Miracles Still Happen: How One Man Asked for Prayers from Beyond the Grave and Another Man Delivered Him

How This Man Learned from Mary How to Deliver Souls from Purgatory

Since the end of November, the month dedicated to the poor souls in Purgatory, is coming up in a few days, I want to get this timely story posted. It's like a ghost story. But it's not a story of ghost, really, but it is about a dead person, a soul in purgatory, who spoke from beyond the grave.  Hearing about it from the man who experienced it gave me chills.  

It's not a fiction. It's something that actually happened to someone I actually know. 

Lately people have been asking me to write for them. These are not professional requests. Just people with a story they want to tell. I'm pretty swamped, but I tried to help with this latest request. It came from a man I've been acquainted with since about 2006, when I got involved with the traditional Latin Mass community around here in the South San Francisco Bay. I'll call him Joseph Anon. He's a piano tuner.

Sept 28, 1997 He Was Converted in an Instant

Joseph prefaced this particular story with other stories of how he had led a drunken immoral life, starting from before he was even a teenager and continuing on past his college years partying all night as a member of a rock band, and then onto his years as a bartender in a beachfront bar in Southern California, with his pick of willing pretty women, acting heedlessly—as he said—like a kid at a candy store, never having known anything about God or Jesus or His Mother or anything about Catholic Church or its teachings.  After a while, the realities of his immoral lifestyle caught up with him in a devastating way, and he almost drank himself to death in grief and remorse after a girlfriend got pregnant twice and both times their children were aborted, even though both times he wanted to keep the baby and the girlfriend rejected his offer of marriage. 

Out of the depths of the wreckage his lifestyle had brought him to, Joseph was brought into the Catholic Faith in a dramatic manner,  sort of like how St. Paul was converted on the road to Damascus—by the direct intervention of Jesus. Afterwards he was miraculously taught most of the doctrine and practices of the Faith by Jesus and Mary. They never appeared to him.  He only heard them speak to him. And they infused knowledge into him without words on more than one occasion. More about his conversion another time. 

Joseph recently became motivated to tell the story of these things that happened twenty-five years ago, to tell of the miracles of grace he received from Jesus and Mary and about other miracles that he has experienced through the intercession of St. Philomena—who many skeptics think is fictitious and to whom many saints have been devoted. Joseph knows that many Catholics aren’t being taught the things he learned directly. At the time these events happened, Jesus told him to teach others what he had learned, but he shied away for a long long time—feeling he is not worthy to teach others.”I’m a dummy,” he says. Over and over he says, “Why did You do all this for me, Lord? Me? Why so much grace? When You know all my sins?"

The encounter between Joseph and a soul in purgatory I'm about to describe happened one night when he was alone in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Our Lady of Peace Church in Santa Clara, CA, which took place two years after his conversion from total ignorance about the things of God.

Above: The altar at Our Lady of Peace Church, Santa Clara, CA. Since 1976, Eucharistic adoration has been held there 24-hours a day, 365 days a year, unless Holy Mass is being celebrated.

JA: "So I called Sister Mary Jean who was in charge of 24 Hour Adoration at Our Lady of Peace. And I said, 'Well, Sister, the Lord told me I'm supposed to go into Adoration, not one night, not two nights, but three nights a week.'

"'Oh,' she said, 'Okay, Joseph, I want you here Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays at two o'clock.'

"And I said, 'Okay, no problem.' She called me back, and said, 'No, I want you here at three.' 

"Anyway, I started going there at three. While I was in the church, night after night, I heard, from the Tabernacle, 'Pray for the holy souls. Pray for the holy souls.' Night after night. 'Pray for the holy souls.' I said, 'Well, yeah, I pray for the holy souls.’ But I didn't know what He was talking about really until this next thing happened.

Wed. April 28, 1999, 3:30 AM

"This gets really weird. This one night changed my life. Really changed my life. So I'm in Adoration at Our Lady of Peace. 

"At that hour, there were usually two Filipinas, older ladies who were sisters. (Well, I call them older but come to think of it they were the same age as I am now—in their late seventies. I was in my fifties then.) They didn't show up that night. So I had the church to myself. 

"It's three, no, three-thirty in the morning. It was a hot night. It felt like summer  And they don't have air conditioning there. 

"So I did my stations, I did my rosary. I'm at the Gospel side, a little to the left of the tabernacle. The Blessed Sacrament is exposed in a big monstrance above the tabernacle. And I'm praying there, thanking the Lord. 

"And I then said, 'It's getting cold here. This is weird.' It's getting icy, and it's coming from the back. It's creeping up on me. I'm praying there at the communion rail, and it's freezing. And I'm  going, "I'm scared now." Because it is so hot the windows are open. And I am so cold I'm shivering. 

"And wow! Now I hear a voice to the left of the tabernacle. 'Pray for me.'

"I said, 'Pray for who?' And I said, 'In Jesus' name, I have to know.'

"The man's voice said, 'I'm Jonathan.'

"I said, 'Oh no, this is a kid I prayed for a year ago. He was in intensive care. And he died. So obviously he's been in purgatory for a long time.' I'm freaked, I'm freaked out. 

"And then the sweetest voice you could ever hear came from my left side, as if she was standing next to me. She said, 'Do not fear, my son.’ As soon as I heard that sweet voice, I knew it was Our Lady, Mother Mary. Her presence humbles you, she’s so . . .  I closed my eyes, leaned my head down and bowed towards the direction of the voice, and I said, ‘Yes, Mother.’ 

"'It is Jonathan,’ she said. "And he is in purgatory. I want you to do something for me.' 

"I said, "Yes.' Now, I'm calmed down. 

"Afterwards I came to understand that Mary then began teaching me the requirements for a plenary indulgence. About which I had no idea. I didn't know anything. I had no idea what an indulgence is. Never mind what plenary means.

"So she told me, 'I want you to offer up your last Communion, your last Confession, prayers for the pope's intentions.  And any good work you did today. And he shall be delivered.'

"And I didn't know what delivered means either. But I said, ‘Yes, Mother, I'm doing it now.' So I looked right at the tabernacle. I said, 'Lord Jesus, I offer up everything she said, my communion, confession, prayers for the pope's intentions and then any good work I've done today. 

"And, and as soon as I said that, I'm going . . ..<laughs> Up to heaven. It's like I shot up into heaven. And everything turned white.  But only for a second. It wasn't any longer than that. Like . . . I just go up and it's all white, and angels are singing.

"What does angels singing sound like? Undescribable. Maybe . . . Think of how those two choirs sounded the other night in the Mission Santa Clara singing the Mission Mass music together, at that Solemn High Mass, and multiply that over and over and over again . . ..

"Then I'm back—in front of the tabernacle at the communion rail. And I went, 'All this stuff's too much for me.'

So then I heard Jonathan's voice way up and he said, 'I want to thank you. I am now in heaven. I will pray for you.'

"And he said 'Call upon me anytime you want. And I'll pray for you.’"

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So that is how Joseph learned devotion to the holy souls and how to obtain a plenary indulgence to help them out of purgatory, plus this bonus: after souls are delivered from purgatory, they'll start to pray for you. 

“As we enter Heaven we will see them, so many of them coming towards us and thanking us,” Archbishop Fulton Sheen has said, “We will ask, who they are, and they will say a poor soul you prayed for in Purgatory.”

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Still doing what the Lord told him to do, "Pray for the holy souls. Pray for the holy souls."

Joseph just called to add that every month he sends a donation to a priest who celebrates only traditional Latin Masses to have five Masses a month said for the Holy Souls—because the Mass is the most effective way to help them, and because he believes the graces from the traditional Latin Mass are more effective.

Joseph's also practices devoutly praying for specific souls in other ways. For one, he routinely serves evening funeral Masses at a local parish where the traditional Latin Mass is not celebrated, and he prays for the souls of those whose funerals he serves. He does this because he said the new funerals are conducted as "celebrations of life," where everybody acts like the person is already in heaven, and so no one is praying any more for the dead person to be released from purgatory, the way they used to do at requiem Masses. 

Joseph also takes home printed prayer cards with the deceased person's name after the funeral Mass, and he stores the cards in a shoe box. There are too many to be able to pray for them every day, so twice a year he opens the box, and he prays by name for each of individual whose prayer card is in the box. 

And he added this, "I wake up sometimes knowing I have to pray for a certain person. I just think the name. It’s very urgent! I’m not sure if the person is in purgatory or the person needs prayers for another reason, being in danger of dying, maybe.  So I pray every prayer I can think of for an hour or more. I’ve got a stack of indulgenced prayers for the Holy Souls in Purgatory that I use."

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See this article for more definitions and details, Indulgences at Catholic Source, with quotes from The Handbook of Indulgences, 3rd Ed.; Manual of Indulgences (Handbook of Indulgences, 4th Ed.).

See also, "4 Ways to help the Holy Souls in Purgatory."

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Coming Soon: How and Why the Lord Sent Angels to Tune Two Pianos for Joseph