Healing The Roots: Entering The Month Of The Dead To Heal Our Lineage

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HEALING THE ROOTS: ENTERING THE MONTH OF THE DEAD TO HEAL OUR LINEAGE

From: Susan Tassone

As the days grow shorter, the Church turns her eyes toward eternity. November is traditionally dedicated as the Month of the Dead, a sacred time when the veil between heaven, earth, and the afterlife feels thinned by prayer. While we naturally prepare to remember our deceased relatives and friends on All Souls’ Day, a profound spiritual reality awaits us this November. Our Lady’s recent call to pray for our entire lineage reminds us that this month is not just about looking back in grief, but stepping forward in deliverance.

Our Lady’s message where she calls us is saying:

“Pray for all our deceased and for our entire lineage, that Our Lord may free us from every evil, from all evil that our relatives have done. That through our prayer, our penance, we may ask for the grace that our ancestors may come out of Purgatory and go to Heaven.”

 (Our Lady of Medjugorje, June 18, 2026)

By uncovering this powerful message, we discover how, over the next thirty days, we are handed an extraordinary treasury of grace to rescue our forgotten ancestors from purgatory, breaking ancient generational cycles and transforming our hidden family burdens into a legacy of spiritual blessings. By breaking down her message line by line, we can understand our profound duty to our ancestors and the liberating grace available to us this November.

“Pray for all our deceased and for our entire lineage…”

November Focus: The practice of interceding for the dead is an act of charity known as suffrage. However, Our Lady’s message specifically separates “the deceased” from our “entire lineage.” Understanding this difference is essential for unpacking her call to action.

  • The Deceased: This encompasses the immediate souls we have known, loved, and lost. They are the recently departed whose names we hold in our living memories.
  • The Entire Lineage (Ancestors): This stretches back hundreds of generations through our family trees. It includes thousands of souls whose names are forgotten by history but are intimately known by God. Many may have entered eternity centuries ago with no one left to pray for them, leaving them “stranded” or forgotten in Purgatory.

The biblical foundation for praying for the deceased in the Old Testament, most notably in 2 Maccabees 12:46: “Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.”

Furthermore, the Church coordinates this massive family network through the Communion of Saints, formalized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 958): “In full consciousness of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has honored with great devotion the memory of the dead and… she offered her suffrages for them.”

“…that Our Lord may free us from every evil, from all evil that our relatives have done.”

A striking component of Our Lady’s message is the petition to be freed from the “evil that our relatives have done.” There is a boundary between spiritual guilt and physical or psychological consequence.

November Focus: Understanding the Cry: “That Our Lord May Free Us from Every Evil”

Guilt is Personal
The Church rejects the concept of inheriting the moral guilt of an ancestor’s personal sins. Every individual answer for their own soul before the judgment seat of God. This is explicitly stated in Ezekiel 18:20:
“The soul that sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son.” While we do not inherit moral guilt, the spiritual, psychological, and behavioral consequences of sin ripple across generations.

If ancestors participate in grave evils, unconfessed patterns of malice, abuse, addictions, or occult practices, those actions leave deep emotional and spiritual wounds that can create toxic patterns, coping mechanisms, or spiritual burdens for living descendants that cause spiritual fractures into the family line. By praying for our lineage, offering Masses, we ask God to apply the healing blood of Jesus Christ to those ancient generational wounds, bringing closure to toxic cycles.

When we pray that “Our Lord may free us from every evil,” we are engaging in a powerful form of spiritual warfare and deliverance. This petition means three things for our lives today:

  • Breaking the Spiritual Cycles: It means asking God to act as a shield, ensuring that whatever spiritual doorways were opened by the sins of past generations are permanently slammed shut. We are begging Christ to make the negative spiritual patterns—such as anger, addiction, occult attachments, or despair—stop completely with us.
  • Healing Intergenerational Trauma: Sin leaves psychological and spiritual wounds. When we ask to be freed from “every evil,” we are asking the Holy Spirit to heal our family tree’s hidden baggage, untangling our minds and hearts from the unspoken spiritual heavy burdens we might carry.
  • Securing Freedom for Future Generations: By standing in the breach and asking Jesus to dissolve the evil attachments of the past, we ensure that our children, grandchildren, and future descendants inherit a clean slate—a legacy of pure blessing rather than spiritual warfare.

“That through our prayer, our penance, we may ask for the grace…”

November Focus: Prayer must be accompanied by penance. November is a season of sacrifice. Fast, give up small comforts or sacrifice time to go to a weekday Mass, visit a cemetery, to gain Indulgences. Be greedy for Indulgences! Pray the Rosary, The Way of the Cross for the Holy Souls, Eucharistic Adoration. All these powerful devotions directly impact the holy souls.

“…that our ancestors may come out of Purgatory and go to Heaven.”

November Focus: According to CCC 1030, Purgatory is a state of final purification for those who die in God’s grace but are still imperfectly cleansed of the attachments to sin (Purgatory). The logic of praying our ancestors out of Purgatory is based on their total dependency on us:

  • The Holy Souls are Helpless: Once a soul leaves the body, their time of “meriting” or doing personal penance is over. They cannot perform acts to actively shorten their own purification. We are their only deliverers. (Remember, one thing they can do while in purgatory is pray and intercede for us)! See CCC: #958
  • The Power of Spiritual Exchange: God, in His mysterious wisdom, allows us the living to offer Masses, Indulgences, prayers, penances, and sacrifices to satisfy the remaining “temporal debt” of these holy souls. We are given the power, privilege and duty to do this so their purification may be completed allowing them to enter Heaven.

November Focus: Practical Steps to Implement Our Lady’s Request

To heal our family tree and release our ancestors from Purgatory, we must actively participate in the Church’s treasury of grace. Here’s how:

Enrollments and Mass Offerings with the Missionaries of the Holy Family

  • Enroll your family lineage with the Missionaries of the Holy

Family with a FAMILY PERPETUAL ENROLLMENT. Enroll your family on their website writing in Intention box: Living and Deceased members and Ancestors

of LAST NAME/WIFE’S MAIDEN NAME FAMILY LINEAGE. This will cover the whole family lineage back to God perpetually! Daily Mass is offered perpetually for the whole family tree back to God, past, present and future.

For Family Perpetual enrollments for $25 visit: www.msf-america.org.

The Missionaries of the Holy Family offer accessible spiritual options to fit your budget:

• Offer a holy Mass for your family Tree. Offering a Mass applies the infinite merits of Christ’s passion directly to your lineage, cutting through centuries of unatoned ancestral sin.

Non-Consecutive 30-Masses ($200 Offering): If the standard Gregorian stipend is out

of reach, this alternate ensures 30 Masses will still be offered for your intention,

though they will not be celebrated on consecutive days.

• Living Intentions ($200 Offering): You can secure 30 Masses for yourself right now while you are alive to blanket your own soul in prayer. When a birthday, anniversary, holy day or holiday comes along ask for a Holy Mass and Enrollment and do the same for others.

  • Commit to Ancestral Fasting and Penance: Dedicate a specific day—such as a Friday—to fast on bread and water, or give up a daily comfort. As you begin, pray: “Lord, I offer this penance for the purification of my ancestors in Purgatory and for the spiritual healing of my living family.”
  • Pray a “Lineage Rosary”: Before starting each decade of your daily Rosary, dedicate it to a specific generation or branch of your family tree (e.g., first decade for parents, second decade for great-grandparents, third decade for distant ancestors who struggled with heavy vices).
  • Gain the Special November 1–8 Cemetery Plenary Indulgence: The Catholic Church offers an extraordinary, specific mercy explicitly matching Our Lady’s request during the Cemetery Indulgences (November 1–8). By devoutly visiting any cemetery on these eight days and mentally or vocally praying for the dead, you can obtain one plenary indulgence per day—effectively relieving or releasing a soul(s) from Purgatory.

To unlock this grace for your ancestors, follow the standard requirements:

  • Complete a Sacramental Confession (one confession suffices for all eight days).
  • Receive Holy Communion daily for each indulgence sought.
  • Pray for the intentions of the Pope (Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be).
  • Strive for complete detachment from all sin, even venial sin.
    (Note: Outside of November 1–8, a cemetery visit grants a partial indulgence, which still heavily aids your family tree).

THE ULTIMATE REUNION

Blessed Fulton Sheen beautifully captures this holy exchange.

“As we enter Heaven, we will see them, so many of them, coming toward us and thanking us.

We will ask who they are, and they will say ‘a poor soul you prayed for in purgatory.’”

 

Imagine the joy of crossing into eternity and being embraced by a line of centuries-old ancestors who are only In Heaven because you answered Our Lady’s call this November. Let us not leave our lineage stranded. Offer Masses for them, enroll them, sacrifice for them, and turn your family into a legacy of Saints.