Quote/s of the Day 2 November – The Solemnity of All Souls
St James the Apostle gives a method of avoiding or lessening our stay in Purgatory.
He says: “He who saves a soul saves his own and satisfies for a multitude of sins.” (James 1:20)
“Let us help and commemorate them. If Job’s sons were purified by their father’s sacrifice (Job 1:5), why would we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them”.
St John Chrysostom (347-407) Doctor of the Church – (Homilies on 1 Corinthians 41:5 [A.D. 392]
“But by the prayers of the Holy Church and by the salvific sacrifice and by the alms which are given for their spirits, there is no doubt that the dead are aided, that the Lord might deal more mercifully with them than their sins would deserve. The whole Church observes this practice which was handed down by the Fathers: that it prays for those who have died in the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, when they are commemorated in their own place in the sacrifice itself; and the sacrifice is offered also in memory of them, on their behalf. If, then, works of mercy are celebrated for the sake of those who are being remembered, who would hesitate to recommend them, on whose behalf prayers to God are not offered in vain? It is not at all to be doubted that such prayers are of profit to the dead; but for such of them as lived before their death in a way that makes it possible for these things to be useful to them after death”.
St Augustine (354-430) Doctor of the Church (The City of God 21:13 [A.D. 419]
“I would go so far as to say that if there was not purgatory, then we would have to invent it, for who would dare say of himself that he was able to stand directly before God. And yet we don’t want to be, to use an image from scripture, ‘a pot that turned out wrong’, that has to be thrown away; we want to be able to be put right. Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. That He can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to be with Him and can stand there in the fullness of life. Purgatory strips off from one person what is unbearable and from another the inability to bear certain things, so that in each of them a pure heart is revealed and we can see that we all belong together in one enormous symphony of being.”
Pope Benedict XVI
“If today we are remembering
these brothers and sisters of
ours who lived before us and are
now in heaven, they are there
because they were washed in the
Blood of Christ, that is our hope
and this hope does not disappoint.
If we live our lives with the Lord,
he will never disappoint us.”
AnaStpaul 