Hungry Souls: Supernatural Visits, Messages, and Warnings from Purgatory

As I understand it, Purgatory exists as a necessary state of reparation and of soul purification after death. Purgatory is necessary in order to make just reparation, or "repayment," for sins committed in life, even though the sins may have been repented of in life, confessed, and official assigned penance done in life. In this book, we read that Jesus told one holy religious saint with whom He communicated that He does not like to subject souls to the painful suffering of Purgatory but that He has to do it because of the strict requirement of perfect Justice. Purgatory is also deemed a necessary experience before most souls can enter Heaven because through the extremely painful suffering in the burning "Fires" of Purgatory, which are attested to be fully as bad as Hell Fire, the soul is made pure enough to enter and live in the perfectly Holy place that is Heaven. Even a surely quite holy soul such as St. Faustina Kowalska had to submit to a very brief period of one day in Purgatory. So we see that the Lord is an exacting Judge. [--For a soul who is less holy and less perfectly repentant and who has had many sins, this reader understands that there must be a prospect of long, painful reparation and purification? Thus, I personally FEAR, with intense and serious apprehension.]This book makes the point that Purgatory is a happy blessing, a generous opportunity for souls to become transformed so as to more perfectly and joyously experience the blissful life of Heaven with the Lord. [Nevertheless, I find it a terrifying prospect. Yet, I remind myself that even the Lord exuded bloody tears anticipating the agony of the Crucifixion. And so I try to take Courage and trudge on in faith.]There seem to be varying statements in this book about just how severe Purgatory will be for any given soul, depending upon the degree of sincere penitence while in life.Obviously, I do believe that the phenomenon of Purgatory exists, although there was a time when I did not believe in it. [I've encountered some Catholic priests who don't believe in it, despite the doctrine of Purgatory being a part of Roman Catholic teaching. Incidentally, it should be noted however that the doctrine of a "Limbo" where unbaptized babies were supposed to have gone has been recently discontinued as a Catholic doctrine.] Mainly, I base my acceptance of Purgatory as a fact upon the testimony of the saints who experienced evidence of it. I accept their veracity and their sanity as support for their testimony.If you are curious about supernatural and/or paranormal experiences---the existence of "ghosts" and roaming spirits of the dead, and that sort of thing---you can find stories here about those kinds of things.The main point of this book is that souls in Purgatory can be relieved and freed by the prayers and "suffrages" and sacrifices offered for them by their fellow Christians who are yet alive on the earth. As the whole concept of Purgatory has fallen into obscurity and the souls suffering in Purgatory have been forgotten, they are needy of our prayers and works in their behalf. They are "Hungry Souls." As we can do much for them by our prayers, they can also help us by their heartfelt prayers. There is this opportunity of mutual relief and solace of mercy within the Communion of all the saints, which I suppose includes all those faithful to Christ as Lord, not just Roman Catholics. I don't know how the doctrine of Purgatory applies to those who believe just in the One True God and not in the Son as Messiah. But I do know that the Catholic Church teaches that Jesus is the only Way to Salvation. However, it also teaches that there are extenuating circumstances and that one has to understand the possibilities of Salvation to contain complexities relating to the "hearts," the choices, of each individual soul of whatever faith (or SEEMING lack of it), known only to God---or so it seems to me, in my understanding of what the Catholic Church teaches. I hope I haven't misrepresented these teachings in any way.)In the last 50 years or so, there is much information available about so-called "Near-Death Experiences" and other visions and messages from the world of the After-Life in which people receive information about what life is like there. It's difficult to know exactly what kind of actual evidential conclusions we can draw from all the information available to us now about the After-Life. There does not appear to be much information there about Purgatory, but I did discover a possible concept of Purgatory in the book entitled Hello from Heaven, which is written up among my book reviews here. The concluding section of that book posits evidence of transitional sectors of After-Life where people are transformed out of states like alcohol addiction, sex addiction, murderous compulsions, what-have-you. An expressed concept in this book's concluding material is that as long as a soul makes a decision in favor of the will to grow in love and knowledge [knowledge of truth and of the divine, towards "holiness" and greater purity, you might say], there is no damnation for that soul, rather there is the opportunity to become more and more transformed. This concept is based upon information from recounted messages, not upon the authors' imposed personal concepts of the After-Life. I would love to think that there is such a non-fearsome "Purgatory" in the After-Life. Generally speaking, this particular book Hello from Heaven derives from research based on a broad perspective of experiences of people who have been more and/or less fervent believers in God (not all were Christians, though) prior to their experiencing messages from their loved ones in Heaven.Looking at the Protestant perspective of the After-Life as presented in just one example, the book by Don Piper entitled 90 Minutes in Heaven, you can see the experience of a man whom one would suppose to be as truthful, sane, and believable as the Catholic saints. He presents only a minimal vision of Heaven that he experienced as seen from the Gate region thereof. He encountered certain particular persons he knew that had died, persons that had played an especial role in his choice for Salvation as a Christian. The only point I want to make, from which one might possibly draw some conclusions about Purgatory, is that the people he saw apparently were Protestants who had not benefited in life from the usual Roman Catholic means of Graces for the working out of their Salvation, and they were already in Heaven within the time-frame of Don's lifetime. They seem to have been ordinary devoted Christian folk, some married people. One was his grandfather, if I recall rightly. So, for myself, I draw the encouraging conclusion that some ordinary Christians who may have had an "ordinary amount of sinfulness" [whatever that sinful "amount" may happen to have been, necessarily a varying amount in individual cases, I would suppose] got to Heaven within a few years. Or, maybe some of them even went directly there, as Protestant doctrine would have it. Who knows?To me, there seem to be quite contradictory evidences as to exactly what happens to the soul after death, and so, from a rational point of view, the constructs of the major resources of doctrine and the evidences about the subject can seem more or less shaky, depending upon whatever varying books about evidences of the After-Life one happens to be reading at the time.Anyway, I think this highly evidential book by van den Aardweg about Purgatory is well worth reading and that the message is well worth heeding. It is an attractive paperback book, printed on glossy paper, adorned with very nice color photographs. The text is brief. You can finish reading the book pretty quickly, but you might want to own the book in order to go back and re-study it or refer to it from time to time. There are good footnotes and references, but it doesn't have an index, which I wish it did.

This book was not quite what I was expecting, but it still turned out to be excellent and very well-written. I ordered this book because I've been extremely interested in near-death experiences for many years, and have read many books on the subject. I would not say the book is mis-described on Amazon, but as it turns out, the book contains only a little bit on near-death experiences and visions.The author is a Dutch psychotherapist, born in 1936, who is both conservative and very traditionally old-Catholic in his interests and life approach. This book is a good read even for non-Catholics and non-religious people, for reasons I will explain below (and the reasons are nothing to do with converting people to Catholicism, but with understanding certain behavior of some groups of people in this life).This book is about Purgatory, and messages from Purgatory which have been received and documented by the Catholic church. It's a really nice volume on extremely high-quality paper with color photographs of official church relics which are preserved, all having to do with Purgatory. Many of these relics are from the 1800s. They are currently housed in the 'Museo del Purgatorio' (Museum of Purgatory), at the Vatican, in Rome. The book concentrates on spiritual visitations which are all investigated, accepted, and documented by the Catholic church, to Catholics. The book is very well-written with extensive notes on every chapter, and a bibliography at the end.I was born as a nominal Christian in a traditional Protestant denomination, but was not schooled in Christianity growing up. I feel I am a spiritual person, but not really a practicing Christian. I had heard of Purgatory, but knew nothing about it before reading this book. It seems to be a doctrine of the Catholic Church, but rejected by most Protestant Churches (except Methodist and Lutheran). I supplemented my reading by looking up Purgatory and reading a few online articles about it. For those who do not know what it is, it is an intermediate place where "saved" souls go to purify themselves and cleanse themselves from all earthly sins before entering heaven. According to what I read in this book, it is not God who casts souls into Purgatory, but the souls themselves, who appearing before God feel ashamed and unclean with the sin in their souls; therefore, they cast themselves into Purgatory for months or years to cleanse themselves before returning to the gates of Heaven. The gates of Heaven are not locked, but are wide open. Yet, they dare not enter while still in an unclean state. Those who reject God, according to what I read, go neither to Heaven, nor Purgatory, but to Hell. The method of cleansing in Purgatory is a burning fire (like the fires of Hell), and this is why the preserved relics are all things like burned hand hand prints or fingerprints, on fabric, on walls, on prayer books, etc. The "rust of sin" has to be "burned away."The main message communicated from the souls in Purgatory, according to this book, is that LIVING PEOPLE need to PAY ATTENTION to HOW they are sinning, and how they are living each and every day. THEY NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT WHILE THEY ARE STILL ALIVE, in trying to stop sinning, and to become a better person, and to atone for the sins which they have committed. To do so will greatly shorten their future time in Purgatory. EVERYTHING THAT WE DO AND SAY AND THINK in our lives DOES MATTER. Some of the souls suffering in Purgatory have communicated that examples of what they are there for are things like failing to practice temperance in food and drink, smoking or drugs; for failures to behave charitably, or kindly; a priest performing masses while motivated for getting extra money, rather than for spiritual reasons; for ridiculing religion; for being self-centered; the many hidden flaws stemming from the soul's 'lower self' in all of us.By reading this book, I learned all about Purgatory, as well as the mindset paradigm in which Catholic people were living up through the 1950s. One of the author's points in writing this book (he's now 83) is that young people are no longer being taught about Purgatory, and that they SHOULD be; that the Church needs to start teaching people about it AGAIN. To not do so is a grave disservice, according to the author. Also, the doctrine of Purgatory was reaffirmed by both Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope John Paul II; it has MOST DEFINITELY NOT BEEN DROPPED (as many modern or young Catholics apparently seem to think).One of the useful things I learned in this book, as a non-Catholic, and as a non-practicing nominal Christian, is about a cultural phenomenon many people are asking about today. Lately, every time there is some kind of terrorist massacre with guns or bombs, you see so many people commenting online about offering their "thoughts and prayers." Lately, at least in the United States, there has been somewhat of a backlash against this, with people being angry about those who offer "thoughts and prayers," as in "how USELESS is THAT?!?" Through reading this book, I learned all about the Catholic belief that ALL souls in Purgatory (who are ALL the souls who believe in God, and who will eventually go to Heaven; all of whom will need to be in Purgatory for months or years before getting into Heaven) CAN ONLY BE HELPED BY THE LIVING WHO ARE WILLING TO PRAY FOR THEM. According to what I read, Catholic Doctrine says that because the souls in Purgatory no longer have a body, they are not able to take any actions to undo their sin. But because people on the Earth still have bodies, THEIR ACTIONS CAN HAVE AN EFFECT. Thus, THIS IS THE REASON for the "Requiem Masses for the Dead" in the Catholic Church. Those in Purgatory--our parents, relatives, and friends--can be helped to get out sooner by our constant prayers for them, by our own performing of good deeds on Earth, etc. (I'm not an expert to give more examples, but more examples are given in the book.) So my own personal conclusion is that I think what is happening when people offer "thoughts and prayers" is that this is part of an older tradition of offering prayers for the dead (those killed in the shooting or bombing) who are all assumed to be in Purgatory, in order to HELP THEM THROUGH AND REDUCE THEIR SUFFERING TIME IN PURGATORY--except that people today no longer know WHY that is the traditional thing to offer. As far as having Masses said for dead relatives or people killed in disasters, I presume the reason this is supposed to be helpful is because of the great NUMBERS of people in the Church praying for the souls of those people, even if they are strangers, that all of this praying helps them. In one case offered in the book, one dead soul appeared and asked that Masses be held for her. After two Requiem Masses were held, the dead person appeared again to tell the living person that this had been enough to get them out of Purgatory, and they were now moving on to Heaven. Before reading this book, I'd heard the term Requiem Mass, but had no idea what it meant, or what it's significance was supposed to be. So back to modern disasters, people offer "thoughts" when they aren't religious, and "prayers" if they are religious, but more as a way of trying to express condolences. Apparently what they should also be doing is also OFFERING REAL PRAYERS for those people. Here is an example, given in the book, of a few phrases from a Requiem Prayer: "...thus discharge, in that life hereafter, by mercy, the consequences of their trespasses, and call them to the crown of the ...immortality...of the accomplished virtue in the heavenly kingdom..." and "grant the souls of the defunct the eternal rest..." and "eternal Light to enlighten them."I also learned in my supplementary reading that Islam believes in a Purgatory-like state, called Barzakh--although like in Catholicism, it isn't talked about too much today in Islam. Modern Islam, according to my reading, also focuses on a person's life and on the Day of Judgement. In Buddhism, the Purgatory-like state or place is called the Bardo Realm.I think this book is a very worthwhile read for ALL Catholics. For non-Catholics, it is an interesting and thoughtful read for anyone interested either in religions, in spirituality (many more topics are discussed in the book than I have space to mention here), and for anyone seeking to understand what other groups of humans believe. I found it especially interesting as the origin of the "thoughts and prayers" behavior after terrorist attacks or disasters became clear to me.

Our mother Rose recently died on Sunday 7/7/24 aged 85.The funeral Mass on the following Friday was a real great send off for our Mam and thanks be to God in Christ for consolation for our Mam’s soul and for the comfort of family, relatives and friends. I prayed for Mam’s soul and intercession with the Lord. What a blessing then that I came across this wonderful book by Gerard J.M. Van Den Aardweg. Within a few days I have read it completely through and how it has aroused in me a love for God and to pray for Mam’s soul. I am indebted to the author. A friend of mine by God’s providence recognised him from a conference a few decades ago. Thanks be to God.

Professor Van Aardweg —a veteran in mental health —provides hard evidence from souls in Purgatory, who leavetheir "mark" and urgent request(s). Eternal Life, or Death, freely chosen by persons, once deceased, is no joke, butan entrance into Divine Mercy and, ultimately, true Justice and Love.

Good

Nice reading experience. Arrived on the expected date. Will surely buy again. :)

This is a must read. It gives you insight as to how souls suffer in purgatory and how they desperately need our prayers. Most importantly it gives you a better understanding of what can be avoided and encourages us to lead a holy life to shorten your time in purgatory too. For skeptics or non believers - this is your proof!