So I went on retreat last week, just got back yesterday afternoon in time for confessions. I spent the week at a Benedcitine Abbey. It was a great week, I prayed a lot, I slept a lot, and I even read a whole book.  Only about 100 pages, but a big accomplishment for me, I can hardly ever find time to read.

The book is called, “Hungry Souls: Supernatural Visits, Messages, and Warnings from Purgatory” by Dr. Gerard J. M. Van Den Aardweg, a Dutch Psychotherapist. It detailed many supernatural visits from people in purgatory over the last five hundred years or so, really pretty fascinating.  

They are considered Hungry Souls because souls in purgatory hungry for our prayers, they can’t pray themselves out of it and into Heaven, so they need our prayers to get them out, but when we forget to pray for them, sometimes they get permission from God to visit us and remind us to pray.

One of the ways that people in purgatory were described, when they would first appear to people on earth, is having a “rust of sin,” that their sin was still attached to them, and they would look horrible, unrecognizable at first. As they received more prayers, gradually this “rust of sin” was chipped away, the people became clear and vibrant, and then, having satisfied God’s justice, they could move on to Heaven.  There were many, many accounts and they almost always took on this pattern.

So today we celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary who lived a life free of sin, she never accumulated any of that “rust of sin,” she was perfectly holy so we believe at the end of her earthly life God just assumed her body and soul directly into Heaven, glorifying her as Queen of Heaven.

The good news of the Assumption is that will be our destiny as well. It is a sign to us, it is a promise to us that we will also be assumed, body and soul into Heaven, and that we will be glorified as well.

This is what Jesus has done for us on the cross.  He has freed us from our sins, sure there might be some rust that needs to be knocked off at the end of our earthly life, but He has freed us from our sins and opened the door to Heaven, because of His great love for us.

We might say that Jesus loved Mary the most, she was His mother after all, but through our baptism we have become adopted sons and daughters of God, part of the family, and heirs of that same eternal life that Mary first received. Mary’s assumption gives us hope and confidence that we will join her there someday in glory. But someday isn’t today, hopefully, so there are some things that we should be doing now.  

First, we should be praying for our loved ones who have died.  We should have Masses said for them, we should offer prayers and we should offer our sacrifices up for them.  We can even do it generically, saying, “this is for anyone in my family line who needs prayers.”  That is important to do.  

 

Second, we should work to get rid of that rust of sin that we might have started to accumulate in our own lives.  This includes going to confession, but it really means getting rid of any attachment to sin, growing in holiness.  Only the perfect can enter Heaven, we can grow towards perfection either here on earth or in purgatory, after reading this book it is clear to me that it’s preferable to grow in holiness toward perfection here.

Third, we should ask Mary for her intercession for both of these two things.  We should ask Immaculate Mary to pray for our deceased loved ones and we should ask her to pray for us as well.  We know from scripture that prayers of the righteous are very efficacious.  

As Catholics, often people will question us as to why we pray to Mary.  It is a fair question, it is often misunderstood that we are praying for intercession, we are simply asking for her prayers. 

It is kind of like this, you are struggling with something, so you think of the holiest person you know on earth, wouldn’t you go to that person and ask them for prayers?  Well, Mary, being alive in the body of Christ is available to take our prayer requests, and we do, and we should, especially for those who have died, and for ourselves.  

Think about the most popular prayer to Mary, the Hail Mary, the first part is from our Gospel today, the inspired word of the Holy Spirit that Elizabeth said, followed by a prayer of intercession, “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Because Mary, being in Heaven and being the queen mother of God, has a lot of pull, a lot of influence.  She intercedes for us.  She loves us as her own children, and she goes to her Son Jesus on our behalf. 

This should give us great comfort, as well as hope and confidence, that we have a powerful advocate in Mary, a prayer warrior so to speak, to intercede for our loved ones and to intercede for us.  Today is a celebration indeed.

So together, let’s offer that prayer for our deceased loved ones. “Hail Mary…”