Problems with some Indulgences in relation to Purgatory

[EasterJoy]

The St. Gertrude prayer is a beautiful and wonderful prayer, but it is only a part of private revelation. I personally believe in it. How do you reconcile the ease of it compared to other acts in regards to the holy souls? One does not have to understand everything - one can normally do many different devotions for the sake of one’s penance and for the holy souls, and make this a primary one. One can count on God’s mercy and consider that the merits of the Passion outweigh the merits of all other meritorious acts which is one solution. One could speculate that there are souls perhaps waiting specifically for this prayer to be said. We do not have to understand everything, we can trust there is great help through prayers with promises and offering up the Passion.

I think there is a great deal of question about whether St. Gertrude ever reported anything like 1,000 souls released for one prayer. My impression is that she personally, with the consent of her superior, did serious penance for three months for one person. Still, it is not as if a penance would be less appreciated by a soul in Purgatory if they need just a little than if they need a lot. If you’re destitute and trying to raise $1,000 for something that will save your life, every penny on your behalf counts! If you only need ten cents, how disappointing when someone doesn’t want to do a penny’s worth for you, because it isn’t $10 worth! Beggars are not choosers!

The question is this: how much penance do each of us do, how much do we take on without outside prompting, and out of that, how much do we do for someone other than ourselves? How does this compare to, say, the amount of scrambling we are willing to do in order to keep someone from forming a bad impression of us, the amount of dieting we are willing to do to fit into a certain dress by a certain date, the amount of sweating we’re willing to do because there is a temporal championship or a sales goal on the line, or the amount of silence we’re willing to impose on ourselves when making noise would get us into trouble?

What are we willing to do for the pearl of great price? And, considering its nature, can we ever buy it for ourselves alone? I don’t think so.

 

[NeedImprovement]

I try to pray that particular prayer once a day (and again if I pass in front of the tabernacle where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved).

If we’re letting uncertainty about how many souls St. Gertrude’s prayer delivers keep us from praying it, we kind of have the bull by the tail. We shouldn’t even let uncertainty of its origin impede us. However if we’re going to speculate on its origin, it’s much better to err on the side of caution :

 It would seem better if any claims of inauthenticity or of the prayer originating somewhere else were substantiated. Initially, doubt was being expressed that 1,000 souls are freed when the prayer is said, but please permit me to point out that we’re straddling a line now…we’re on the verge of digressing to the point of doubting whether the actual prayer originated from St. Gertrude.

Someone expressing unfounded (unsubstantiated) doubt about that prayer’s origin could run the risk of discouraging others from praying it. I don’t think we could call that a good thing - discouraging others from praying for the holy souls.

I’m reading some of St. Gertrude’s books online…my.homewithgod.com/gertrude/…don’t know if I’ll find anything related to that prayer (if I do I’ll be sure to post it here).

I thought Shin made an excellent point in post # 4 :

… One can count on God’s mercy and consider that the merits of the Passion outweigh the merits of all other meritorious acts which is one solution. One could speculate that there are souls perhaps waiting specifically for this prayer to be said. We do not have to understand everything, we can trust there is great help through prayers with promises and offering up the Passion.
…

I wonder how many souls are waiting for just one small prayer to be delivered … how many have paid 99.7% of their debt to Divine justice and await only a tiny gesture of mercy on our part ? EasterJoy said it quite eloquently:

… Still, it is not as if a penance would be less appreciated by a soul in Purgatory if they need just a little than if they need a lot. If you’re destitute and trying to raise $1,000 for something that will save your life, every penny on your behalf counts! If you only need ten cents, how disappointing when someone doesn’t want to do a penny’s worth for you, because it isn’t $10 worth! Beggars are not choosers!
…

I see it this way : That prayer received approval and recommendation by (sgd.) M. Cardinal Pahiarca at Lisbon, Portugal, on March 4, 1936. I don’t wonder why; its theology is sound and solid.

If we’re discounting numbers…fine, but maybe that’s because we haven’t reflected deeply enough on what the prayer says.Perhaps we think it’s just words. Maybe we’re ***too ***objective in this case…still looking at the prayer from the outside. Here’s the original half of the prayer:

Eternal Father I offer you the Most Precious Blood of Your Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in Purgatory,…

In the Eucharistic prayer of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the most important words after the words of consecration are (according to Rev Albert Mary Shamon), “we offer”.
Do we know what that means…?…to offer something to God. In the Mass, the Sacrifice of Calvary is re-presented (made present again) and Christ takes our offerings to Himself, along with with all the merits of the Sacrifice at Calvary (which are infinite) and offers these together with Himself as a victim to the Father.

Let’s look at the prayer again: “Eternal Father, we offer…” “…the Most Precious Blood” – one drop of which would be enough to redeem the whole world, “…in union with the Masses said throughout the world today”, we unite our offering to Christ’s offering at Calvary.

Every Eucharistic prayer also contains a particular intercession for the holy souls in Purgatory. Just for the sake of numbers, there are more than 370,000 Catholic priests in the world today.

Saint Gertrude was a very pious and favoured soul. I ask her intercession from time to time because I’m so far from having her piety and because I don’t always remember the holy souls the way I wish I did.