Years and years ago when I converted and Our Lady taught me to pray the Rosary my big intention was for my family, six brothers and three sisters and my mother and father would all get into heaven when they died. I wasn't too worried about Purgatory, I just wanted to haul them thought them Pearly Gates. So every Rosary this was my big, big ask. ..and it was a big ask, really, one of my brothers and one of my sisters, for instance were complete Atheists and had given up the practise of the Faith. This went on for several years until finally Our Lady showed up and with a kind of wave of her hands and smile as though to say, 'Stop bothering me over this, I give in!' She promised me that each and every one of them would be saved. To stop torturing her. I had got it. Heaven really does listen to our prayers, they really do and the Rosary is particularly powerful in this regards. It seems to me as far as regards Prayers of Intercession of souls our prayers should be like stones thrown into a pond. The ripples should hit family first, the nearest and dearest first and then spreading out from there. Why? Well duty of care. Our Parents , for instance did so much for us, we have a real duty to see they get into heaven and as fast as possible. Then from there the ripples spread out to Spouses, children and Siblings. Not simply as Charity , but duty. We have a Duty of Care and of Love to Pray for Family. Even so there is no real certainty that family will be saved. I read about one of Padre Pio's sisters , for instance and she was certainly not in a good place. The old Saint prayed for her his whole life, but nowhere is there any Sign of Conversion before death. She may have converted in the actual death process, but who knows really. Anyway I had slight inward doubts about Our Lady's promise. My family seemed hard cases in some way, tow of them particularly. But one of my brothers the atheist one died aged 26 and showed up the next morning as I was walking round the park. He was smiling and happy. The first thing he said to me was, 'You were right and I was wrong!' Then he said, 'But don't be proud, I know much more about things now than you do!' Then smiling he faded into the clouds. So there is always hope. There is always , always hope. Pray the Rosary.
Thank you for this. Its so comforting. I know the Blessed Mother can be counted on. I love thd image of the ripples in the pond. That's usually how I pray--family and then I work outward.
That is very interesting. I too pray for my own salvation and the salvation of my wife and children, my parents, my extended family, the family tree, all those whom I love and those I meet on my life's pilgrim journey. Kind of ever-widening circles. When both my parents died I later found prayers from an old rite for those dying and the dead. I wrote 12 pages of them into my spiritual diary and prayed them out loud several times for my parents. I do feel that God heard these prayers. I have never had any messages, visions or dreams of either of them, good or bad since they died. Just silence and a sense of peace. My mother was very religious and dutyful with a beautiful humility whereas my father was a man of action and of the world, but never in his life missed Mass. I feel that he may have started out with a knowledge of the Faith, but the after a life of public service in which he saw many things that would test the humanity of the seer, he became maybe hardened or even traumatised. As Pope Benedict said in his prophecy, mankind is really just an abyss of fallenness, or something to that effect. And he may have lost his Faith (my father that is). At the end of his life after my mother died he was very lost and very sick himself. I do not think my father prayed at all. He told us one day, when we were taking him to my mother's grave, that sometimes he prayed 'a very poor' Our Father, 'and that's something coming from a man like me'. I sensed the palsity of his spiritual life even though I was an unbeliever in transition myself and had no spiritual sense either. Looking back I see the heroic and humble efforts he seemed to be making to approach God, to understand what had happened to my mother and what was before him. He always used to say, 'this life is for the living'. And now the abyss of the grave was before him. And it was dawning on me too. But I was at a stage where I was of no spiritual help to my father. I think St. John Henry Newman describes so well the difficulty facing us as we approach death, when we have not tilled the soil of the spiritual life. The difficulty of coming to know our Creator when we have no foundation of a prayer life or a life of past virtue to support us. The difficulty of praying when all the weight of our past habits are weighing us down. When the weight of our sickness and ill health is weighing us down. When we have given all the best days of our life to worldly pursuits. When even if we knew what the spiritual climb ahead of us looked like, we are in no position to throw ourselves into it with any vigour. So our prayers for the dead and those dying are so necessary. At times like this I do indeed think we need to meditate on the mercy of Jesus to the good thief on the Cross. On a ligther note, I laughed heartily when I read one of Frank Duff's writings on heaven - where he talked about the football match between the Saints and the 'scrape-ins'!
Beautifully said - as I approach sixty this year and look back over my life I grieve over my sin and it is perhaps the sins of ommission that weigh the heaviest. Yet the Good News is that it is only because of my weakenesses and brokeness that has allowed God to reign in me - I fell so many times in sin and almost gave up at times but persevered and it was in the refinery of failure that God was able to break through by His grace to bring me to a place of peace and wholeness. This life is a constant battle and journey and at the end of the day all is grace - The greatest decision I ever made was in 2004 to commit to a daily Rosary and have been faithful ever since - and God has been more than generous in return. Yours is a wonderful post that I will return to as it contains many gems - love the Frank Duff quote too since I will be one of the 'scrape-ins' lol - we need a sense of humour to get us through this life.
Lovely. Full of real spiritual insights. My mother and father were in many ways seriously devout and good Catholics. I "kicked against the goad" quite badly but God's mercy and their prayers brought me back. I thank God for their stalwart faith during those wayward years. I am sure their faithfulness kept me from destruction. Faith is a gift from God. A precious gift that can easily be thrown away. I was blessed with really good parents who prayed me back. I am so grateful. I am trying to do the same for my husband and children. It is a hard road. I've received no real signs that my parents are in heaven but I have great peace about them and I continue to pray for their souls.
"This life is a constant battle and journey and at the end of the day it is all grace..." So so so true. The Holy Rosary is my bulwark too. I try to pray at least one Rosary a day--sometimes more. Some days its easy. Some days its hard. Lately its really hard.
As far as I recall Our Lady at Fatima said that many souls are being lost because they have no one to pray for them. The children at Fatima were so taken by this thought it was the Big Crusade of their lives. They had been shown Hell and knew what it meant. They also knew , for Our Lady told them that souls were falling into hell, 'Like snowflakes'. In other words many, many souls. I love to pray for two things. The souls deepest in Purgatory and the Souls in deepest danger of hell. These are my two real biggies.These are the souls that have no one else really. They are very much to be pitied. Very,very,very,very much to pitied. Poor, poor souls..and so many of them!!
I really loved Pope Benedict's thoughts on his coming death. He compared going home to God to being like becoming a little child again and going back to his loving home in Bavaria. Or in other words heaven is all about family. Of being given the big hug of welcome. Of being embraced. A lovely way of looking at it.
Yes indeed. I'm sure my mother prayed me back too. I still have one of her Rosary beads. They are tied together with pieces of string which are black and greasy with use. Although I don't normally use them, I do like to pray on them knowing my fingers are running over the same beads as my mother's did. I also have the old 1958 pocket Prayer Book for Men which my father must have used quite heavily, judging by the finger marks and grease at the bottoms of the pages. It is the simple prayers from this book that I pray before and after Holy Communion. They end with En Ego, to which is attached a plenary indulgence (with the usual conditions): En Ego Good and sweetest Jesus see, Kneeling here I beg of Thee, Make my heart feel ardently, Living Faith, Hope and Charity. True repentence I implore, Steadfast will to sin no more, Deeply moved and grieved in soul, Thy five wounds I now behold. Here I see fulfilled in Thee, David's words of prophecy: "They have dug my hands and feet, They have numbered all my bones." I can't help wondering what must have happened in the intervening period between my father's heavy use of the pocket prayer book and his later life. I do think the Church and the society underwent a huge tranformation which undermined its spiritual life and that of individuals and the Nation. Lord have mercy us and on all our parents and ancestors! Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
When my mother died I found her little prayer book which she must have used for so many years, heavily bound with sellotape. It would only have cost a few pennies, but goodness must she ever have used it. I found this so touching. It reminded me that we don't have to get very complicated to get to the place we should be . This is true of the Spiritual Life in General, I think, that it resolves itself into great simplicity. It is a return to childhood. A good example of this is the Rosary, so very, very simple, yet so utterly profound But it has to be done right. Like anything else we must do it from the heart
I wanted to share a wonderful story of prayer. Like most of you, I pray the rosary daily. I have a strong devotion to the Blessed mother. Think I might’ve heard this on this forum but I’ve added a little prayer in between the decades where I say , “ with these beads Blessed mother, please bind my children to your Immaculate heart and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”. Just like all of you, we’ve discussed the spiritual battle it is that’s going on, especially for our children. My oldest son stopped going to Mass. So the best I can do at this point is just pray for them. So, my younger son (17) has a job at our church as a Sacristan. It’s a paid job and he is responsible for unlocking the church, putting on the lights making sure the candles are lit & setting up the Altar, etc. he also attends one of the masses that day and gets paid for that hour also. So, for the most part my husband and I will go to mass and he will sit with us. yesterday, he was getting ready to leave to go to work at the church. I told him I would see him at the 5 o’clock mass. He said why are you going to that Mass… So I said so we could go to Mass together . And he pushed back and said no I’m not going to Mass…I’m gonna hear the Mass from the sacristy. I said to him don’t you realize how silly that sounds? You are going to be in the church how could you not go to Mass? But I didn’t wanna make a big deal about it so he left. Of course you know what I did next… I prayed and I prayed real hard! LOL! I asked the Blessed mother to please speak to Jesus and ask Jesus to tell my sons guardian angel to inspire him to go to mass tonight. So, my husband and I went to mass and we’re sitting in the pew and my son comes in and he sits next to us. And I gave him a smile and then my son said to me “mom, I just went to Confession”. I gave him a big smile and I didn’t make a big deal about it. but, quietly the tears streamed down my cheeks and I said a silent prayer to God and of course our Blessed mother to thank them for this little miracle. You have to understand, this is the first time my son went to confession on his own without my asking him if he wanted to go. So later on when he got home from work, he told me tjat first of all, he felt like a jerk for what he said to me before he left….and then when he was at Church, he was unlocking the confessional doors for the priests and he saw there was no line and felt like he should go. The priest was so happy to see a young man coming to confession. My son felt so good about what he did and you know how I feel!!!!! thanks for letting me share. Can’t share this story with many people.
You are very blessed. Your son is open to and listened to the prompting of Holy Spirit! Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
I have discovered Fr Brendan Walsh from a talk he gave on his conversion and journey to the priesthood from the Divine Mercy Conference 2020. Absolutely wonderful. Funny and poignant and filled with God's faithfulness and wonderful sense of humor. If you haven't already heard it please find it. What a testimony to his mother's prayers and the intercession of Padre Pio. I mean to listen to it again. Its on you tube.
Just a little reminder. St. Jacinta Marto died 103 years ago today (20th Feb 1920). St. Jacinta please pray for all of us and for the world! At 4:30 you can see the tomb of Saints Jacinta and Francisco.
I can't recommend highly enough the seven sorrows rosary... The promises alone, for the families of those that recite it are astonishing. I've been saying it for years. And honestly, I see it's effects in those around me. https://7sorrowsrosaries.com/pages/7-sorrows-promises
