A Lenten Penance That Will Help Your Deceased Loved Ones

Why not form the habit of practicing “Indulgences”during Lent and decrease the temporal punishment due to your sins in a extra efficacious way and, at the same time, grow in love for the Holy Souls in Purgatory?

An indulgence can be offered for oneself or for the Holy Souls in Purgatory but not for another living person.

Indulgences are a great gift of God’s mercy. They help to satisfy for the temporal punishment due to sins and can be gained for ourselves or for the souls in Purgatory. Indulgences are a wonderful way to effectively help our love ones who have died that goes way beyond our own ability to help them. 

Many of us feel a sense of guilt after the death of someone close to us, wishing that we would have done things differently. Indulgences give us a chance to remedy that by helping them now in their current state. Many (probably most) of our loved ones didn’t have a chance to satisfy for the temporal punishment of their sins before they died; they might not have even realized that they needed to, and, on top of that, the souls in Purgatory cannot help themselves – they are not in a position to merit any longer - so they need our help.

Indulgences offer us a wonderful incentive to make our entire day into a prayer – an offering of love. There are indulgences for specific prayers; for fulfilling our daily duties to the best of our ability and bearing difficulties of life in a Christian spirit. There are indulgences for acts of charity and for acts of penance.

I try to offer every prayer, work, joy, sorrow and suffering; every difficultly, traffic, weather, rudeness from other people, difficult situations at work, headache, etc. as an indulgence by bearing each one patiently, doing my best and offering each one with love to God and because these acts of love are offered as indulgences the supernatural value of them is greatly increased, much more than if I offered these same acts of love without the intention of attaching an indulgence to them. 

LEARN MORE ABOUT INDULGENCES HERE  AND HOW TO DOUBLE THE GRACE OBTAINED FOR THE HOLY SOULS IN PURGATORY

God blesses the efforts of those who work hard to form the habit of helping the Holy Souls in Purgatory this way! Here is an example from the life of St. John Macias:

ESCORTS TO HEAVEN

St. John Macias worked for the sick in Peru and, no matter how tired he was, he prayed three Rosaries on his knees (as an indulgence) every night for the poor souls in purgatory. On his deathbed, St. John the Evangelist appeared to him and said that through his prayers St. John Macias had released one million four hundred thousand souls from purgatory. When he died, thousands upon thousands of souls poured from heaven to greet him.