Family, researching and writing about Visions of the Saints has been one of the most emotional experiences we've ever had.
It has been exciting, inspiring, frightening, uplifting.
It has called us to new commitment! We've been brought back to some of the values of our childhood, long forgotten.
We learned most of the teachings on Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, sometime in our early Catholic School training, granted, not with as much depth as in this book.
But the Souls in Purgatory were always in the recesses of our minds and hearts during our formative years.
The good sisters encouraged us to pray for the release of the Poor Souls from Purgatory.
And hand in hand, we also prayed very often and fervently for the conversion of sinners, so that there would be fewer Souls in Purgatory, and hopefully none going to Hell.
On the Feast of All Souls, we wrote on little envelopes, we received in church, all the names of loved ones who had died.
During the month of November, our pastor kept those envelopes on the Altar, so that the Poor Souls would be remembered, during the Sacrifice of the Mass.
But what has happened? We're twenty, thirty, forty years older.
We've forgotten the devotions to the Poor Souls in Purgatory, which were so important to us when we were young.
When we should have been offering Masses and sacrifices for their release from Purgatory, instead we have regressed to the pagan ways of our ancestors, supplanting the life-saving rituals of the Church with the fancy caskets and expensive floral arrangements which will get no one into Heaven.
An ironic thing, now that we're older, we know more and more people who have died; yet say fewer prayers, have fewer Masses said, and make fewer sacrifices than we did when we knew fewer people who had died.
Brother Joseph's daddy is 82 years old, and he says he's a stranger in his hometown; everyone his age is dead.
Well, they may all be in Purgatory, Willie! Pray for them, so that someday they will be praying for you in Heaven.
We always wonder why the Lord has us do, whatever He assigns us, at a given time in the history of the world.
What is there that He knows that we don't know, and should know? Is it He Who is bringing this book to us about Heaven, Hell and Purgatory? Is He saying, we should be willing, no, anxious to spend our Purgatory on earth? Is He through this book, imploring us to not do the things that will land us in Purgatory, no less Hell? Is He not saying that He and His Most Precious Mother are waiting for us in Heaven? We said in this book that there have been so many indicators that we're in the Latter Days, we should take very seriously the mandates that Our Lord Jesus gave to St.
Gertrude the Great, St.
Margaret Mary Alacoque, and in the Twentieth Century, St.
Faustina, to pray, pray constantly to His Sacred Heart for His Mercy.
Why did the Lord inspire us to write this book, at this time? Could it be that our deceased relatives, whether they be mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, and descendants going back five and ten generations, are begging us to pray for their release from Purgatory? Are Our Lord and Mother Mary trying to warn of us of something that will happen in the final days of this Millennium? We are on a crash course of destruction, and our Holy Family doesn't want us to be caught up in the devastation.
Our greatest weapons have never changed, the Mass, the Rosary, sacrifices for the Souls in Purgatory and the conversion of sinners.
Use them! Take to heart St.
Paul's command to the Ephesians: "Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the Principalities and the Powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness on high.
(Eph 6:11-12) Copyright (c) 2011 Bob and Penny Lord's Site