St Patrick's Dumbarton

Month of November

November is the month of the Holy Souls. The Church remembers in particular all our deceased relatives and friends in the masses offered this month. Pope Benedict in his Encyclical Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope) writes of purgatory that, ‘Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.’ We all want love in our lives, even if it is painful at times, but we persevere because we also know the joy that loves brings when it is complete. It is to the love of God in heaven that we journey here on earth and when that love is not completed at our death, the revelation of God’s love in its fullness continues the work of purification in us so that we can enjoy his love for ever in heaven.

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Click on the image to play the video	Taken from Catholic.org