Mother Mary

THERE used to be a booklet titled "An Unpublished Manuscript on Purgatory" being sold in Catholic bookstores. Before it vanished altogether for reasons I don't know, I'd buy several copies to give away to family and friends. Yes, it's also all about actual experiences of a nun with another soul from Purgatory, not unlike those of Maria Simma (1915-2004), the current subject of this column's series. I gave away the booklets for the same reason I have been sharing the experiences of Simma: to build up faith in the afterlife, in my firm belief this also boosts faith in God. At another time, I will share excerpts from the "unpublished manuscript" which has the Church's "nihil obstat" and "imprimatur." Nihil obstat means "nothing stands in the way," that the manuscript can be forwarded to the bishop for review and decision. Once the bishop finds the work free from doctrinal error, he grants it an imprimatur which means ...

ABOUT twice in my life I have heard homilies which referred to Heaven and even hell as a "condition" or a "state of being," period. Each time, before the period, I had hoped more explanations were coming, but no. Heaven and hell (no mention of Purgatory at all) ended like a dangling sentences. I thought it made Heaven unattractive and hell, not that bad. It was also a foggy way to give an idea of the afterlife. If Heaven and hell were mere states of being, how do they differ from our being in the present state? This question was not resolved. There's just no way of fully explaining the afterlife from the point of view of what we're used to in the natural world. It is said that the best rational explanation of it was made by the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquins in his Summa Theologiae, but towards the end of his life, he stopped writing after he was shown a glimpse of the Other Side. It was in 1273 that Aquinas was celebrating Mass when he received the reve...

IT'S not even Halloween, plus our country is reeling from a virulent Covid-19, furious over a terrorism law, scourged by swine flu in Luzon, and this section dwells on mystic Maria Simma and her ghosts? Some justification was cited here before, but it bears repeating if only to underscore its importance: it is in the most trying times that we have to keep faith in the afterlife, that no matter the swirl of daily burden, there is hope. Simma, who had lived a holy life in her tiny village of Sonntag, Austria, remains a testimony to everlasting life whose initial stage for some though has to be spent in Purgatory (as demanded by Divine Justice). That’s where most of Simma’s ghosts came from. The thought of Purgatory should also remind us that sins, even those already forgiven, still have to be paid for--but not necessarily in Purgatory. Sufferings on earth can be offered as mortification so that one can readily fly off to the perfection of Heaven after leaving the body, no more purga...

EACH morning, we wake up to an ego ready to assert itself thru the day, even if we are not aware of this. Even acts that we think are good can turn out to be nothing but selfishness, if we take selflessness to mean anything in which none is left for one to relish but as an offering to God as He would dispose of it. That's why one of my favorite saints has been St. Therese of the Little Flower. I keep two photos of her on the family altar: one as she knelt as a nun beside a cross, and another her close up, with her penetrating eyes and kindest smile. This, to fire me up against my ego. St. Therese's greatest gospel for me is that each has the opportunity to be saintly (if this desire is selfishness, so gladly be it) even in doing little things, in coping with the smallest irritations in life. Why, she had admitted being irked by the rattling of the rosary of another nun in her convent, but she held that feeling as mortification offered to God. On humility, St. Therese had this ...

MY TWO sisters and I were looking at my very sick Dad when he breathed his last in bed in February last year. "There is no more movement," I said, as my niece- a physician- was preparing another bottle of IV fluid for Dad. My niece rushed to search Dad's pulse, found none, and asked whether we, siblings, wanted revival efforts. We opted to let go of my father; he had suffered enough from ravaging cancer. He was 92. Any death in the family cuts painfully deep, but in the case of my father, I found much comfort in my unwavering faith in the afterlife. I took my phone and googled for prayers for death in the family, prayed aloud, once in a while looking at the ceiling where Dad could be hovering and still confused on who was the motionless person, who looked exactly like him, lying in his bed. From dire prophecies for our times, this shift to afterlife tone is motivated by a desire to convince people to take spirituality more seriously. Covid-19 has, to some extent, driven m...

WITH some, if not most mystics, relaying to us terrifying warnings for our times, how do we not fear? This was the topic of noted Catholic influencers and authors Mark Mallett and Daniel O’Connor in their Queen of Media Productions online program. Both have strong beliefs in modern-day Marian apparitions and that, yes, we are in an era that could be described only as apocalyptic. My past columns shared some of such prophecies that, in sum, warned of a chastisement worse than the deluge of Noah’s time unless mankind changes, reforms, returns to God. That’s a lot of terrifying things to say, yet there is also an admonition: Fear not. How? Both Mallett and O’Connor agree that such admonition can be realized only if one has firm faith in God; it also helps to believe in all that He teaches via his Church. There is life everlasting and each one is called to be part of the blissful side of this non-ending reality. If there has to be tragedy and disasters, these are means of last resort for ...