Ponderings
Images of Blessed Virgin Mary

St. John Vianney once wrote: “Only after the Last Judgment will Mary get any rest; from now until then, she is much too busy with her children.”  A true mother loves all her children and while the relationship between mother and child may change over the years the love that a good mother has never diminishes.  This made most evident in our next image of the Blessed Virgin Mary from Ann Ball’s book: The Other Faces Of Mary: Stories, Devotions and Pictures of the Holy Virgin around the World.  This image has been entitled: Our Lady of Montligeon and in its original form it was a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary lifting souls out of the fires of purgatory and placing them into the heavens. 
 
                “Yes” we Catholics still believe in Purgatory.  The doctrine of purgatory simply states that there is a place/time after death where a person receives a final cleansing or purifying (often depicted as fire) of our desire to sin and/or our love of sin is removed from us.  Since I am a visual person, I like to think of purgatory as a sort of drug rehab center for sinners.  In a drug rehab center, I have to go through withdraws of getting the drug out of my system and even though it is for my own benefit it is a painful process but I cannot be healed until the drugs are out of my system.  Spiritually, I have to get rid of my desire to sin before I can enter God’s loving presence forever.  As an ex-drug user learns healthier ways to deal with the situations in his or her life; a sinner learns how to forgive instead of holding grudges.  A sinner has to learn how handle temptation without sinning. In the same way that a person in a drug rehab center can receive encouragement from family and friends through letters and phone calls a person in purgatory can receive encouragement through prayers of both the living (us) and the dead (Mary and the Saints). 

                The Blessed Virgin Mary are extra special because Mary’s prayers would be like receiving a prayer from our own mother, someone famous , and someone in great authority for she is also the Queen of Heaven.  Her words to us are the same words of encouragements that she gave to the servants at the Wedding Feast of Cana – “Do whatever he tells you!”  We would do well to follow this advice. 

                I think it also important to point out that love is what changes us in Purgatory the more we come to grasp how much God loves us the less desire we have to commit sin. Our Lady of Montligeon should also remind us that the dead are connected to us through the Church and the Communion of Saints.  We should trust in their prayers for us and we should help them with our prayers. 
 
“Even while living in this world, the heart of Mary was so filled with tenderness and compassion for men, that no one ever suffered so much for his own pains as Mary suffered for the pains of others.” - Saint Jerome~
 
Our Lady of Montligeon Prayer:
Our Lady Liberty, have mercy on all our departed loved ones, especially on those who are most in need of the Lord's mercy. Intercede for those who have gone before us that the purifying love of God may lead them to full deliverance. May our prayer, united with the prayer of the whole Church, obtain for them a joy beyond all their desires, and bring consolation and relief to our loved ones in their suffering and distress. Mother of the Church, help us, pilgrims on earth, the better to live each day our journey towards the Resurrection. Heal our wounds of heart and soul. Help us to become witnesses of the Unseen God, seeking already the things that the eye cannot see. Grant us the grace of becoming apostles of Hope, like watchmen waiting for the dawn. Refuge of sinners and Queen of all Saints gather us all one day, in Our Father's House, or the eternal Easter, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.