All Souls Month-Purgatory App helps foster devotion to pray for the departed

The month of November is traditionally a time to honor and pray for the departed souls, especially those who may have no one to pray for them. So let us take a look at an app designed to help us do just that.

Catholic Meditations on Purgatory App  (Free) iOS only.

Ideal for the month of All Souls and the great feast day that leads it off. 

To encourage you to pray for the holy souls in Purgatory, this app offers daily devotions for a period of one month with a notification (you set the time) to help you to remember. According to developers, content is based on the book, “The Devout Year” by Rev. RF Clarke, SJ., and includes points of Catholic teaching about Purgatory and the dire need to pray for those souls awaiting Heaven. “On many questions respecting Purgatory, vague and even false notions are very common among Catholics. It is the object [of this content] to instruct unto justice as well as to lead to the practice of good works.” [book quote in app’s introduction] You can choose from various meditations offered (like “How to avoid Purgatory”) or go to the daily, randomly selected meditation. Central to the app is Psalm 130, “De Profundis,” a traditional penitential psalm. Each meditation walks you through three points and then the subsequent adoration, reflex action on yourself, petition, resolution, colloquies and conclusion. Appreciated is the option to email, Twitter, Facebook, text message content. You can also copy content to paste.

Pope Benedict XVI’s reflection on Psalm 130 is a rich source for meditation on this subject. This particular meditation is not included in this app (great idea, though!)  You can wander over to this link to check it out. Here’s an excerpt:

“Beyond its funeral application, the text [Psalm 130] is above all a canticle to divine mercy and to reconciliation between the sinner and the Lord, a just God, but always ready to reveal himself as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7). Precisely for this reason our psalm is inserted in the Christmas liturgy of vespers and of the whole Christmas octave, as well as in that of the 4th Sunday of Easter and of the solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord.”

UPDATE

Prayers for Souls in Purgatory (Free) Android Here’s a recommended app submitted by one of our readers. This provides many of the traditional prayers of the Church for souls in Purgatory. What is behind this devotion? According to Our Catholic Prayers web site, “Many of the Fathers of the Church, such as St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom, considered prayers for souls in purgatory to be essential. The church has endorsed the doctrine of purgatory from the Councils of Florence and Trent in the 15th and 16th centuries right up through Vatican II in the 1960’s. The most famous scriptural reference, among others, concerning these prayers comes from the Old Testament where it is called “a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins” (2 Macabees 12:46).” If you are looking for traditional prayers surrounding this devotion, this app provides several to choose from including:

• The Heroic Act of Love
• Twelve-year Devotion for the Souls in Purgatory
• Devotion to the Holy Wounds
• Prayer for the Liberation of Souls in Purgatory
• First Tuesday Chaplet for the Souls in Purgatory
• Crown of Suffrages for the Souls in Purgatory
• The 100 Requiem Prayer

Finally, the Office for the Dead is a powerful way to assist the Holy Souls. It is the Church’s prayer directed toward this intention in a universal way. You can find the Office for the Dead in your Liturgy of the Hours apps, most notably (and at no cost) iBreviary – for iOS ,  Android, Windows 7 Blackberry (direct download), and on the browser of your mobile phone.  Web-based device access (for Kindle, Nook and your computer etc.) Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD .

Still not convinced about the importance of this devotion? Check out this article on the “Forgotten Church.”