The catholic Bishop of Awka Diocese, Rt. Rev. Paulinous Ezeokafor made out time to educate journalists shortly after the celebration of this years, shortly after the solemnity of All Saints /Souls Mass held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Awka, to pray for the fallen saints of God, who were opportune of being able to enter heaven but still caught in the bridge between heaven and hell known as purgatory.
Excepts:
My Lord Bishop Sir, could you please explain to us the significance of today’s service, it seems unique, carved out from other services even making out time to pray and celebrate with the dead?
Well today is a very important day in the life of Catholic church word wide which started precisely yesterday, when the church celebrated the solemnity of All Saints that is all that have lived in this life and have really done well in human reckoning and they are really counted among the saints.
There are many Saints that are not in the book of divine saints, it’s only those who show something extra-ordinary, something we can count and say.
Today we celebrating and praying for those of us who have died, left this world but we are not sure, whether they have been opportune to be with God in his heavenly kingdom, and you know its very important to pray for the dead so that God will grant them mercy and forgiveness. In fact, the church made it in a way that you get what we call, plenary indulgent, even from yesterday till the end of the month.
If you pray, just say our father or any other prayers recognized by the church, its sure that the soul will be grated total freedom from purgatory and that means a lot.
We are happy as we pray as we pray for them and we are hoping that when we too are gone, people will pray for us too , I believe that all of us are praying to receive total freedom from purgatory, I believe every want s to get to heaven, and I believe even the worst sinner are also in need of God mercies for forgiveness of sins and since these our brothers and sisters cannot on their own bailed themselves out, they need our help, that is why they need our help which call for our prayers and the good works, sacrifices, so it’s a very significant and memorable day for the church, because this is the communion of saints, the saint in heaven, the souls in purgatory and we here on earth.
As we pray for them, we are hoping that God will grant them eternal rest and we know in our own time, if we do not get there immediately, surely people on earth would then be in the need to pray for us.
My Lord Bishop Sir, For instance, the protestant churches believed that there in nothing like purgatory, their believe has it that if someone dies now, he or she faces heaven for judgment with no recourse to purgatory experience, what your take on such teaching Sir?
Well you call it protestant and it’s a protestant theology and you know they came out of Catholic Church and a certain things few disagreed upon before they left, so you would not be surprised if they teach such, but our faith teaches us that there must be an in-between, because not everyone is perfect, but not that everyone is so bad that cannot be, is just that when you are sick or to just describe it with a relationship, there is a difference when you say this person is my enemy completely! or we say we can find a way about it.
So we have mottle sin, we have big sin and then, what is not sin and then we think of purgatory as a stepping stone for those who for one reason or the order are not perfect, because the Bible says nothing imperfect shall get to the presence of God.
Sometime, we find people who are not fully perfect, because nothing imperfect can get to Gods Kingdom, sometime you find people who are not imperfect, in the sense they are totally to be dropped from entering the kingdom of God, in that case we say they have a case.
Even in the second book of Macabre in the Old Testament, because somebody God did that to, started collecting money praying for the dead, because he discovered that among the soldiers who were caught in the war are disarmed under them, so he was so worry, okay so he believed that praying for the dead and there must be an in-between heaven and earth and beneath and it cannot be that somebody has gone nowhere because we are all aspiring to be perfect.
