Category: Purgatory

Look Up, Lift Up Your Head

Look Up, Lift Up Your Head

Throughout the important Feastdays celebrated this past month (Christ the King, All Saints Day, Commemoration of the Poor Souls), one cannot help but turn one’s thoughts to one’s own eternal destiny. The joys of Heaven, the purifications of Purgatory….all are brought before our minds just as the Liturgical Year comes to a climax. It is the intention of Holy Mother Church that we turn our meditations towards our death and judgment, and ultimately the Last Judgement, which is both the theme of the last few Sundays of the year and the focus of the penitential season of Advent.

Meditating on the Last Judgement, and even our own death, has a very specific and salutary purpose in the spiritual life: it serves as both warning and consolation.

In WEBSITE NEWS we explore some of the meaning Catholic meaning behind popular Christmas customs and give recommendations for Spiritual Reading. Read more…

“All of Life is Advent”

“All of Life is Advent”

All too often, November finds many of us racing into the celebratory mood of Christmas, without a thought of Advent, that preparatory season of light penance and prayer. Father Delp, who wrote from his WWII cell in Nazi Germany, had many beautiful reflections on this holy season that are applicable today: "Advent is a time of being deeply shaken, so that man will wake up to himself…. Perhaps what we modern people need most is to be genuinely shaken, so that where life is grounded, we would feel its stability; and where life is unstable and uncertain, immoral and unprincipled, we would know that, also, and endure it… erhaps that is the ultimate answer to the question of why God has sent us into this time, why He permits this whirlwind to go over the earth, and why He holds us in such a state of chaos and in hopelessness and in darkness… More, and on a deeper level than before, we really know this time that all of life is Advent."

We don’t forget, during this month of November, our brethren the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Briefly meditating on their sufferings reminds us of the need to pray for them: “Purgatory, in all truth, the workshop of infinite justice. Divine severity and rigor are exercised there with an intensity that, to us on earth, is unknown... On the other hand, purgatory is the masterpiece of the heart of God, the most marvelous artifice of His love.”

In WEBSITE NEWS we touch on the history and symbolism behind the Advent wreath, a beloved Catholic custom during these days before Christmas. We also introduce our new relic badge of Our Lady of Guadalupe, briefly remember the story of this great apparition and patron of the Americas, as well as studying the intricate symbolism contained in Her image.

COMMUNITY NEWS contains the completion of our new shrine to Our Lady of Fatima. Read more…

Remembrance of the Holy Souls

Remembrance of the Holy Souls

This SPECIAL EDITION of our newsletter is dedicate to the Poor Souls in Purgatory as the month of November will shortly be upon us. A custom here at the Chapel is to place the names of our deceased family members and other loved ones on the altar to be remembered at all of the Masses here during the entire month. We invite you to do the same!

If we knew we could still help those we love who have departed from this world, wouldn’t we want very much to do it? Learning more about this doctrine can up us help them, and we give several reading suggestions on this topic. Read More….

Prayerful Remembrance of the Holy Souls in Purgatory

Prayerful Remembrance of the Holy Souls in Purgatory

It is a prayerful month, as we answer the call of Holy Mother Church to pray for the Faithful Departed, “that they may be released from their sins,” as the Book of Machabees expresses it. Carmelites have ever been devoted to praying for the souls in Purgatory, as the history of the Order documents, especially from the time of our Holy Mother St. Teresa. “Marvelous is the mercy of God to have provided sinners with a Purgatory – a place of purification in unchangeable eternity; a robing room for those whose wedding garments are earth-soiled; a period when God Himself, jealous for the beauty of His bride, finishes the life-work which the negligent soul has left undone.” – Divine Crucible

In WEBSITE NEWS we are still constructing our new website, and with Advent coming soon, we recommend some good spiritual reading to help prepare for Christmas.

In COMMUNITY NEWS we share with you pictures from the funeral and requiem vestment sets we just completed. The weeping willow design was based on an old vestment that we have. Read More….

The Rosary and The Carmelite Shield

The Rosary and The Carmelite Shield

This is the month of the Holy Rosary: “The Most Holy Virgin, in these last times in which we live, has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Holy Rosary. She has given this efficacy to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all, spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families, of the families of the world, or of the religious communities, or even of the life of peoples and nations, that cannot be solved by the Rosary.” – Sister Lucia

We also answer a longstanding and good question some of our friends and readers have had—and that is about the meaning of the Carmelite Shield.

In WEBSITE NEWS the new calendar is available, and we also recommend some good spiritual reading about St. Therese.

In COMMUNITY NEWS we celebrated another first profession for one of our novices. We have also been busy growing vegetables and doing some small landscape projects. Read More….

A Christian Advent and Christmas

A Christian Advent and Christmas

Secular society, and its heavily commercial influence, pulls people into a worldly, month-long party with pretty much constant revelry and merry-making. Let us attend, then, to the words of our Divine Master Himself, who cautioned those He loves: “But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be overburdened with self-indulgence and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly, as a snare. For come it will upon all who dwell on the face of all the earth. Watch, then, praying at all times…” (Luke 21:34-36)

In WEBSITE NEWS we give several ideas for valuable gifts of Faith.

In COMMUNITY NEWS we share details from the two sisters clothing ceremonies and we also made special banner for the feast of Christ the King. Read More….

The Holy Souls and St. Teresa of Avila

The Holy Souls and St. Teresa of Avila

Don’t forget that November is dedicated to the Poor Souls in Purgatory. Our Holy Mother St. Teresa of Avila had many experiences with a soul in Purgatory, and documented the experience in her writings: “The Lord told me that the young man's salvation had been in great jeopardy, but that he had received mercy for the service he had rendered to the Blessed Mother in giving that house to be a monastery of her order; however, that he would not leave purgatory until the first Mass was said there-- that then he would leave. I was so conscious of the grievous afflictions of this soul that even though I wanted to make a foundation in Toledo, I set it aside and hastened as much as I could to found a house in Valladolid...” (Foundations, Chapter 10).

Please be sure to visit our website, which now has a “build your own custom rosary” feature. We have also added Pardon Crucifixes to our selection. Read More….