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MONTH ARRIVES FOR US TO HELP THE SOULS WHO MAY BE IN PURGATORY OR ROAMING IN 'BETWEEN'

[excerpt from: The Spirits Around Us]

It is the month to focus prayer for the deceased. Let us do so! Last week, we presented a note about indulgences offered for prayers at graveside. Many spirits need our assistance!

It is interesting that All Souls follows the ghosts of Halloween (as does the day for the saints -- who assist us, including in prayer for the souls!).

The Church requires “no motion of faith for or against ghosts,” or earthbound spirits, is the way Sir Leslie (a consultant to Pope Pius XI) put it. In City of God (Book XXII), Saint Augustine mentions a haunted house – whether by an earthbound spirit or a demon, we cannot know, although an exorcism was performed, and perhaps there was no distinction for Augustine between the demonic and the ghostly (for elsewhere he seems skeptical of ghosts). 

In the early Church, they were referred to as revenants, and there has been an explosion of reports in our own time.

Saint Gennadius once rebuked a specter that addressed him.

St. Eulogius of Alexandria saw a wraith.

Saint Amatus appeared after his death to his mother.

Saint Gregory tells of a deacon who haunted certain baths (and was seen by a bishop). It is in his Dialogues.

Whether ghosts are miracles or not, Saint Thomas Aquinas "accepted the apparition of the dead which he attributes to the special dispensation of God or else to the operation of spirits, good or bad,” according to an eminent Church scholar named Sir Shane Leslie.

“I don’t know if I built my home on haunted property ten years ago, or if I am being visited by the holy souls,” a woman named Dee Dee from Michigan wrote. “I only know that many nights when I lay in bed to read before falling asleep, I have encountered knocking on my wall above my bed in several places and that it does not cease until I pray. One night I was so unnerved that I pulled my Scapular out of my night gown, made the Sign of the Cross, and kissed it. The knocking stopped right away. It’s almost as if they were saying, ‘can you put in a few good words for me?’ While the sudden noises, occasional shadows, and missing objects at times startle me, I just say aloud, ‘I will pray for you.’ I believe that’s the best way to handle a haunting. These souls are still on their journey and we must help them any way we can. I am very devoted to the Holy Souls.”

Many such souls, it seems, are purgatorial. “In August of 2000 my dad passed away from lung cancer in Edmonton, Canada,” wrote an engineering technologist named Waldo W. Ponce. “I few days later he came to me in a dream. He looked younger but serious and he was wearing a long white robe and said to me in Spanish, ‘Tell [my brother] Ivan that purgatory exists. I was there for sixty-three days.’ He then disappeared. The following morning for some reason I looked at a calendar first thing and counted sixty-three days from the death of my father and it ended on my brother Ivan’s birthday.”

Our prayers for them work – freeing them to Heaven.

“During the year of the Jubilee of John Paul II, when one could gain a plenary indulgence for a holy soul, my sister called from out of state and told me she was compelled to do the indulgence for my husband’s mother, and that she would be completing the requirement for the indulgence the next day,” said Jennifer Spillet. “I wanted to tell my husband about this when he arrived home from work that evening but completely forgot about it.

“The next day after he had arrived at work he called and said, ‘I just had the strangest thing happen to me that I have ever had happen.’ His voice was shaky but full of joy. Tearful.

“He proceeded to tell me that his mother went to Heaven that day.

“I asked what he was talking about. He said that on the way to work he was at a light waiting for it to turn green when the most beautiful music began playing (he didn’t have his radio on) and an overwhelming feeling came on him of his mother’s presence, that she was letting him know that she had gone to Heaven that day! I suddenly remembered my sister was completing her requirements for the indulgence that very day. I told my husband about my sister offering up the indulgence for his mother and after I hung up I called my sister and yes, you guessed it: she had finished her indulgence at about the same time this had happened to my husband!”

[resources: Hungry Souls and The Spirits Around Us]

See also: Indulgences offered for prayers at graveside]

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