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Everything I am going to reveal to you in this article is true. It happened to me, and it changed the very trajectory of my life for the good. It occurred in the summer of 1995.
My grandfather, who helped raise me, was in the final months of his life. His body was riddled with cancer. As his death approached, I had a strong intuition that on his deathbed my grandfather would see his mother, who had died thirty years prior, and that my father would witness it.
A couple of weeks after I had this intuition, I received a call from my father at three o’clock in the morning that my grandfather had died. He told me that my grandfather sat up in bed with his arms outstretched and said, “Momma, Momma, Momma,” just before he died. Then, lying back down on his bed, he rolled over, squeezed my grandmother’s hand, and died peacefully.
My grandfather was by no means a saint, though I believe his mother to be one. She lived a simple, holy, and virtuous life. He and I would attend Sunday Mass together, then visit the church’s cemetery where his mother was buried. He did this rain or shine every Sunday. I knew he loved her very much.
My grandfather was a complicated man. He had been a member of the Freemasons for many years, and I knew membership in that organization meant immediate excommunication from the Church. Though he lived a very imperfect life, I could not but hope and pray for his salvation.
So, after his death, I prayed for his soul, believing that the events of that night may have portended his salvation. But I knew that if he had been saved, he was most assuredly in purgatory.
To this day, I do not know what possessed me to ask God for a sign, and not, as you will learn, just any sign. But before I tell you of the sign I asked for, I must tell you that what I did by asking for this was wrong, perhaps very wrong, though at the time I did not see it that way. It certainly showed a lack of faith on my part in the benevolence of God and revealed just how weak my faith was.
A few months after his death, the specific sign I asked God for was that someone I knew would have a dream of my grandfather in purgatory and would further witness his release from purgatory. Yes, I know what you are thinking…Jewish people have an appropriate word for it: Chutzpah!
Approximately two weeks after making my request, I had the dream, and it was utterly astonishing. That dream is as vivid to me today, over thirty years later, as it was that night.
I saw my grandfather agonizing in pain in a bed. The room had no color to it, and it seemed as if in the midst of a thick fog, though the fog did not affect my ability to see his face clearly. After taking in this scene for a few moments, I sensed a presence to my immediate left. I turned and saw what I somehow knew was his guardian angel.
What happened next occurred so quickly that I cannot fully explain it. My grandfather and I were whisked away by his guardian angel. If you have ever watched a Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise goes into warp speed, that is the closest visual image of what I experienced in the dream.
Then, as we approached heaven, yet still some distance away, we slowed down, and I could see the gates of heaven which were gold in appearance and enormous in size. Coming down to greet us were bright lights which, as they got closer, turned out to be angels. With that I awoke from the dream.
Upon waking, I was filled with such joy. Then, for a brief moment, doubt crept into my mind. Was this dream the product of my subconscious thought? I hadn’t expected that if my prayer were answered, it would be I who had the dream, but rather someone I knew. Upon reflection, I reasoned, Who knows me better than I do? And with that all doubt dispensed.
I normally attended a noontime Mass then, but that morning I decided that I could not wait that long to thank God for the answer to my request. So, I attended the 6:50 AM Mass at my parish.
The celebrant that morning was a visiting priest I’d never seen before. After he proclaimed the Gospel, he proceeded to go into the universal prayers.
I will never forget the last petition that he recited. It is burned into my memory. He said, and I quote, “And let us be thankful to Almighty God for all our family members who have been released from the pains of purgatory!”
In all my years of attending Mass, before and after that day, I have never heard such a petition as that! I could not stop crying. My tears formed a puddle on the floor of the church. I wept uncontrollably for the remainder of the Mass and for fifteen minutes thereafter. I could not believe the depth of His love for me, as unworthy as I was, and the assurance He wished me to have concerning the salvation of my grandfather.
As hard as it is to believe, Almighty God had one more surprise in store for me that day. When I got home from work that evening, I received a letter in the mail from St Joseph’s Abbey. It informed me that the Gregorian Mass series that I’d requested to be celebrated in remembrance of my grandfather had been completed.
For those of you unfamiliar with what that is, it is a series of thirty Masses said on consecutive days for the release of a soul in purgatory. The promise of St. Gregory the Great, a pope of the sixth century, is that a thirty-day series of Masses offered for a deceased person would free that soul from the state of purgatory upon its completion.
I asked for a sign and received three all on the same day!
One final vignette to this story occurred shortly after my ordination to the Deaconate, thirteen years after that extraordinary day. A Carmelite sister of mine gave me a book, entitled “Thirty Day Devotion to the Holy Souls.” It is a thirty-day novena of meditation and prayers for the Holy Souls.
When I arrived on day twenty-two of the novena, the title of the meditation was the “Guardian Angels.” And on page three, it read:
When the hour of release has struck for the suffering soul, the guardian angel, with the speed of lightning, leads the soul to heaven. The guardian angel is often accompanied by a multitude of angels, so the entrance of the soul into heaven is truly a triumphant one!
Another flood of tears flowed down my face. I had received yet another affirmation of everything that I had experienced in that dream.
To this day, I continue to pray that thirty-day novena for the suffering souls’ release from purgatory and have offered plenary indulgences for their benefit as well.
My purpose in writing this article is to share this profound experience with you in the hope that you may come to believe, if you do not already do so, in the existence of purgatory and how our prayers can truly be effective in souls’ release, satisfying Divine Justice by our supplications!
Photo by Gabriel Castles on Unsplash
