In fact I took extra care, being hell bent as it were, to make it to Divine Mercy Sunday this year once I fully grasped the hows of it (confession and communion) to avoid any and all purgatory time until then. I’d have crawled on broken glass if need be, for that special grace. To then turn around and tell God “yea, give my lifelong sacrifices to some lukewarm soul, someone who couldn’t be bothered in life to do much or anything, to please You, and send them to heaven before me while I bake here in mini hell” is absolute bonkers. Sorry, but no.
I already give up my Sunday mornings to go to Mass when, to be honest, I’d much rather stay under the covers in bed, especially on cold and rainy days. I give plenty to charity, probably more than I should. I suck it up a lot in life (and people who read the comments section can probably tell I have a short temper so keeping quiet is a feat unto itself). I make it a point as best I can to pray the divine mercy chaplet at the 3pm hour, even if it cuts into my day, plus daily rosaries as best I can. I make too many sacrifices in this world to then give up my spiritual bank account on top of that, as if I did nothing. Purgatory does not sound appetizing to me and real life isn’t a movie, where if you answer the right question (give up your spiritual bank account) God will take pity and send both you and the other soul it would have benefitted, straight to heaven, for “doing the right thing”. Like you said, He will take it seriously and that will be that for you.
Plus we don’t know how long each transgression lasts in that horrid state, time wise. St. Lucia of Fatima was told some 18 year old girl from her village, Amelia, will be in purgatory until the end of the world. This is not some murderer we are talking about. A regular village girl, from that time, how bad could she have been to deserve that? So I can’t imagine us, with our constant temptations thanks to technology, plus human imperfections, how long we would get….
Thanks but I’ll keep my spiritual bank account all to myself. Souls in purgatory can get my prayers. Both acts work, except one I also get to keep for myself (prayers for them, and my own spiritual bank account continues to be mine).
But is it even possible to do that? I think it is *not* possible. After Mass on Divine Mercy Sunday, I asked my parish priest whether the fancy power-wash thing from St Faustina is a thing that can be given away (not all things are possible to give away) and he was fairly certain that it is *not* something that can be given away. The heroic act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_Act_of_Charity gives away the *satisfactory* part of one's *works* during one's lifetime (and the suffrages after one's death). So for example if I sleep on boards for one night, or if I eat bread and water for one day, that penance has a "satisfactory" part to it (paying part of the temporal debt that I owe), and the heroic act would give that satisfactory part away. If one of my kids is yelling for an hour and I offer my suffering to God (because I do not like the noise and the kid can't be talked out of yelling), there is a satisfactory part to that sacrifice also, and the heroic act would give that satisfactory part away. But the fancy Divine Mercy Sunday thing is in a different category, by our reckoning. It is not a "work" of ours but a gift that we accept, apparently?... I don't really know and we should hunt down a Dominican to ask (they seem to know everything about everything).
I do not say this because I want to talk anyone into anything (people should do what they are attracted to, and follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and if you have no attraction to this heroic act thing, then I would think that you should not do it). I just have an engineer brain and like to know what categories things are in.
I checked on the Divine Mercy power washing (by the way I love the term!) and he’s right that it’s the one thing you can’t do for anyone else but yourself. Father Chris Alar from the Marians (MIC, he has an incredible YouTube series called explaining the faith. Better than Father Mike Schmitz in my humble opinion).
And yes Divine Mercy power washing is an absolute special grace / gift given only on that one day. So if you want it bad enough you’ll see to it to do what He requests in order to get it, since it’s only once a year. Hence my mowing people down (figuratively of course) to get to mass that day, once I understood everything.
I totally get how it works now and yes it’s like a second baptism so to speak, your sins are pardoned (gotta go to confession being part one) and the punishment due to them is wiped clean. (Part two, Eucharist and specifically asking for that grace / gift). Needless to say, Divine Mercy is going to be iron clad into my calendar from here on out.
From a healthcare minded brain, I appreciate your engineer brain :) 🧠
Yeah, I’ve thought about that Fatima village girl too and had the same thoughts as you: If she went to Purgatory until the end of time, what chance does any one of us have? Though, thinking about it, I knew some pretty nasty and downright evil girls when I was in school, so there’s that. Maybe she was a terrible bully and super selfish. Maybe she mocked God all day long. Who knows. Maybe the worst trait is to be self-righteous and completely unrepentant. I guess the best we can do is love Jesus and love other people and hope for the best. Pray, hope, and don’t worry, as Padre Pio said (though he himself worried quite a bit).
I would ask: why would a private revelation tell someone this? So that everyone will pray for this girl to get out of purgatory. Then when she is out, we don't know it, so still everyone is praying for her to get out of purgatory, but it won't be wasted (it will be given to someone else or to oneself, according to one's preferences, I would think; some people like to leave everything up to the Blessed Virgin Mary and have her choose people, other folks like to have the general intention of whoever has no one to pray for them, etc.), and many souls go to heaven sooner, and everyone who prays receives merit for having prayed (God will never be outdone in generosity). We should not complacently stop praying for the poor souls in purgatory, though, but rather we should give thanks to God for His great mercy in inspiring all of this action through this simple and unexplained remark of an apparition. What chance does any of us have, of being "rescued" by so many of the faithful? I don't know. However I think it is probably pretty simple to avoid purgatory altogether by telling God (frequently) "purify me entirely, in this life; I'll cooperate" and then cooperating with Him. I do not say "easy" because that is different than simple. But it might also be easy; I don't know.
I’m devoted to praying for souls in purgatory, regardless of who they are for sure, but one thing is praying for them and something else is emptying my spiritual bank account for them. To be fair, the apparition told her this in response to the girl’s asking. It’s not like our Blessed Mother just said “by the way”. Had she not asked, we wouldn’t have known.
On your first paragraph, I believe “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” means the opposite of what everyone thinks; heard this from one of the exorcists on YouTube. It sounds like it’s the Church doing the battering, not the other way around. And he’s right. And I love to think if it that way :)
Father Calloway is the best! Have you read his book, his semi autobiography? And I thought I had a checkered past! He does not mince words and calls it like it is. (Little background: he used to be an addict, his father was in the military and stationed in Japan, with him getting arrested a few times, listened to heavy metal, had long hair, loved ladies, the more the merrier, etc) which would explain his way of speaking out, in a no nonsense manner. Love him!
Regarding the heroic act, I can assuredly confirm absolutely not. At all. I have a spiritual rap sheet a mile long. And I’m working hard to rectify it, “stumbling” as this blog says, and most times falling flat on my face in the mud. While a pigeon drops one on my head. And someone without looking, trips over me and buries my face deeper in the mud, while a puppy comes and marks me as his territory while I’m face down. To face all that, plus the horrors of purgatory, over what? Someone who ended up there probably for doing less than me? Some lukewarm Catholic / Christian, or someone who couldn’t be bothered in life and probably wrecked havoc on earth and had some sort of deathbed conversion? I don’t think so. That’s like asking a martyr to give me his crown of martyrdom. I doubt any of them would, as they've earned that crown with their blood. Or a Saint giving up their saintly position in heaven to me. If anyone has read the horrors of purgatory, no one in their right mind would want to spend anytime in there.
I love Fr. Calloway! I heard his conversion story straight from his own mouth in a Pints with Aquinas episode. I was laughing tears too because he has this really droll sense of humor. https://www.youtube.com/live/Pr44q3zw4j8
I met him two years ago (with a photo to prove it, which I unfortunately can’t post in the comments); his Marian order is right here in Steubenville, though he’s usually traveling. Really great guy.
> Frankly, I haven’t made the Heroic Act, and I’m not sure I’m brave enough to do it.
I have heard of it. Since my advice to others is seasoned with prudence, I would say "maybe talk to one's spiritual director first" (for the same reason as I would say this for unusual physical penance: to guard against pride. But I think the heroic act is probably less dangerous, because the personal negative consequences are in the forefront, so I say "maybe").
The chief reason a person would undertake it (setting aside pride: "are you brave enough" indeed! ;) ) is an awareness of how much the poor souls are suffering, and a desire (which is charity) to relieve them immediately even at the same cost to oneself (which for someone repentant of decades of grave sin (e.g..me, although what do I know?) would appear to be substantial). The other motivation for someone to do it, I think, would be "to be poor with the poor Christ" which is a normal/unnatural desire that we see in the lives of saints generally (living with material austerity, to the extent possible in their station of life) - this heroic act would be a kind of spiritual destitution and I think after praying the kenotic hymn (Christ emptied himself etc) enough times, it could eventually start to sound (recklessly) appealing.
The Heroic Act is a really big deal. There's a guy doing YouTube videos about the holy souls in Purgatory who in one video encourages the viewer to "just do it." I think that's reckless behavior and not in the interest of anyone watching. This is not something you should do on a whim because "it sounds so good."
In fact I took extra care, being hell bent as it were, to make it to Divine Mercy Sunday this year once I fully grasped the hows of it (confession and communion) to avoid any and all purgatory time until then. I’d have crawled on broken glass if need be, for that special grace. To then turn around and tell God “yea, give my lifelong sacrifices to some lukewarm soul, someone who couldn’t be bothered in life to do much or anything, to please You, and send them to heaven before me while I bake here in mini hell” is absolute bonkers. Sorry, but no.
I already give up my Sunday mornings to go to Mass when, to be honest, I’d much rather stay under the covers in bed, especially on cold and rainy days. I give plenty to charity, probably more than I should. I suck it up a lot in life (and people who read the comments section can probably tell I have a short temper so keeping quiet is a feat unto itself). I make it a point as best I can to pray the divine mercy chaplet at the 3pm hour, even if it cuts into my day, plus daily rosaries as best I can. I make too many sacrifices in this world to then give up my spiritual bank account on top of that, as if I did nothing. Purgatory does not sound appetizing to me and real life isn’t a movie, where if you answer the right question (give up your spiritual bank account) God will take pity and send both you and the other soul it would have benefitted, straight to heaven, for “doing the right thing”. Like you said, He will take it seriously and that will be that for you.
Plus we don’t know how long each transgression lasts in that horrid state, time wise. St. Lucia of Fatima was told some 18 year old girl from her village, Amelia, will be in purgatory until the end of the world. This is not some murderer we are talking about. A regular village girl, from that time, how bad could she have been to deserve that? So I can’t imagine us, with our constant temptations thanks to technology, plus human imperfections, how long we would get….
Thanks but I’ll keep my spiritual bank account all to myself. Souls in purgatory can get my prayers. Both acts work, except one I also get to keep for myself (prayers for them, and my own spiritual bank account continues to be mine).
> To then turn around and tell God
But is it even possible to do that? I think it is *not* possible. After Mass on Divine Mercy Sunday, I asked my parish priest whether the fancy power-wash thing from St Faustina is a thing that can be given away (not all things are possible to give away) and he was fairly certain that it is *not* something that can be given away. The heroic act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_Act_of_Charity gives away the *satisfactory* part of one's *works* during one's lifetime (and the suffrages after one's death). So for example if I sleep on boards for one night, or if I eat bread and water for one day, that penance has a "satisfactory" part to it (paying part of the temporal debt that I owe), and the heroic act would give that satisfactory part away. If one of my kids is yelling for an hour and I offer my suffering to God (because I do not like the noise and the kid can't be talked out of yelling), there is a satisfactory part to that sacrifice also, and the heroic act would give that satisfactory part away. But the fancy Divine Mercy Sunday thing is in a different category, by our reckoning. It is not a "work" of ours but a gift that we accept, apparently?... I don't really know and we should hunt down a Dominican to ask (they seem to know everything about everything).
I do not say this because I want to talk anyone into anything (people should do what they are attracted to, and follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and if you have no attraction to this heroic act thing, then I would think that you should not do it). I just have an engineer brain and like to know what categories things are in.
I checked on the Divine Mercy power washing (by the way I love the term!) and he’s right that it’s the one thing you can’t do for anyone else but yourself. Father Chris Alar from the Marians (MIC, he has an incredible YouTube series called explaining the faith. Better than Father Mike Schmitz in my humble opinion).
And yes Divine Mercy power washing is an absolute special grace / gift given only on that one day. So if you want it bad enough you’ll see to it to do what He requests in order to get it, since it’s only once a year. Hence my mowing people down (figuratively of course) to get to mass that day, once I understood everything.
I totally get how it works now and yes it’s like a second baptism so to speak, your sins are pardoned (gotta go to confession being part one) and the punishment due to them is wiped clean. (Part two, Eucharist and specifically asking for that grace / gift). Needless to say, Divine Mercy is going to be iron clad into my calendar from here on out.
From a healthcare minded brain, I appreciate your engineer brain :) 🧠
Yeah, I’ve thought about that Fatima village girl too and had the same thoughts as you: If she went to Purgatory until the end of time, what chance does any one of us have? Though, thinking about it, I knew some pretty nasty and downright evil girls when I was in school, so there’s that. Maybe she was a terrible bully and super selfish. Maybe she mocked God all day long. Who knows. Maybe the worst trait is to be self-righteous and completely unrepentant. I guess the best we can do is love Jesus and love other people and hope for the best. Pray, hope, and don’t worry, as Padre Pio said (though he himself worried quite a bit).
> If she went to Purgatory until the end of time,
I would ask: why would a private revelation tell someone this? So that everyone will pray for this girl to get out of purgatory. Then when she is out, we don't know it, so still everyone is praying for her to get out of purgatory, but it won't be wasted (it will be given to someone else or to oneself, according to one's preferences, I would think; some people like to leave everything up to the Blessed Virgin Mary and have her choose people, other folks like to have the general intention of whoever has no one to pray for them, etc.), and many souls go to heaven sooner, and everyone who prays receives merit for having prayed (God will never be outdone in generosity). We should not complacently stop praying for the poor souls in purgatory, though, but rather we should give thanks to God for His great mercy in inspiring all of this action through this simple and unexplained remark of an apparition. What chance does any of us have, of being "rescued" by so many of the faithful? I don't know. However I think it is probably pretty simple to avoid purgatory altogether by telling God (frequently) "purify me entirely, in this life; I'll cooperate" and then cooperating with Him. I do not say "easy" because that is different than simple. But it might also be easy; I don't know.
I’m devoted to praying for souls in purgatory, regardless of who they are for sure, but one thing is praying for them and something else is emptying my spiritual bank account for them. To be fair, the apparition told her this in response to the girl’s asking. It’s not like our Blessed Mother just said “by the way”. Had she not asked, we wouldn’t have known.
On your first paragraph, I believe “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” means the opposite of what everyone thinks; heard this from one of the exorcists on YouTube. It sounds like it’s the Church doing the battering, not the other way around. And he’s right. And I love to think if it that way :)
Father Calloway is the best! Have you read his book, his semi autobiography? And I thought I had a checkered past! He does not mince words and calls it like it is. (Little background: he used to be an addict, his father was in the military and stationed in Japan, with him getting arrested a few times, listened to heavy metal, had long hair, loved ladies, the more the merrier, etc) which would explain his way of speaking out, in a no nonsense manner. Love him!
Regarding the heroic act, I can assuredly confirm absolutely not. At all. I have a spiritual rap sheet a mile long. And I’m working hard to rectify it, “stumbling” as this blog says, and most times falling flat on my face in the mud. While a pigeon drops one on my head. And someone without looking, trips over me and buries my face deeper in the mud, while a puppy comes and marks me as his territory while I’m face down. To face all that, plus the horrors of purgatory, over what? Someone who ended up there probably for doing less than me? Some lukewarm Catholic / Christian, or someone who couldn’t be bothered in life and probably wrecked havoc on earth and had some sort of deathbed conversion? I don’t think so. That’s like asking a martyr to give me his crown of martyrdom. I doubt any of them would, as they've earned that crown with their blood. Or a Saint giving up their saintly position in heaven to me. If anyone has read the horrors of purgatory, no one in their right mind would want to spend anytime in there.
I love Fr. Calloway! I heard his conversion story straight from his own mouth in a Pints with Aquinas episode. I was laughing tears too because he has this really droll sense of humor. https://www.youtube.com/live/Pr44q3zw4j8
I met him two years ago (with a photo to prove it, which I unfortunately can’t post in the comments); his Marian order is right here in Steubenville, though he’s usually traveling. Really great guy.
> Frankly, I haven’t made the Heroic Act, and I’m not sure I’m brave enough to do it.
I have heard of it. Since my advice to others is seasoned with prudence, I would say "maybe talk to one's spiritual director first" (for the same reason as I would say this for unusual physical penance: to guard against pride. But I think the heroic act is probably less dangerous, because the personal negative consequences are in the forefront, so I say "maybe").
The chief reason a person would undertake it (setting aside pride: "are you brave enough" indeed! ;) ) is an awareness of how much the poor souls are suffering, and a desire (which is charity) to relieve them immediately even at the same cost to oneself (which for someone repentant of decades of grave sin (e.g..me, although what do I know?) would appear to be substantial). The other motivation for someone to do it, I think, would be "to be poor with the poor Christ" which is a normal/unnatural desire that we see in the lives of saints generally (living with material austerity, to the extent possible in their station of life) - this heroic act would be a kind of spiritual destitution and I think after praying the kenotic hymn (Christ emptied himself etc) enough times, it could eventually start to sound (recklessly) appealing.
The Heroic Act is a really big deal. There's a guy doing YouTube videos about the holy souls in Purgatory who in one video encourages the viewer to "just do it." I think that's reckless behavior and not in the interest of anyone watching. This is not something you should do on a whim because "it sounds so good."
Nice one!