Praying for the Church Suffering

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Vittorio23

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Let me start that I completely accept and believe the Church’s teaching on Purgatory.

Okay, I have never quite understood this 100%. Why exactly do we pray for the holy souls in Purgatory? It seems to me that if they are in Purgatory, then it’s party time, because they’re going through the final purification before Heaven. They are there, they’re going to heaven. What do our prayers do for them?

I asked this of my best friend and her answer was that God uses our prayers to be the purifier for these souls. Is this correct?
 
Vittorio23 said:
Let me start that I completely accept and believe the Church’s teaching on Purgatory.

Okay, I have never quite understood this 100%. Why exactly do we pray for the holy souls in Purgatory? It seems to me that if they are in Purgatory, then it’s party time, because they’re going through the final purification before Heaven. They are there, they’re going to heaven. What do our prayers do for them?

I asked this of my best friend and her answer was that God uses our prayers to be the purifier for these souls. Is this correct?
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To be certain, purgatory is a place of contentment in the fact that the souls “therein” will one day be completely united with God in Heaven. HOWEVER, church teaching has always been that we will be purified “as through fire” and that this process will involve some suffering or sacrifice on our part. Hence the reason we pray for the deceased in purgatory (that and that their reunion with God be “hastened”)
 
Vittorio23 said:
It seems to me that if they are in Purgatory, then it’s party time, because they’re going through the final purification before Heaven.
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Yearning for God is the great purnishment for the Holy Souls.

Can you imagine what it feels like for you to be separated from someone you love for a long time?
 
water said:
Yearning for God is the great purnishment for the Holy Souls.

Can you imagine what it feels like for you to be separated from someone you love for a long time?
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But what can our prayers really do for them? They have to go through this purification process. They need it to get into Heaven.
 
In so far as our prayers merit grace, through the freely given grace of God and the Crucifiction, we can pray, fast and do works of mercy and ask that any grace pertaining to these works be assigned to the souls (actually one) in purgatory. This soul thereby is perfected sooner than it would otherwise have been and will enter heaven and the Beatific vision.
When we die and are being purified in purgatory, the souls we prayed for will pray for us, but their prayers are more efficacious than ours were because they ARE in the Beatific vision.
So, praying for the “poor souls in piurgatory,” is actually a kind of self-serving endeavor, but it also helps someone else.
 
water said:
Can God speed up the process when hearing our prayers?
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Can He? Does He?

Is Purgatory outside of time? Does it necessarily consist of “time” spent? Or does the purification happen in ‘degree’ rather than ‘time spent’?
 
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