Praying for the Dead, Purgatory, and Praying for Death

Obviously today is the day that we pray for the Church Suffering, the souls who will eventually attain the Beatific Vision, yet must undergo the torments necessary to preserve justice and to free them from attachment to sins.

If you have ever watched a cooking pot be made kosher, you will get some idea of what these souls are going through. The pot is thoroughly gone over with a blowtorch so that any trace amounts of traif are incinerated.

So, yes, you repented of whatever sin you did, but there is still a part of you that remembers with fondness how fun it was. Get ready for a scorcher...

Until...

Someone prays for you.

The worst pain on Earth is easier than the lightest pain in Purgatory (which Fr. Zak reminded us of yesterday - did I mention what a great priest Fr. Zak is? How often do you hear of such things at St. Spaceships?), so it is entirely fit to pray for people to die repented of their sins and cleansed of their attachment to those sins. Ultimately we are praying for the people to be what they were created to be, which is, quite frankly, awesome almost to the point of being beyond our fallen comprehension or even imagination.

So, we pray for people to have a happy death. We never want to be like Hamlet, who refrained from killing his uncle after his uncle went to confession, because he wanted to send him to Hell. We may have enemies. If we are doing something right, we will certainly have enemies. We must pray for them to have a happy death.

If our enemies are also enemies of the common good, we may even ask for God to grant them a happy death a little sooner, as well. In fact, I can think of no better thing for a person than to have a good confession, receive a plenary indulgence, and then to die before having a chance to muck it all up again.

So, if you want to do a good turn, pray for the dear departed. Pray for the not-so-dear departed. And pray that R.D. repents of his sins, embraces the Catholic Church, receives absolution and a plenary indulgence, and returns to the embrace of Our Lord post haste. Amen.