Heroic act of charity for the souls of Purgatory

This heroic Act of charity for the benefit of the Souls of Purgatory consists of a spontaneous offer, which is faithful to His Divine Majesty, of all his satisfactory works (reparation of offense, damage or similar ...) in life, and of all the suffrages which he can have after death, for the benefit of the holy Souls in Purgatory.

It was this Act approved by the Supreme Pontiff Gregory XV, when, with his Bolla Pastoris Aeterni, he approved the institute of the Consortium of the Brothers, founded by Ven. P. Domenico di Gesù Maria, Discalced Carmelite, in which, among other pious exercises to for the deceased, there is to offer and consecrate the satisfactory part of their works to their suffrage. As a result, this pious practice was spread with admirable success by Father D. Giuseppe Gaspare Oliden Teatino, who also suggested that these works and suffrages be put back in the hands of the Most Holy Virgin, so that they may distribute them in favor of those holy Souls whom She wants. as soon as possible free from the penalties of Purgatory. With this offer, however, only the special and personal fruit of each one is given, so that the Priests are not prevented from applying the Holy Mass according to the intention of those who gave them alms; nor is the freedom of the faithful to be able to offer their good works to the Lord whenever they want for some special purpose; for example, to beg thanks or give thanks for favors obtained.

This heroic act of charity was enriched with many favors, with a decree of 23 August 1728, by the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XIII, then confirmed by Pope Pius VII on 12 December 1788; which favors were then by the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX, with the Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences of 10 September 1852, specified as follows:

I. Priests who have made the said offer will be able to enjoy, every day, the pardon of the privileged personal altar.

II. All the faithful who have made the same offer can make money:

Plenary indulgence applicable only to the Dead on any day of Holy Communion, provided they visit a Church or public Oratory, and pray there for some space of time according to the intention of the Supreme Pontiff.

III. Likewise they will be able to gain Plenary Indulgence every Monday of the year by listening to the Mass in suffrage of the Souls of Purgatory, and fulfilling the other conditions mentioned above.

IV. All the Indulgences which are granted or which will be granted below, which gain from the faithful who made this offer, can apply to the Souls of Purgatory.

Finally the same Supreme Pontiff Pius IX, having in view those young men who still
the chronic, the old, the peasants, the prisoners and other people who cannot communicate, or cannot listen to the Holy Mass on Monday, did not communicate, and so did the sick, he conceded that the one they will hear on Sunday is valid: and for those faithful who still do not communicate, or are prevented from communicating, he has left the arbitrariness of the respective Ordinaries to authorize the confessors for the commutation of the works.

Finally, we would like to warn you that, although this Heroic Act of Charity is indicated, in some printed leaflets, with the name of Heroic Vow of Charity, and a formula of this offer is expressed in the same, also this vote is not meant to under sin; as well as it is not necessary to pronounce the indicated formula or any other, just the obligation made with the heart to participate in the indicated Indulgences and privileges.

OFFER OF ALL GOOD WORKS to the advantage of the Purging Souls.

For your greater glory, O my God, One in essence and Triune in the Persons, and to imitate our most sweet Redeemer Jesus Christ more closely, as well as to show my sincere servitude towards the Mother of Mercy Mary most holy, who is also Mother of the poor Souls of Purgatory, I propose to cooperate in the redemption and freedom of those captive Souls, still owed to the divine justice of the penalties due to their sins: and, in the way that I can lawfully (without obliging myself under any sin), I promise you with a good heart and I offer you my spontaneous vow to want to free from Purgatory all the Souls that Mary most holy wants to free; and yet in the hands of this most piety Mother I place all my satisfactory works, and those applied by others to me, both in life and in death, and after my passage to eternity.

Please, my God, to want to accept and confirm this offer of mine, as I renew it and confirm it for your honor, and for the health of my soul.

That if by adventure my satisfactory works were not enough to pay all the debts of those Souls, to whom the Most Holy Virgin wants to free, and my own debts for my sins, which I hate and detest with a real heart, I offer myself, O Lord, to pay you, if you like it so much, in the pains of Purgatory what is missing, abandoning me for the rest in the arms of your mercy, and among those of my sweetest Mother Mary. I want to testify to this offer and protest by all the Blesseds of Heaven, and the militant and penal Church in Purgatory. So be it.

OTHER SHORTER FORMULA FOR THE HEROIC ACT.

I NN, in union with the merits of Jesus and Mary, place in the hands of Mary most holy and offer you, my God, for the Souls of Purgatory, the satisfactory part of all the good works that I will do in the course of my life, and which others will apply for me in life and after death. And this for your greater glory, to imitate your example, O my Jesus, whom you all gave for souls; and to increase in Heaven the number of your eternal worshipers and glorifiers of your Mother, who intercede for me.

ADVANTAGES AND ADVANTAGES OF THE HEROIC ACT.

Ah! how true, that charity is the key, which opens the door of Heaven to us and to others! This vow is destined, as the Holy Father Pius IX says in his beautiful brief given on 20 November 1854, to bring the greatest comfort that can ever be given to men by purging souls. Because while the other devotions, prayers, Holy Masses, alms, Indulgences, etc., are for them like drops or streams of fresh water, which fall from time to time on the flames of Purgatory, the Heroic Act gathers them all, flowing continuously , like a perennial spring or a great river, in Purgatory, our life during and even after. The heroic act does not take away from the fact that we must continue to make all the suffrages that we can for the purging souls; but it doubles the merit of them, and collects, as a diligent gleaner does, also all the ears of merit, which are often not cared for. Oh! the beautiful handpieces, which can be sent in a day to Purgatory, or, better to say, to Paradise, by those who, having emitted it, live holyly occupied in such suffrages!

But that's not enough; it also rains on those Souls, thirsty by the fire that yearns them, another continuous dew, and this is the satisfactory merit of all the good that you will do, even without thinking at that moment, always renewing the intention, that this is for purging souls. Your sweat in working in the Lord's vineyard, in assisting the sick, helping miserable ones, etc., restores the poor Souls; your alms to the poor diminish their extreme shortage; your pains soften their pains; if you suffer with patience you face them, they feel consoled; and your penances bring them closer to the joys and joys of Paradise. How precious is this vow, that is, heroic act! I have already said it, whoever made this vow acquires: I. ° at each Communion, II. ° every Monday, in listening to the Holy Mass, a Plenary Indulgence for the Dead. In this way, without taking on many special obligations, we can give them a hundred times more than before we had done such an act. Let us therefore try to stay in God's grace, and to constantly do good works.

Furthermore, our prayers in this way pass through the hands of the most holy Mary. And for the blessed hands of the Virgin Mary the suffrages go much safer, and at the same time increase in value; because the most holy Madonna combines her highest merits with our petty efforts. Furthermore, we are subject to forgetting about certain Souls and others we do not know the needs. After this offer, however, with which we make Our Lady, our administrator, She will do all things for us in the best possible way; she will not forget anyone, fulfilling all our duties towards the holy souls of Purgatory.

In this way, the heroic Act makes the Indulgences all applicable to the Dead, and takes the burden of always having to renew the intention of acquiring Indulgences for the purging Souls. Those who live in a Christian way can gain unparalleled greater indulgences than those in need. Now this vow means that no Indulgence is lost, because all are applied, and bear fruit to the poor Souls of Purgatory. How many advantages!

This Act also provides us with extraordinary advantages. In fact: every time we do a good work, I renounce, it is true, satisfactory merit, but at the same time we add to the work a new degree of virtue, with the Act of charity that is done to the purging Souls; and so we ourselves gain real merit that cannot be taken away from us.

Since then yielding satisfaction for the penalties of Purgatory is a temporal good, and the merit that is therefore acquired towards God makes worthy of a new degree of eternal reward, so with this transfer of a lesser good we acquire a greater good that is, for a limited good an infinite good. What a profitable exchange!

Secondly, the heroic act, in its essence, is a new form of the evangelical counsel of voluntary poverty, but in a more sublime degree. Jesus said: "If you want to be perfect go, sell everything you have, give it to the poor and then come to follow me." Now so do all those who issue this heroic Act, waiting for these spiritual goods, which are estimated a thousand times more valuable by pious souls than temporal goods.

Third advantage: charity is the bond of perfection: now the soul of this Act is precisely charity. So this expropriation will necessarily make us progress in Christian perfection. The frequent memory of the Souls of Purgatory will give us the holy fear of sin, will detach us from the world, will encourage us to good works, and will ignite in our hearts the love of God, and the pain of having offended him. We will be more careful of venial sins, thinking that those Souls suffer so much even for small sins and imperfections. We will give up even more easily to all the disordered attacks of the goods of this land, to the desire to please the people, to be loved, if we often aim with the eye of the soul over there in the underground caves the fire of Purgatory; and in it many rich and learned men in the most squalid misery; many elegant, abandoned in the grip of their pains; and thinking that soon we will be ourselves among those torments and torments, we will try to make them less and shorter, with the exercise of arity towards the Dead, and of the other Christian virtues.

The time of merit has passed for the Souls of Purgatory! ... they pay cash, and without deserving anything with their patience and their love of God, which is also very ardent. This consideration will inspire us to take advantage of the uncertain time of this life, to do good works, to free those Souls from torments, and to gather ourselves merits, before the night seizes us, according to the words of Jesus Christ: “Walk , as long as you have the light, before the darkness catches you, in which you can no longer operate! "

Furthermore, reflect that if such an expropriation makes progress in perfection, it brings us special graces together, because with this Act we give God a special honor, satisfying his justice for the Purging Souls, who thus fly faster to increase the number of blessed citizens of Heaven. We also show our unlimited trust in God, because we blindly throw ourselves into the arms of his mercy; act, that the Heart of Jesus will never leave you without a grand prize.

This also pays homage to Mary most holy, as to Queen and Mother of the Souls of Purgatory, and She will remember it well when we entered that place of pain to serve our sins.

What then is the reward of the Souls of Purgatory, says St. Brigid who heard one day the voice of many Purging Souls who shouted: "O God! reward those who offer us help in our pains ". And at the end he heard a louder voice shouting: "O Lord God, grant the hundredfold with your incomparable omnipotence to all those who with their good works solicit the moment when we can see your face". In fact many Saints and pious people assure that they have obtained many graces through the intercession of the Penitent Souls; because, although they cannot obtain anything for them, however some holy Fathers (and the same says Saint Brigida), they believe that for others they can pray, because they are souls in grace and friends of God.

Oh yes! they are those faithful friends of whom the Holy Spirit says: “Nothing is to be compared to the faithful friend, and a mass of gold and silver is not worthy of being balanced with the goodness of his faith. A faithful friend is a balm of life and immortality, and those who fear the Lord will find it. "

So let's be of good cheer, nor fear point, that for this Vow, that is Act, we agree then to stay longer in Purgatory. Even if it were so, Father Montfort, great promoter of this devotion, tells us: "A thousand Purgatorii are something not to be evaluated, in comparison with a single degree of greater glory, which is obtained with this Act". The fire of Purgatory ends soon, but the greater degree of glory acquired will not end forever.