Purgatory Parades

“Offer it up” is the mantra of  my children’s childhood.  Don’t want to clean your room?  Hate the broccoli? “Offer it up.  Work on your parade!” My children hear it daily.  Your brother is annoying and you wanna kill him but don’t? “Offer it up!” You skin your knee trying to ride your bike down the hill and don’t scream because the baby is sleeping? (You’re my new favorite child!) “Offer it up!”

When I was a girl, my grandmother would tell me this all the time.  “Offer it up!”  I was never really sure why God would want me to suffer through not biting my big brother, or politely eating the cauliflower that made me gag, but I’d look up at Heaven anyway and think “If you want it, you’ve got it……why would you want it?”

It wasn’t until I was older that I figured it all out.  God doesn’t want our suffering.  He wants our obedience.  He wants our humility.  He wants our charity.  He wants our self-control. That’s why we offer the pain, discomfort, and sorrow that we experience up to Him. Not because He desires those things, but because our acceptance of our own crosses becomes a prayer of obedience to Him.

“Take this burden, that I willingly accept, and unite it to the suffering of Your Son’s on the cross.” In this way our pains become trans-formative and a powerful prayer.  There are times when I offer up my sufferings for those I know and love, for their healings or conversions.  Most often, though, I offer them for the poor souls in Purgatory, especially those without anyone left to pray for them, the way my grandmother taught me to do.

“Your goal,” she would tell me, “is to have a great parade of souls waiting to greet you when you get to Heaven, the souls of those for whom you’ve prayed your whole life.  That’s why we offer the things up.  It’s a prayer. They can be simple things like being kind to those who hate you, or big like the pains of childbirth.  These all help, and it’s our duty to help the poor souls.”

It was an image that has stuck with me for the whole of my life…..my Purgatory Parade.  In my mind’s eye, it looks a little like Mardi Gras, but without the skimpy clothing.  It has big horns, raucous music, folks dancing with their umbrellas.  It should make the New York City ticker tapes look like small potatoes.

That’s our job as Catholics.  We’re supposed to pray for each other, and we’re supposed to pray for the poor souls in Purgatory.  We don’t do it because we want or deserve a parade, but because we want that much more joy in Heaven.  It’s not about our glory, but His!

We are supposed to pray and work and offer our sufferings up until the very last moment of our lives.  We’re supposed to populate Heaven.  That’s our purpose on Earth when you boil it all down.  We’re supposed to fill Heaven with people!  Then if we’re lucky, when we get there, we’ll get to join in the parade we had a hand in building.

That’s what I’m doing here, and teaching my children to do.  We’re building up the parade of the ex-Purgatory Peoples.  We’re devoting our efforts to the brass section.  Then toss me a fringed umbrella and let me dance along……..because boy howdy do I want to be in that number, when we all come marching in!

[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://ignitumtoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Rebecca-Frech.png[/author_image] [author_info]Rebecca Frech is a Cradle Catholic who came back to the Church in 2000, and thanks God for it every day. She lives just outside Dallas with the brilliant Computer Guy, their 7 not-quite-perfect children, and an ever-multiplying family of dust bunnies. When she’s not teaching math, neglecting housework, or reluctantly training for a marathon, she’s blogging at Shoved to Them.[/author_info] [/author]