This is a story about Mabel and her friend Paula who worked in a furniture factory together in Australia. They were both Catholics. Paula had been a devout Catholic practicing her faith religiously, praying her rosary every day, wearing her brown scapular, going to confession frequently, and even going to daily Mass whenever possible and receiving Our Lord in Holy Communion.
Mabel on the other hand had started out well as a child. She had good parents who taught her to pray, put her in a Catholic school, helped her make her First Holy Communion and receive the other sacraments. However, she was lax in her devotions, the love of the world began to creep in, and she eventually fell into many sins, and fell away from the Church. Let us hear her story as she revealed it to her friend Paula after she died and was allowed to come back and beg for prayers.
One night, as Paula was praying her rosary for the Poor souls in purgatory, she was frightened by something in the room. Eventually she began to realize there was something or someone in the
Oh! How I regret living a sinful and indifferent life! Indifferentism is a great sin. The soul pays no attention to God’s warnings and commands. He adds sin to sin, treasuring up the wrath of God, (Romans 2:5), not concerned about one day having to answer to God for every single sin, big and small. How did I come to this point?
When I was a little girl, my mother and father taught me the faith. I made my First Holy Communion, and lived my faith quite well for some time. But as I grew older I began to get interested in clothing and little by little I began to be immodest. Later I got interested in dancing and boys. I was also getting interested in foolish games, foolish talk and bad companions. As the worldly vanities began to fill up in my heart, my fervor cooled for God because a soul’s love for the world and its love for God are incompatible. One will either cast out the world and love God, or cast out God and love the world. Usually God is the loser because we are attracted to physical things which please us. This is why St. James says those who love the world are enemies of God. Oh! What foolish traders men are! They trade an infinite good for a finite one. What would you think of a man if he traded a billion dollars for a penny? You would say he was very foolish, yet this is nothing compared to the soul who trades the infinite good of God for a miserable fleeting pleasure!
By the time I was a teenager my inclinations had been formed toward many evil habits. As I was not resisting them, I quickly fell into many grievous sins. This led me to an ever more superficial Catholic faith. While I was still at home with my parents I continued to go to church, but basically as a wall flower. My heart was no longer in it, nor was I participating. Eventually when I was able to leave home, I quit going to church. This saddened my mother and father very much, but what could they do? Their pleas fell on deaf ears. I was like so many others who fell away from the faith. Because of my sins I fell into spiritual blindness as the Book of Wisdom says, 2:21, because of my malice.
At this point, I was ripe for the protestant preacher to come along and tell me I needed to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He told me I didn’t need the Mother of God’s prayers. He was saying I couldn’t ask her to intercede for me, Jesus was the one mediator, yet they would pray for each other at church! How ironic! Jesus is the one mediator yet here they are mediating! He told me the Eucharist was just a symbol, there was no such thing as purgatory, and you didn’t have to confess your sins to the priest. And since I didn’t know the right answers I believed him. I started going to a protestant church. Oh! But what a different story I have to tell now. Jesus is really and truly present in the Holy Eucharist; the Blessed Mother’s prayers are most powerful, confession is in the Bible and it means what it says that the priests can loose and bind, forgive or retain. (St. John 20:21-23) Now that I am suffering terribly in these flames, how I wish I could cry out to the whole world to pray for me, and all the poor souls! If there were no forgiveness in the next world, why did Jesus say there would be no forgiveness in life, or in the world to come? St. Matthew 12:32. Oh! How deceived are the protestant sects on many doctrines of the faith!
I went to the protestant churches for a while but lost interest. My soul still experienced a deep void. I was now married. I had no real regard for the commandments. Sunday I was out shopping like most everyone else, mowing my yard or cleaning my house. My husband too had no qualms about fixing the fence, working on a building, fixing a lawnmower or cleaning out the shed. Yet God commanded Moses to stone the man to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, Numbers 15:32-35, to show the seriousness of violating the Sabbath! Although all those years I could hear God’s voice calling me back to Mass, I was indifferent. It no longer bothered me to commit a mortal sin by missing Mass on Sunday, undue work on the Lord’s Day, or shopping. Every one was doing it so it couldn’t be all that bad, Right? As a matter of fact, I had so desensitized my conscience because of my sin, I did not consider it any big sin at all. Yet, God would punish me one way and then another , to try to correct my conscience. Even though I could see things were going badly , I continued to be indifferent and added sin to sin. Deaf ears. I tell you Paula, indifference is a great sin whereby we continue to offend so good a God after all He has done to save us, and by His extreme mercy we are not cast into hell right away. But I tell you this, the sinner who continues in sin till his death, who remains deaf to God’s many calls, will lose his soul in hell forever. His hell will be increased a hundredfold when his children follow him there, because he did not instruct them as he was supposed to, did not get them to church or see that they were brought up in the faith!
As the Scripture says, “The way the tree leans is the way the tree falls.” If a man is living in sin and does not struggle to break the habit, and reform himself, the odds are he will lose his soul. Paula, I beg your prayers, especially the holy rosary which releases many souls from purgatory; the devotion of the Way of the Cross often; and especially I beg you to have pity on me by having Masses offered for me. I need the blood of Jesus on my soul from Masses which purify us and is a balm to our souls. Although I have been justly condemned here till the end of the world for my sins, yet the kindness and goodness of God will shorten and alleviate my sufferings by the kindness of souls on earth. Please, in the Name of God, do not forget me!” Please visit our website: www.MotherofGodlibrary.org
Thus ends the sad story of Mabel who will be in purgatory till the end of the world. It reminds one of the story of Our Lady of Fatima to the 3 children in Portugal when they asked Our Lady about two children who had died. “Amelia,” the Lady said, “would be in purgatory till the end of the world.” Let this sad story be a reminder to us to always pray for those in purgatory, and also, if we who are to read these lines are not keeping God’s commandments will seriously contemplate the seriousness of offending Almighty God by missing Mass on Sundays and holydays, or breaking any of the other commandments. Father Ronald Tangen had this to say: “How stupid can we be to condemn ourselves to hell for all eternity for 15 minutes of unlawful sexual pleasure, or by missing Mass on Sunday to watch a football game!” One time a lady asked St. John Vianney, the Cure’ of Ars, if they could get their hay in on Sunday. He said, “No, you may not get your hay in.” But she said, “But Father, it’s our livelihood. We need to get our hay in.” And he replied, “No, you may not get your hay in!” She disobeyed the good Father and they got their hay in. That night, the woman died!