Sixteenth Day: The Efficacy of Prayer for the Suffering Souls
by VP
Posted on Saturday November 16, 2024 at 01:00AM in Meditations
"It is holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins." (2 Mach. XII, 46)
Prayer for the dead is holy because pleasing to God; wholesome, because through the merciful goodness of God it accomplishes its sublime and charitable object. Nothing is so pleasing to God as the sacrifice of love and mercy, especially when offered for the suffering souls, whom He loves most tenderly, because they are holy and sure of Heaven.
To relieve the suffering souls we can do nothing more salutary than to gain indulgences applicable to them, offering to God the perfect satisfaction of Christ and the saints, and performing good works in their behalf, that they may be comforted or delivered from the pains of Purgatory.
A suffering soul may receive an entire or a temporary remission of her penalty, according to the indulgence applied.
Prayer: Open, O Lord, the rich treasures of Thy holy Church, in favor of the souls in Purgatory that they may receive full pardon, or at least, some relief in their pains; and grant us grace to deliver and to comfort a great number of suffering souls by prayer and good works. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Prayer for Priests in Purgatory: My Jesus, by the sorrows Thou didst suffer in Thine Agony in the Garden, in Thy Scourging and Crowning with thorns, in the Way to Calvary, in Thy Crucifixion and Death, have mercy on the souls of priests in Purgatory, especially those most forgotten and who have no one else to pray for them. I wish to remember all those priests who ministered to me, the priests my heart has never forgotten, and for those that I no longer recall due to my frailty of memory. Do Thou deliver them from the dire torments they endure; call them and admit them to Thy most sweet embrace in Paradise.
Pope Saint Pius X and Saint John Vianney, pray for us and especially for our priests. Amen
Special Intercession: Pray for the souls, who during their earthly career, endeavored to gain many indulgences for the faithful departed.
Lord grant them eternal rest, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen. (three times)
Invocation: My Jesus, mercy!
Source: Manual of the Purgatorian Society, Redemptorist Fathers. 1907