“Nicholas, man of God, look at me,” cried a soul to Nicholas of Tolentino. The young Augustinian priest had just begun to fall asleep when the voice surprised and alarmed him. The soul identified himself as Friar Pellegrino of Osimo, who Nicholas knew when that friar was alive.

“I am tormented in these flames,” Pelligrino lamented. “God did not reject my contrition and instead did not destine me to eternal punishment, which I deserved due to my weakness, but to purgatorial punishment, in virtue of His mercy.”

Then he begged Nicholas to “celebrate a Mass of the Dead for me, so that I may be freed from my torments.” But Nicholas could not because he was assigned to say the monastery’s community Mass.

“Then at least come with me … see our suffering … pity these unfortunates who await your help…If you celebrate Mass for us, most of these people will be liberated,” Pelligrino again pleaded.  Nicholas was then shown a great sea of souls of all ages, sexes and conditions, stretching across the land.

Nicholas prayed all night. In the morning once the monastery’s prior heard his story, he gave Nicholas permission to immediately say the Masses for the Dead. Seven days later, Pelligrino appeared again — this time, accompanied by a victorious multitude also freed.

After that occurrence in the late 13th century, Nicholas spent his years praying and offering Masses for the souls in purgatory. He freed countless numbers. During one Mass, Jesus appeared, thanked him and showed him the souls his Masses had released.

In 1884 Pope Leo XIII declared St. Nicholas of Tolentino universal patron of the Holy Souls in Purgatory.

Nicholas’s experience wasn’t a one-time event. Nor was it for other saints along the centuries as they, too, heard or saw souls in purgatory pleading for their help.

 

Padre Pio and the Souls

“I am Pietro Di Mauro. I died in a fire on Sept. 18, 1908,” the man in the black cloak told Padre Pio who, like Nicholas, was lying on his cot to rest one evening in the monastery. The man said he had lived and died in that particular room during the period the monastery had been appropriated for use as a home for elderly.

Padre Pio asked the man what he wanted.

“I am coming from purgatory. The Lord has allowed me to come to ask you to offer for me the Holy Mass of tomorrow morning. Thanks to this Mass I will be able to enter Heaven,” he said.

Padre Pio agreed he would. He saw then man out of the monastery at which time he said he “became fully aware of having spoken to a deceased person only when, going out to the churchyard, the man who was beside me, suddenly disappeared. I must confess that I reentered the convent [monastery] somewhat frightened.”

Padre Pio told the story to the monastery’s superior who then went to the registry office in San Giovanni Rotondo. In the records he found Pietro Di Mauro’s name and the cause of death exactly as the soul from Purgatory had said.

The saintly friar shared another story about the time he was alone one evening, praying in the choir loft. He spotted a young friar at the main altar apparently dusting and arranging flowers. Since it was suppertime, Padre Pio called out, “Fra Leone, go to eat, it is not the time to dust and set up the altar.”

“I am not Fra Leone,” the voice answered, identifying himself as a friar who had done his novitiate there. “For obedience I received the task to keep the main altar clean and orderly during my year of probation. Unfortunately, many times I was disrespectful to Jesus in the sacrament by passing in front of the altar without revering the Most Holy One kept in the tabernacle. For this grave omission, I am still in purgatory. Now the Lord, in his infinite goodness, sends me to you so that you may determine how much longer I must suffer in those flames of love. Help me,” he appealed.

St. Pio told the soul from purgatory he’d have to remain there until the morning Mass. “You are cruel!” the souls shouted, screamed, then disappeared.

“That wailing created a wound in my heart that I have felt and shall feel all my life,” recalled the saint. “I, who through divine delegation could have sent that soul immediately to Heaven, condemned him to remain another night in the flames of purgatory.”

 

St. Faustina’s Encounters

When we hear St. Faustina Kowalska’s name, we immediately think of the Divine Mercy devotion. Yet she also had experiences with souls in purgatory. One encounter came right on All Souls Day, Nov. 2, 1936.

That evening she went to the cemetery. After praying some time, she saw one of the sisters who told her, “We are in the chapel.”

“I understood that I was to go to the chapel and there pray and gain the indulgences,” Faustina said. During Mass the following day she observed “three white doves soaring from the altar toward heaven” and “understood that not only the three souls that I saw had gone to heaven, but also many others who had died beyond the confines of our institute. Oh, how good and merciful is the Lord!”

Another time before all Souls’ Day, she also went to the cemetery at sundown. There she said, “If you need something, my dear little souls, I will be glad to help you to the extent that the rule permits me.”

She heard this answer: “Do the will of God; we are happy in the measure that we have fulfilled God’s will.”

Faustina didn’t take visits lightly, but tested the souls since one time the experience was not of a soul in purgatory. But this next incident turned out differently.

One night a young woman came to see Faustina and informed her she needed prayers. Faustina prayed at once, “but her spirit did not leave me,” she explained. “Then I thought to myself, ‘If you are a good spirit, leave me in peace, and the indulgences I will gain tomorrow will be for you.’ At that moment, the spirit left my room, and I recognized that she was in purgatory.”

Faustina also received a visit from Jesus concerning the souls. She saw him upon the cross, his Sacred Blood flowing from his hand, feet and side. She described, “Jesus said to me, All this is for the salvation of souls. Consider well, My daughter, what you are doing for their salvation. I answered, ‘Jesus, when I look at Your suffering, I see that I am doing next to nothing for the salvation of souls.’ And the Lord said to me, Know, My daughter, that your silent day-to-day martyrdom in complete submission to My will ushers many souls into heaven.”

 

A Great Pope and Recommendation

Before he became the Holy Father, Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604) had a drawn out encounter that led to what we know as Gregorian Masses for the deceased — 30 Masses in a row for the repose of the soul for whom they’re being offered.

In his Dialogues, Book 4, Gregory described in great detail the events that led to the Masses. At the monastery he founded, a monk named Justus became ill and was dying.

“Justus perceiving himself past all hope of life, told this brother [named Copiosus] of his where he had secretly laid up three crowns of gold,” Gregory noted. The monks were told and “carefully seeking, and tossing up all his medicines and boxes, found in one of them these three crowns hidden.”

Gregory related that he “could not quietly digest so great a sin at his hands” because he had broken the rule of the monastery.

“Being, therefore, much troubled and grieved at that which had happened,” wrote Gregory, “I began to think with myself what was best to be done, both for the soul of him that was now dying, and also for the edification and example of those that were yet living.”

The punishment for both goals began with the monks not being allowed to visit or to comfort Justus in any way because of the gold crowns he had hidden from them for himself. The intention was that “at least before his death, sorrow may wound his heart, and purge it from the sin committed,” Gregory explained. His body wasn’t to be buried with the other monks. He was to buried with the coins, with all “crying out all with joint voice: ‘Thy money be with thee unto perdition’; and so put earth upon him.”

Gregory’s aim and desire was “both to help him that was leaving the world, and also to edify the monks yet remaining behind, that both grief of death might make him pardonable for his sin, and such a severe sentence against avarice might terrify and preserve them from the like offence.” It worked. Copiosus told his brother Justus the reason why the monks could not visit him. Justus immediately repented. The other monks checked their own selves.

“Thirty days after his departure, I began to take compassion upon him, and with great grief to think of his punishment, and what means there was to help him,” Gregory wrote. He told the monastery’s prior, “It is now a good while since our brother which is departed has remained in the torments of fire, and therefore we must show him some charity (so that we may) procure his delivery.”

Gregory ordered that for 30 days Holy Mass was to be offered for Justus, “so that not one day pass in which, for his absolution and discharge, the healthful sacrifice be not offered.”

Later Justus appeared to his Copiosus and told him, “Hitherto have I been in bad case, but now I am well; for this day have I received the communion.” He was out of purgatory and able to enter heaven. Copiosus hastened to tell the monks.

Gregory attested, “They diligently counting the days, found it to be that in which the 30^th sacrifice was offered for his soul: and so, though neither Copiosus knew what the monks had done for him, nor they what he had seen concerning the state of his brother, yet at one and the same time both he knew what they had done, and they what he had seen, and so the sacrifice and vision agreeing together, apparent it was that the dead monk was by the holy sacrifice delivered from his pains.”

 

Lessons for Us

We may never see or hear a holy soul from purgatory, but we learn what to do from the encounters saints experienced.

Have Masses said for the Holy Souls there. Our family. Friends. Those abandoned. In relation to what Jesus told Faustina, offer up an annoyance without complaining, like standing in a long line in traffic or the supermarket. Pray a Rosary for them. Say short prayers like, “Jesus have mercy on the souls in purgatory.”  Remember what we heard as we grew up — “Offer it up for the holy souls in purgatory.”