Holy Souls Mass Remembrance
“… I shall hearken in a special manner to the prayers
that shall be addressed to me for the relief of the souls in Purgatory.”
– Our Lady of the Bowed Head to Fr. Dominic
Dear Friends of Carmel,
The month of November begins in a few weeks, and we turn our thoughts toward Purgatory and the holy souls who dwell there for a time, expiating their faults. Fostering charity among the members of the Mystical Body of Christ, Holy Mother Church admonishes us to pray more especially during November for these souls, both known and unknown to us.
A custom we keep in our chapel here is to place the names of deceased family members and other loved ones on our altars, and our priests faithfully remember these souls at each Mass offered during the month of November. We invite you to send us the names of your loved ones who are deceased, and we will be happy to include these souls in this great benefit of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for their speedy release and eternal peace. As many as seven Masses are offered here at our chapel each day, and a remembrance of your deceased loved ones will be made at each Mass, each day of the month of November, starting on All Souls Day, November 2nd. A donation is customary, as a stipend for the Priests who celebrate the Masses. However, it is not obligatory, as we know these are difficult times financially for many. Even if you are not able to send a donation, please feel free to send us the names of your deceased, so that they might benefit from the treasury of the Church and the graces she pours out on all of her children through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Use our new submission form to submit your names
Before October 31st
Our Lady of the Bowed Head
The image at the beginning of this newsletter is a miraculous image of Our Lady that regrettably is not very well known. Because of its connection to the Holy Souls, we take this opportunity to tell the beautiful story behind this marvelous image.
In the year 1610, a Carmelite friar, now known as Venerable Dominic of Jesus and Mary, was surveying an old house he had recently purchased with the intention of converting it into a Monastery. He had a deep interior impulse to sort through a pile of seemingly unimportant rubbish outside the house and found discarded in this trash an oil painting of Our Lady.
He was grieved to see such a desecration, and he brought the picture inside, cleaned and repaired it, placed it in his cell and venerated it with great confidence. One evening he noticed some dust had settled on the now-treasured portrait, and taking his woolen handkerchief he said with childlike simplicity: “O purest and holiest of Virgins, nothing in the whole world is worthy of touching your holy face, but since I have nothing but this course handkerchief, deign to accept my good will.” While he dusted and cleaned the picture, the image suddenly became animated.
Our Lady smiled at him, and nodded her head in a token of gratitude. This is the very pose the image retains to this day. She calmed the startled friar with the words: “Fear not, my son, for your request is granted (he had earlier requested a favor of her). It will be accomplished and will be part of the recompense that you are to receive for the love that you bear my Divine Son and myself.”
She told him to express with all confidence any favor he might desire. Father Dominic fell on his knees, and knowing by revelation of the soul of a benefactor that was suffering in Purgatory, asked for its deliverance. “Dominic, my son,” Our Lady encouraged, “I will deliver this soul from Purgatory, but you must offer still several Masses and make sacrifices for this soul.” The apparition ended, and Dominic hastened to do as Our Lady had told him.
Our Lady of the Bowed Head holy card
Some days later, he was again praying before the miraculous picture, and Our Lady appeared once more, this time accompanied with the soul of the benefactor which had been delivered from Purgatory, who thanked Father Dominic for his prayers and sacrifices. Our Lady encouraged Father Dominic to continue asking for favors: “All those who implore my protection, devoutly honoring this picture, will obtain their petitions, and will receive many graces. Moreover, I shall hearken in a special manner to the prayers that shall be addressed to me for the relief of the souls in Purgatory.”
The original image is currently enshrined at the Carmelite Monastery in Vienna.
After such promises, Father Dominic felt he could no longer keep this special image for his own personal use and had the image placed in the Monastery church. It remained in the custody of the Carmelite Order until a few decades later, when the superiors of the Order gifted the image to Emperor Ferdinand II, a great benefactor of the Order who founded convents in Vienna and Prague. It became a prized possession, highly venerated by the Emperor and his wife and kept in their private chapel until the Emperor’s death, at which point the Empress brought it back to the Carmelite Order.
She gave it to the Carmelite nuns at the convent in Vienna, which she herself also entered. It was once again placed in a public chapel, where multitudes of people came to venerate it, many receiving miraculous favors. Pope Pius XI solemnly crowned the image in 1931.
We received as a gift in the mid-1990s a framed portrait of this beautiful image. The friend who donated it went to great lengths to obtain it when she traveled to Vienna, the current location of the original. We recall her touching story: she greatly desired to see the image in the Carmelite Church there, but arrived late, after the church was locked. Asking a priest there, he explained that everything was closed, and nothing could be done until another day.
However, the priest had a change of heart and then welcomed her and her husband to enter by a back entrance, showing them around the church, but especially taking them to the miraculous image. Our friend wrote to us that, praying before the image, she was inspired to obtain a copy for our Monastery, as well as the one she already planned to purchase for her own home. We keep this treasured image just outside our Choir, where we love to stop and pray, especially for our departed loved ones.
Like Father Dominic, we have long thought it best not to keep it to ourselves, and have at last made copies of it to share with all of you. The prints we offer are from a photograph of our own image. We also printed holy cards for your own personal devotion.Remember Our Lady’s words! Pray for the Poor Souls! Have Masses offered, and make sacrifices for them.
Feast of the Holy Rosary
We would be remiss if we did not even acknowledge the fact that October 7th is the Feast of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary. So much could be said about this feast! Its history – and mystery – is a topic worth knowing and exploring.
But today, we will have to confine ourselves to reminding you of Our Lady’s words to St. Dominic when she gave the Rosary: “Someday, I will save the world through the Rosary.” History gives evidence on numerous occasions of the fulfillment of this prophecy and promise, and this day commemorates one of them: the victory of Christian forces in the great Battle of Lepanto in 1571. But we suggest to you that we have not yet seen the completion of this victory. Our Lady of Fatima told us to “pray the rosary every day to obtain peace.” We are desperate for peace in this world. Need we seek other solutions?
It will be an encouragement to read or re-read the 15 Promises Our Lady made through St. Dominic and Blessed Alan de la Roche to those who pray and are devoted to the Holy Rosary. If you have not already listened to it, we also have a wonderful talk posted on our website given by one of our Priests with some suggestions on how to pray the rosary well.
The Rosary also has its root in prayers for the dead. Years before St. Dominic, monks who were illiterate, would pray Our Fathers in place of the psalms sung by the choir Monks. When a monk died, the choir would pray the psalter, and the lay brothers would pray 150 Our Fathers, using beads to count the prayers.
This 19th century painting from Belgium shows St. Dominic receiving the rosary from Our Lady while the Poor Souls in Purgatory look on.
Even as the rosary gradually became a more common form of prayer, eventually being transformed by Our Lady into what it is today, it remains a very salutary and efficacious prayer for the dead, often being prayed at funeral gatherings.
St. Alphonsus tells us that Blessed Alan de la Roche, the Dominican who revived the Rosary devotion two centuries after St. Dominic, wrote in his memoirs that many of the [deceased Dominican] brethren had appeared to him and his Community while they recited the Rosary. These souls frequently declared that next to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, there was no more powerful means than the Rosary to help the suffering souls in Purgatory. Numerous souls were released daily who otherwise would have been obliged to remain in Purgatory for years.
Purgatorian Manual
This beautiful pocket sized prayerbook is only 3″ x 5″ and less than 1/2 inch thick, yet it contains almost 300 pages of wonderful prayers. This book contains every prayer, meditation, novena, and Mass for the Holy Souls that you could imagine. It is a treasure for those who love the Holy Souls and wish to pray TO and FOR our dearly departed. It was the official Manual of the Purgatorian Society promoted under the auspices of the Redemptorists.
See our complete book section for more books and suggested reading about Purgatory and the Holy Souls.
St. Therese’s Requiem Holy Face Vestment Painting
We often share with you stories and pictures from our own vestment projects and work for the altar, but Carmelite nuns have been making vestments for a very long time.
Before we close this newsletter focusing on the Holy Souls, we thought we would share with you a very special vestment that was made by none other than our own St. Therese, whose Feast day we recently celebrated. It is a beautiful example of liturgical art and devotion for the Mass and for the Holy Souls.
This particular vestment was a Requiem chasuble. The material for it was taken from a dress that had belonged to the mother of the Saint, Zelie Martin, and the central piece consists of hand painting by the Saint, rich with personal symbolism. The two white roses honored her parents, and the lilies represented the nine children in the family. The four un-blossomed lilies were those children that died in infancy, and the five in full bloom the five sisters who all gave themselves to Christ in religious vocations. The central image of the vestment honors St. Therese’s special devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, and she identified herself with the lily half hidden behind the picture of Our Lord.
To make this beautiful piece of artwork more known and available, we have printed it on a ceramic wall cross for personal devotion. We had to edit the image slightly, moving up the roses to fit the entire image on the shorter cross. But other than that small edit, the artwork is St. Therese’s original painting, a beautiful way to honor the Holy Face, remember the Holy Souls and honor our special Saint.
We end this newsletter by returning to where it began, reminding you to send us the names of your deceased loved ones for the Holy Souls Mass remembrance in November.
We also assure you of our prayers now and always!
In Christ,
Your Carmelite Sisters
Prayer to Our Lady of the Bowed Head
Virgin most holy,
Mother of the Word Incarnate,
Treasurer of graces,
and Refuge of poor sinners:
we fly to thy motherly affection
with lively faith,
and we beg of thee the grace
ever to do the will of God.
Into thy most holy hands
we commit the keeping of our hearts,
asking thee for health of soul and body,
in the certain hope that thou,
our most loving Mother,
wilt hear our prayer.
Wherefore with lively faith we say:
Hail Mary three times