Sermon on Purgatory by St. John Vianney
by DEVOTION TO THE HOLY SOULS IN PURGATORY on Monday, April
4, 2011 at 2:37am
How many are there, perhaps, who during the course of eight
or ten years have received from their parents or their friends the work of
having Masses said and alms given and have allowed the whole thing to slide!
How many are there who, for fear of finding that certain good works should be
done, have not wanted to go to the trouble of looking at the will that their
parents or their friends have made in their favor?
Alas, these poor souls are
still detained in the flames because no one has desired to fulfill their last
wishes! Poor fathers and mothers, you are being sacrificed for the happiness of
your children and your heirs!
You perhaps have neglected your own salvation to
augment their fortune. You are being cheated of the good works which you left
behind in your wills! ... Poor parents!
How blind you were to forget
yourselves! ... You will tell me, perhaps: "Our parents lived good lives;
they were very good people." Ah! They needed little to go into these
flames!
See what Albert the Great, a man whose virtues shone in such
an extraordinary way, said on this matter. He revealed one day to one of his
friends that God had taken him into Purgatory for having entertained a slightly
self-satisfied thought about his own knowledge. The most astonishing thing was that
there were actually saints there, even ones who were beatified, who were
passing through Purgatory.
Saint Severinus, Archbishop of Cologne, appeared to one of
his friends a long time after his death and told him that he had been in
Purgatory for having deferred to the evening the prayers he should have said in
the morning.
Oh! What years of Purgatory will there be for those
Christians who have no difficulty at all in deferring their prayers to another
time on the excuse of having to do some pressing work!
If we really desired the
happiness of possessing God, we should avoid the little faults as well as the
big ones, since separation from God is so frightful a torment to all these poor
souls!
Has anyone been to purgatory and back? I have had 2 NDE and 3 OBE in my 40 years of life. My last NDE was in Al Jihad, Baghdad Iraq in support of the 07 Surge. I was hit with an 8 array EFP (Explosive Formed Projectile) IED. I was in a light infantry outfit and the driver paid the ultimate price when his life was taken and I was the next seriously injured. My story is one of those that not too many people have had and I would like to know if there is anyone else who has been there and is alive today?
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