. If this means prayer, and it does, there is no more effective prayer than one that is joined with sacrifice, which in practice means prayer that is animated by the cheerful acceptance of the Cross.

The apostolate of suffering is not some exotic enterprise for only mystics or what we sometimes call “victim souls.” It is open to everyone who has faith, and love, and zeal for souls. Faith assures us that suffering must be noble, seeing that God became man in order to suffer and thereby save the world. Love enables us to make of every pain a willing sacrifice, seeing that it costs us so much. And zeal for souls urges us to actually rejoice as we are privileged to suffer something for the myriad souls redeemed by the blood of Christ.

He did His part to reconcile this sinful world with the Father. But the mercy that He merited by His Cross will remain sterile unless sinners cooperate with the graces He won for mankind. We must unite our cross with the Savior’s to help sinners respond to God’s mercy.

With St. Paul we can say to others what he told the Christians of his day: “It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that is still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church.” (Colossians 1:24). Christ is still redeeming the world, with our cooperation."

-- The Apostolate of Suffering by Fr John A Hardon, SJ

The motive power behind gentleness is always love

"Gentleness is the virtue that restrains the passion of anger. Over the centuries it has been variously described. Sometimes poetically, sometimes theologically. Where anger flares up, gentleness calms down. Where anger is a bursting flame gentleness is a gentle rain. Where anger asserts itself and crushes, gentleness embraces and quiets and soothes yet as we hear these and similar descriptions of gentleness we are liable to make the mistake as I dare say so much of the modern world makes the mistake of identifying gentleness with weakness.

A gentle person is a meek person. So most people think that a gentle person is a weak person. It is just the opposite. In order to be truly gentle and that does not mean soft or sentimental, one must be strong. Only strong people can be gentle, because gentleness restrains strength by love. Whether its strength of body that could destroy physically or strength of will that could crush volitionally or strength of mind that could devastate intellectually. It’s only such people that can even begin to be gentle. And the reason of course is because they’ve got something to restrain.

But the motive power behind gentleness is always love. Love of the other for whose sake I restrain myself. There are then two qualities that belong to the meaning of gentleness and they are strength and love. As we turn to the Gospels and ask ourselves where and how has the Savior commended this virtue to our practice? At first sight we may be shocked to learn that there is only one expressed occasion when Christ explicitly told us to learn from Him; now of course He was teaching constantly. But only once did He formally tell us, command us to learn of Him. Learn of me He told us, for I am gentle and humble of heart. So the first and primary lesson that we learn from Christ’s own telling us, bidding us, to imitate him especially in His gentleness is that if we are to be gentle as He was we must be humble like He was. Gentleness or meekness which are synonymous are impossible in the absence of humility. Why? If we’ve ever asked ourselves why do we get irritated with people. Why do they bother us? Why all these inner and sometimes outer flares of passion isn’t because somehow though we may not even articulate the fact to ourselves that we, well, don’t like what the person is doing because we feel the person has no right to be doing this. At least in my presence or I wouldn’t do this. Who does she think she is talking that way to me? If we wish then in imitation of Jesus to be gentle we must become humble. So much so that I do not hesitate to say that the best single barometer of humility which by its nature is quite hidden and not so easy to identify, the best single barometer of how humble we are is how gentle we are. Only humble people will be gentle. Because only they will honestly say to themselves why should I get angry with her, come to think of it I’ve just done the same. Or why should I be irritated? If I’m really honest I know there must be things that are irritating to him or her. So why should one irritant be irritated with another irritant?

If we are humble, if we look into our hearts, and not just at times, but constantly, what do we see there? If we look, you know we don’t see except what we’re looking for. If we look into our hearts we see sin, passion, weakness, ineptitude, crudeness, self-conceit. You name it and we’ve got it. All it takes is a good hard look but that takes humility. We are so prone, as the same Jesus has been telling us, we are so prone to see the faults even the minorest of them, the littlest thing that Christ calls speck in our brother’s eye, and we don’t see the beam in our own. And do you know why because maybe the beam is so big in our own eyes we can’t even recognize the fact that the person does have virtue, does have fine qualities. Remember this: we always see others through our own eyes. And our eyes are sinful eyes. So much and more that could be said about Christ’s teaching about gentleness is practice. Christ practiced his gentleness from the womb of His mother. No objections recorded by Mary or Joseph for having to trek the long miles to Bethlehem."

-- Gentleness by Fr John A Hardon, SJ

Memorial of St Maximilian Kolbe

"St. Maximillian Kolbe was born in Poland in 1894, and baptized under the name Raymond. In 1910, he entered the novitiate of the Conventual Franciscans and was given his religious name Maximillian. He took his final vows in Rome in 1914 and three years later, organized, with six other confreres, the association of the Meletsia Immaculate, or The Militia of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. Kolbe never forgot that while here on earth we are members of the Church militant. He was ordained in Rome in 1918 and in 1922 he began publishing the magazine, "Knight of the Immaculate," first in Polish and later in several other languages. St. Maximillian has been an outstanding promoter of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary through the modern media of writing, radio and, since his day, television.

In 1927, St. Maximillian began building a whole town with property donated by a wealthy nobleman, called the "Town of the Immaculate," outside of Warsaw. There he began training people with vocations among the laity and prospective Religious and Priests, to become apostles of Mary. The first Marian Missionaries to Japan were trained in the "Town of the Immaculate."

In 1930, Maximillian opened a Marian publication apostolate in Nagasaki, Japan – one of the two cities in Japan which would later be ravaged by a nuclear bomb during the Second World War. As popes have been saying ever since, God chose His most faithful people as a sacrifice to insure future peace in the world.

In 1939, Maximillian was arrested by the Nazis who had taken over Poland. Two years later, in 1941, he died at the infamous concentration camp Auschwitz. The common practice by the Nazis of randomly selecting prisoners to die claimed a young man with a wife and family. When he cried out for mercy on behalf of his family Maximillian offered his life in place of the husband and father. The SS guards took Kolbe instead and placed him in a cell where he was denied food and water. When the guards came to collect and dispose of the bodies, they found Kolbe was amazingly still alive. In disgust the guards inoculated him with a deadly poison. He was beatified by Pope Paul VI and canonized by Pope John Paul II.

Maximillian's Marian Spirituality

The spirituality of St. Maximillian is based directly on this truth: the Immaculate Virgin Mary is the Mediatrix of all graces. That is the first premise of his Marian thinking. If this were not so, Maximillian explains, all our strength and effort in the spiritual life would be in vain.

In other words, our spiritual life depends on grace. That's obvious, but it also depends on the grace that we must receive through Mary.

Second, the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mediatrix of all the graces that any human being receives, believer or unbeliever, Christian or non-Christian, without exception.

Third, our life of grace depends on the nearness of grace that we have to the soul of the Immaculate Mother of God. It is an article of Faith that everyone receives sufficient grace to reach Heaven.

But the degree of grace that any person receives – always from Christ but through Mary – depends on the degree of grace which that person, at the time when the grace is needed, is near to, like to, assimilated to the Mother of Jesus. The more Marian we are, the more assurance we have of obtaining grace from Mary's Son through His Mother. That deserves to be memorized.

Fourth, the nearer a person's soul is to the Blessed Virgin Mary's soul, the more pure that person's soul becomes. That person becomes freer from sin, holier, and deepened in his faith, growing in understanding and firmly accepting God's revealed truth. In other words, holiness determines clarity; holiness determines intelligibility; holiness determines certitude in the faith that we already possess. Our faith will grow in the measure of our holiness approximating, at any given point in time, the holiness of Christ's Mother. Correspondingly, the greater becomes that person's virtues – theological and moral. This is a unique insight into Marian spirituality.

Our relationship with Mary, as Mediatrix is normative. Depending on how closely our life of grace approximates Mary's at any given time in our lives, she then becomes the standard of how much grace we are going to receive.

Fifth, Maximillian describes Our Lady in terms of her relationship with the Holy Trinity. The one created person in whom we can best recognize and find reflected the Holy Trinity, is the Blessed Virgin Mary who is the spouse, says Maximillian, of the Holy Trinity.

Everything which God does, outside of His own Trinitarian life – in the created universe of time and eternity – is always done by all three Persons, equally and simultaneously. Having created the world, the apex of the work of the Holy Trinity is the Incarnation and therefore Mary, who had to cooperate with her free human will with the Holy Trinity. Otherwise there would not have been the Incarnation.

Maximillian insists that although Mary is of course a creature, there is one and only one who is the most sublime model that God has created among human persons; one for us to both venerate and imitate, and that is the Immaculate Mother of God.

Sixth, unlike her Son Who is a divine Person, there are not, as the heretical Nestorius claimed, two persons in Christ, human and divine. There are two natures, one Person in Christ. Mary was not divine, but she was as closely united with the Trinity as any human person can be. The key words in Maximillian's Mariology are "human person." The only human person who was as closely united to the Holy Trinity as is absolutely possible, and therefore, the highest reflection of the love of the Holy Trinity; the most perfect human, living, visible, audible human being is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Seventh, St. Maximillian spoke of the human soul as going with Mary to Christ, not going to Christ from Mary. He avoided that preposition of relationship.

Eighth, he stressed the importance of every Catholic consecrating him or herself to Mary and added that this could be done in one of a variety of ways. "We can consecrate ourselves to the Immaculate One in various ways," he said, "and express our consecration in different words or different forms. In fact, a simple act of the will would be enough for that really is the essence of such a Marian consecration." However, he did provide one formula as follows: "My Immaculate Queen of heaven and earth, refuge of sinners and Mother most loving; you to whom God entrusted the entire order of mercy. I am an unworthy sinner. I cast myself at your feet, humbly pleading that you ordain to accept me completely and totally as your property and possession and do with me, and all my powers of body and soul, and with all my life and death and eternity, whatever is pleasing to you."

Ninth, for St. Maximillian Kolbe, the outward sign of consecration to Mary was to wear, or at least carry, the Miraculous Medal. He explained, this is not absolutely essential, but then he added, "it is the integral sign and condition for our consecration."

Tenth, the most effective means of conversion is through Mary. His great hope was that the missionary evangelization and conversion apostolate of the Catholic Church into the future would be placed into the hands of Mary. He predicted that after 2000 years, only a fraction of the human race would even be nominally Christian. He said, "we need Mary for the conversion of sinners, for the bringing of tepid souls to sanctity, for bringing the millions of non-Christians to Christ.

Conditions for Conversion

St. Maximillian saw the prospects of converting sinners to a life of grace under two conditions. First, we will be as effective converters (or evangelizers or missionaries) as we are personally devoted to Our Lady.

Secondly, we must, if necessary, make drastic changes in our approach to those whom we want to bring to Christ or to a closer following of Mary's Son. We must promote our missionary and conversion zeal through promoting the knowledge, love and devotion to the Mother of God. Mary will do wonders, provided we use her name and her influence to effect what is so desperately needed in the modern world.

Given this logic, that Mary is the key to converting the world to her Son, St. Maximillian not only named but organized his special followers as the Militia or "Army of the Immaculate" following, as he said, on the promise that Yahweh had made in Genesis: that Mary would crush the serpent's head.

St. Maximillian Kolbe, zealous promoter of the veneration of the Immaculate Mother of God and martyr of charity, pray for us."

-- St Maximilian Kolbe: Apostle of Mary by Fr John A Hardon, SJ

Penance and Reparation, part II

"If we ask, why penance and reparation, the first answer is: Because God wants it.

But if we press the question: Why does God want it? Then we must say, because in His mysterious wisdom, His justice requires it. We may legitimately say, without really understanding it, that He has no choice. Having given us a free will, if we abuse liberty, we must use our freedom to repay to God the love we have stolen from Him (which is penance) and repair the damage we have done (which is reparation).

Notice, all along I have been using the first person plural, "we", because penance and reparation are owed to God not only because I have individually sinned, but because we human beings have sinned and are sinning, in our day, on a scale never before conceived in the annals of history.

We know better than Cain after he killed his brother, Abel. We are our brother's keepers. We are mysteriously co-responsible for what other people do wrong. There is a profound sense in which all of us are somehow to do penance and make reparation, not only for our sinful misdeeds, but for the sins of our country and, indeed, for the sins of the whole human race.

We return to our question: Why penance and reparation? Because, in Christ's words, "Unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish".

Is it any wonder that on Pentecost Sunday, after Peter preached his sermon, and rebuked the people for their sins, and they asked him, "what must we do," his first word to the multitude was the imperative verb, "Repent!"

Is it any wonder that Our Lady of Fatima's message to a sinful world in our day, may be summarized in the same imperative, "Do penance."

Indeed, the calamities that we have so far seen in this present century: two world wars with more casualties than in all the previous wars of history, and the threat of a nuclear holocaust that hangs over us like a tornado cloud. All of this is God's warning to do penance and reparation. Why? Because God is not mocked.

You do not offend God with impunity. You do not sin without retribution. You do not ignore the will of the Almighty and expect the Almighty to ignore what you do.

What bears emphasis, however, is that this retribution is either to be paid willingly, with our penance and reparation, or will be paid unwillingly within the divine punishment.

The divine logic is simple, awfully simple, and all we have to do is learn what God is telling us. Either we do penance and reparation because we want to, or we shall suffer (against our will) the consequences of our sins in this life, and in the life to come.

But remember, this penance and reparation is to be done not only for what we have personally done wrong. It is for all the pride and lust, for all the cruelty and greed, for all the envy and laziness and gluttony of a sin-laden human family.

God is merciful and in fact as our Holy Father has told us, Jesus Christ is the Incarnation of divine mercy. But God's mercy is conditional. It is conditional on our practice of penance and reparation."

-- Penance and Reparation: A Lenten Meditation Fr John A Hardon, SJ

Copyright © 2003 by Inter Mirifica

Penance and Reparation, part I

"Penance and reparation are the consequence of sin. Or again, penance and reparation are the price we have to pay for our own and other people's sin. Penance and reparation, finally, are what God requires from sinners as a condition for showing them His mercy.

In order to better understand the meaning of penance and reparation, we have to look for a moment at what happens whenever we sin. Two things happen:

• First: we incur guilt before God for the self-will that caused us to sin. We become more or less separated or estranged from God, depending on the gravity of our sin.
• Second: We deserve punishment for the disorder we cause by our sinful conduct. We become liable to suffering pain, again more or less pain, depending on how seriously we have done wrong.

Against this background, we can more easily see the meaning of penance and reparation.

• Penance is the repentance we must make to remove the guilt, or to reinstate ourselves in God's friendship.
• Reparation is the pain we must endure to make up for the harm we brought about by our self-indulgence when we sinned.

What then do penance and reparation have in common? They have this in common, that they are absolutely necessary if the justice of God is to be satisfied after we have offended the divine Majesty. They also have this in common, that God now has a right to demand more of us than He would have required had we not committed sin. The word more is basic to any correct understanding of penance and reparation.

But if penance and reparation have this in common, how do they differ? They differ, as we have seen, in the two different ways that we do wrong whenever we sin. Because we have failed in loving God, we now owe Him more love than He would have required had we not offended Him. We did wrong by our willful love of self. So now we have to make up by our selfless love of God. This is Penance.

And because we have brought disorder into the world by our sins, we must undergo pain to undo this harm we have caused. This is reparation."


-- Penance and Reparation: A Lenten Meditation Fr John A Hardon, SJ
Copyright © 2003 by Inter Mirifica

All Souls Day

"Today is the feast of All Souls. It comes on the day after All Saints. Between these two feast days, we remember all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ: the Church Triumphant in heaven, the Church Militant on earth, and the Church Suffering in purgatory.

Over the centuries the month of November has been dedicated to the Poor Souls. No doubt the reason is because November is the last month of the liturgical year, even as purgatory is the last stage of human existence before a soul reaches heaven.

During this homily, I would like to ask three questions and share with you a short answer on what our Catholic faith teaches about devotion to the Poor Souls in purgatory.

Who are the Poor Souls?

Why are the Poor Souls in purgatory?

How are we to practice our devotion to the souls in purgatory?

-o-
Who Are the Poor Souls?

The Poor Souls are the souls of those people who died in the friendship of God. But they still have some suffering to undergo for the sins they had committed during their lives on earth. It is the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church that there is a purgatory. As the word itself indicates, purgatory is the state of those who still have to be cleansed of the penalty which they owe for their past offenses against God.

The Poor Souls are poor because they are in suffering and need our help. We know from Sacred Scripture that there is a purgatory, as described in the second book of Maccabees, which unfortunately has been removed from the Protestant Old Testament. As described in Sacred Scripture, Judas Maccabeus, the leader of a Jewish army, decided to offer a sacrifice for the Jews who had died in battle. The Bible then tells us,"If he had not expected the fallen to rise again, it would have been superstitious and foolish to pray for the dead." However, since he believed in the resurrection of the dead, "he had this atonement sacrifice offered for the dead, so that they might be released from their sins" (II Maccabees 12:41?45).

The existence of purgatory is a defined truth of the Catholic faith. Those who die without the guilt of mortal sin, but with temporal punishment still due for their past offenses "are cleansed after death in purgatorial or cleansing punishments."

It is commonly believed that the principal suffering in purgatory is the pain of loss. The souls are temporarily deprived of the Beatific Vision.

Why are the Poor Souls in Purgatory?

In order to understand why the Poor Souls are in purgatory, as Catholics we should know what we believe about the double effect of every sin. Every time we sin we lose more or less of God's grace. This we call "guilt." Every time we sin we also incur a debt of pain. This we call "penalty."

Mortal sins are called mortal because they deprive the sinner of sanctifying grace and the right to heaven. Mortal sins also incur the debt of eternal punishment.

When mortal sins are forgiven in the sacrament of penance, sanctifying grace is restored and the debt of eternal punishment is removed. But normally there is still temporal punishment to be expiated. Moreover, venial sins always carry with them a debt of temporal punishment, which is more or less remitted, depending on a person's spiritual dispositions.

This immediately tells us that because we are sinners we must expect to suffer in expiation for our sins. The choice we have is between patiently suffering here on earth or suffering in purgatory after our bodily death.

Devotion to the Poor Souls

It must seem strange to speak of devotion to the Poor Souls. But it is not really strange. Devotion to the Poor Souls has two sides: our side and the side of the souls in purgatory.

On their side, the Poor Souls are united with us in the one Kingdom of Christ. They can pray and obtain blessings for us here on earth. They are united, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, with the pilgrim Church in the Communion of Saints. We are therefore encouraged to invoke their aid, with a confidence of being heard by those who understand our needs. They know from their own experience what it means to carry the cross here on earth.

On our side we are to do everything we can to help the Poor Souls in the Church Suffering. The sufferings in purgatory are not the same for all. They depend on each person's degree of sinfulness. St. Thomas Aquinas held that the least pain in purgatory is greater than the worst pain in this life. St. Bonaventure held that the worst suffering after death was greater than the worst suffering on earth, but the same could not be said regarding the least pain in purgatory. In general, however, we should say that the pains of purgatory are greater than those on earth.

What does it mean to pray for the Poor Souls? It means everything that we can offer for the faithful departed.

• We can offer our bodily pains in expiation for their sins.
• We can offer our spiritual sufferings, our disappointments and fears, our discouragement and estrangement from those we love.
• We can offer our vocal prayers, like the Rosary, the Memorare, the Angelus, the recitation of the Divine Office.
• We can offer our mental prayers, like the Way of the Cross, our daily meditation and examination of conscience.
• We can offer our mortifications, like giving up some delicacy at table, or performance of some unpleasant work.

But the most effective offering we can make for the Poor Souls is the Holy Eucharist at the Sacrifice of the Mass, Holy Communion and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Over the centuries, the Catholic faithful have by now offered countless Masses for the Poor Souls. In the Society of Jesus, we priests are expected to offer one Mass each month for all the deceased Jesuits. This amounts to over sixteen thousand Masses that are to be said every month for the members of the Society of Jesus who are still in purgatory.

May I offer a recommendation? During the month of November, I suggest that we make a list of all the deceased persons whom we wish to specially remember in our Masses, prayers and sacrifices for the repose of their souls. Add to this list as those enter eternity whom you wish to specially commend to the mercy of God. This, by the way, is called a Necrology. Every Catholic diocese in the world has a Necrology of its deceased priests. Every family should have its own Necrology of deceased members whom we daily remember to our merciful Lord.

Every time you say the grace after meals, be sure to add the invocation, "May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen." In every Rosary you recite, do not forget to say after each decade, " O, my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and bring all souls to heaven, especially those who are in most need of thy mercy."

Remember that devotion to the Poor Souls is really a covenant between them and us. We pray and sacrifice for them, They can pray and suffer for us. They appreciate whatever help we give them, to lessen their suffering and to shorten their stay in Purgatory. They will continue to show their appreciation when we join them in a heavenly eternity."

-- Fr John A Hardon, SJ
Copyright © 2001 Inter Mirifica