11. An angel in heaven
Angela’s sadness
Angela had just
come from school with her eyes full of tears.
Her once cheerful
voice, as she used to enter the house, is replaced now by her childish sobs. Her
mother approached her anxiously and asked her:
-What is wrong with
you my little girl why are you crying? Did anything unpleasant happen at school that made you
so upset?
-I am so sad, my mummy. Our teacher told us
that Maria, my best friend at school, who was continuously ill last month and
was taken to hospital, died last night. I cannot believe it, that I lost my best friend so suddenly.
She was so good!
-I understand your
sadness my little girl. I understand why you are suffering and crying so much.
But if you knew where your beloved friend will be from today on, you might not
be so sorrowful.
-Where will Maria
be from today on, mummy?
-From today on her
childish soul, my Angela, is fluttering into the divine embrace of our good
God. Her little body may
be in the ground, but her pure soul is together with the angels of heaven. You may be very sad now because you lost your best friend, but Maria is
very happy in her daddy God's arms. Every pure soul who
leaves this life goes directly into the embrace of our good God, who is the
real Dad and Mum of all souls.
-Why, mummy, does God take young children close to Him before they grow
and enjoy this world?
- Our God’s decisions cannot be easily comprehended
by us humans, my Angela, because His intention is the soul’s salvation.
There are many reasons why our good God does it.
-Yes, my daughter. Our heavenly Father knows, as God that He is, who His
well-meaning children are and which of them would grow up with meanness, hurting themselves and other people with their own
will. So when He sees with His divine vision some benevolent
children who would have great difficulties in their future lives and they would
lose their soul through despair, He takes them close to Him without delay. Also
when He sees that some of them would reach the
point of committing great sins, without realising and they would lose their souls, He also takes them
near Him without delay, to save them from destruction. Other times He takes them
because He wants to have little innocent children near Him who will intervene with their prayers beside his
throne in heaven to
save some people who were in great sorrow on earth. Do you know how many times people have been saved from
great dangers, even nations, by the prayerful intervention of these young children
who make up the small heavenly angelic army of people’s salvation?
-Wow, my mummy! How wise and merciful our God is, and we, without
knowing the greatness of His infinite love, call Him many times unrighteous and
cruel!
Our body is the temple of God
- However, I am very sad, mum, that they would put her into the ground
and we will not see her again.
-I have already told you, my Angela, that every man who is born here on
earth consists of his mortal and material body which he is getting from the mummy who gives
birth to him, but also from the intangible and indestructible soul which is given to
him by the heart of our beloved God the Father. The soul is what gives value to the body,
because it is the one thing that will live for eternity. The body, when the time appointed by God will come, will die and return to the
ground. But the soul is eternal, because God took it out of
His divine heart, and wants it to return into His divine embrace from where it
came.
-That is, man’s body has no value at all?
-Of course not, my little girl! Whatever God creates
is valuable, because everything has a specific and important role to perform in
the creation of God our Father. Nothing has been created by our good God without having an important role to play. Look at the
sun. It warms us, it gives us light and it brightens the day so that people can
do their work. Look at the air, which although we can’t see it, however, it
gives us the precious oxygen to live. If we are deprived for a few
minutes of air and oxygen, then everyone will die. The same thing happens with all the wonderful creations of God. Therefore
our body couldn’t be different from them.
-What is the role of our body then, mummy, since it is
our immortal soul that has the greatest value?
-Our body is given to us by God to become, as long we
live on this earth, the house of the
soul. So, by our
precious soul living in it, it is becoming a
sacred and holy place. Our body
is called the temple of God by the Holy Spirit. And that is how all Christians need to see it, so we are always very
careful not to pollute it.
-How is our body polluted, mum?
-Our body, my child, is the visible part of every human soul. That’s why every soul is
recognized by the specific form that every man has. As long as man lives on this
earth, body and soul become one, in an indivisible human being.
So, when the soul is polluted, the body is also polluted,
as well as when the body is polluted, the soul is also polluted.
The secret of childish happiness
-What is it, mum, that pollutes the body and makes the
soul polluted?
-Sin, my child, pollutes the soul of man. This,
with the help of the devil Satan, manages to remove a soul from God. Sometimes
it is accomplished through the mistakes of the body, and other times through
the mistakes of the soul. That’s why all the mistakes and sins that are made by
man, my Angela, are divided into two kinds. Those which first contaminate
man’s heart and then also pollute his soul, and those which first contaminate the
body and then pollute the soul too.
-What are the greater sins mum? Those of body or those
of the heart?
-Although there is not much difference, my child,
whether someone dies from flu or from an incurable disease, since he died in
the end, however, there is a substantial difference between the body’s mistakes
and the ones of the heart. It is easier and faster to repent bodily mistakes, for
example, various carnal sins, because they are easily perceived. However, with
mistakes of the heart, such as, jealousy, envy, criticism and others, due to
human selfishness, a man can hardly realize the magnitude of his sin in order
to repent.
-Therefore, from what I understand, the most dangerous
sins must be those of the heart. What is the greatest sin of the heart mum?
-The lack of trust in our good God is the greatest sin
which a soul can commit. Due to this fatal mistake the first created people have
fallen and as a result are sent out of paradise? Devil Satan’s words which
slandered our good God to the first created man, made man doubt the love of his
creator God. Since having first made him doubt whether God really loved him,
afterwards he didn’t want to obey His divine commandments, because he no longer
had absolute trust in His Creator. Do you understand why the lack of trust in
our God is the greatest sin that a man can commit?
-I understand, my mummy, so I will beg the Holy Spirit
to give me absolute trust in our good God.
-Behave towards our good God, my little girl, like you
treat me and your sweet daddy; with absolute love and trust. Tell me, my child,
do you have difficulty doing whatever we ask you to do with love?
-No, my mum, on the contrary I am glad to do what you
ask me, because I know that whatever you tell me to do it is for my own good.
-This is the secret of your childish happiness, my
Angela. You trust us completely and you joyfully do whatever we tell you, because
you know that what we say to you is for your own good. If you believe deeply in your heart, that God loves
you with infinite affection and adoration, then you trust Him completely and
you do whatever He wants joyfully with absolute obedience to His divine Will.
-Mum, my friend Maria, who died, loved and trusted God.
Won’t she be close to Him now?
-Of course, she is now close to Him. Her little body
might be in the ground, but her soul is resting in the arms of our good God and
now hears the hymns of the angels who glorify our holy Creator.
The sorrow of death
-Mum, since our souls go near to our good God, why do
people cry so much and look so desperate, when they lose a loved one?
-This is, my child, very natural for any person who
loses a loved one. Don’t we cry when one of our beloved ones goes away to
foreign land and we will not see him for a long time? Especially when our loved
one dies and we will not have the opportunity to see him again on this earth.
Don’t forget that even Christ, when He was informed that His beloved friend
Lazarus had died, wept like a perfect man as He was. However, the natural human
need to mourn your beloved one who left this life and you will not ever see him
again differs from that sorrow which is caused by despair that this person whom
we mourn is completely lost from life and he will not exist anywhere. And this,
unfortunately my child, happens to those who do not believe that there is
eternal life. My little girl, why are you upset about the death of your friend?
-I will miss her so much mum! She was my best friend.
We were studying together at school, we were sitting together at the same desk,
we were playing games together and I could tell her anything because I trusted
her. So, do you understand mum, why I will
miss her very much?
- I understand my little girl. But I would like to ask
you something. If you knew that she and her mum would have to leave our
beautiful village to go far away to America, where her dad currently lives and
works to support his family, would you mourn as much as now?
-No, mum, because I would know that she would be there
very happy near her daddy. I would be very upset about losing my beloved friend
but, at the same time, I would be happy because I would know that she would be
so happy near her beloved daddy.
-That’s exactly how we should feel, my child, for each
good soul who loved God and now by their death has left us. We might miss the
presence of our beloved one, but his soul will be very happy now in the arms of
our beloved God the Father.
Happy and unhappy souls
-Mummy, do all souls go into the arms of our heavenly
Father?
-Unfortunately not, my Angela.
-Some of them go into the dark kingdom of hell. But we
decide where our souls go after the death of our body. And this is due to a
great and unique gift which was given to us by the Creator God. This
gift is called free will and by it
man can decide by himself what he wants to do with his life. God didn’t want His
most perfect creature to live without personal will, because otherwise every
act of his life wouldn’t have any value. My Angela, do you love me because
someone is forcing you to or because you yourself want to?
-I love you, my mum, because I want to and I know that
you love and adore me!
-This is what is giving value to the love you give me,
my child, because you are doing with your will, through your heart. This is
exactly what God also wants from all His children. He wants us to love Him, to
trust Him and to obey Him by our own free will, because then our choice is
worthy. If something is done by force or necessity it has no value.
-Mummy, I love our good God because I want to, since
He loves and adores me. As I love dad and you and I always want us to be
together, and I also want the same with our good God, to always be with Him and
to think continually of Him.
-Your love that you give to our beloved God the Father,
my Angela, makes Him very happy; therefore when the day appointed by God will
come for your soul to fly to heaven, He will be waiting for you at the gates of
Paradise to welcome you to His wonderful heavenly Kingdom, where only joy,
peace and infinite happiness exist. There, along with all the righteous and
saints who loved Him like a Mother and Father of their soul while they were living
on earth, you will enjoy the infinite affectionate love of His heart. Then with
all the power of your soul you will feel how He loves and adores us, something that
human mind cannot describe!
-And my friend Maria is she living this happiness now,
mum?
-Yes, my Angela, your good girlfriend Maria is now
enjoying a happiness that she could never imagine on earth. Her beloved parents
and friends might suffer for the loss of her presence on earth, but like an
angel she is enjoying a unique happiness and joy of the infinite love and
adoration that our heavenly Father gives her.
-I’m happy mummy, with what you tell me and you also
make me wish for the time that my soul would be in the embrace of our good God!
-Virtuous people, my little girl, and those divinely
in love with God, as were our saints, never feared death because they saw it as
an opportunity to unite their soul with their beloved King Jesus and to enjoy with
Him the absolute joy and happiness in eternity. This was the reason why our
saints had the power to endure the tortures and not be afraid of confessing with
courage their belief in God in front of their torturers.
-But why are many people afraid of death?
-There are many who are afraid of death because they
don’t believe that there is an eternal life, so they think that their life ends
by the death of their body. Others are frightened of the thought of death because they
don’t live according to God’s Will but by what the deceitful Satan puts in
their mind. They live with jealousy, envy, malice, hate and prodigality, giving
the right to evil Satan to rule over their souls and claim them as his own
friends and followers. Therefore,
they are afraid of death, because they know that Satan, whom they served in
their earthly life, will come now to take them into the dark kingdom of Hades.
-So, mummy, as happy as those people are who live
according to the commandments of our good God and wait with longing to be close
to Him, without being afraid of death; so unhappy are those who live according
to the commandments of Satan and fear that they would go to hell!
- This is exactly the difference between a soul who
loves and trusts God and tries to live virtuously on this earth, with another
one whose thoughts and deeds follow the commands of evil Satan. Whoever we choose to direct our lives on
this earth, he will come and without doubt take our soul at the time of our death.
-But if
someone repents for his mistakes and returns to God, can Satan take his soul to
hell?
-Of course, not! Our God is so affectionate and so merciful
that when He sees one of His children kneeling in humility and apologizing for
his mistakes, He immediately forgives him.
- With
just an apology will God forgive the sinner?
-Yes, my little girl. No man can realize how
infinitely God loves us and wants all people to be saved and to enter to His
celestial kingdom of Heaven. But woe to them, my little girl, who despise the love
of our Good God and follow evil Satan. They will suffer so much misery by
Lucifer himself that if they knew it no one would ever follow him. Even at the
time of man’s death, no one can imagine how much the devil wants to harm every
soul!
The Toll-Houses of the soul
-When a person dies mum, what happens next?
-That very moment, my Angela, is the most critical for
every soul. From that moment onwards the eternal happiness or eternal misery of
every soul is judged. If the soul is pious, many angels and many saints are
coming along with its guardian angel to accompany it to the throne of God. But
if it is evil and impious, then many demons are coming to claim it and take it
into the dark kingdom of eternal misery.
-And what about the guardian angel of the soul, what is
he doing then mummy?
-No demon is allowed to hurt the soul until God Himself
will decide where this soul goes. The demons, however, don’t stop tempting the
soul even for a moment until it arrives before God’s throne.
-How do the evil demons tempt the soul?
-Well, as the soul ascends to the throne of God, some
terrible demons, the toll-houses, stop
it one after the other and demand that the guardian angel deliver the soul to
them in order to take it with them into the dark kingdom of hell. They tell him
all the mistakes and sins that were committed during its life on earth in order
to convince him that this soul belongs to them.
-Are there many demons that tempt souls, mum?
-Yes, my Angela, there are as many as the sins into
which people have fallen. However, those demons who manage to separate a soul from
God with some very great sins stand out among them. With these Lucifer manages to
gain complete power over those souls while they are living and after death he
takes them easily into his dark kingdom.
-What are those sins mum?
-They are those of atheism, deceit and witchcraft. People
who fall into these terrible sins reach the point of doubting the existence of
our good God and claim that God does not exist. Others in fact believe that
Lucifer himself is God. So, instead of worshipping the one true God, they
worship the devil himself as God and when they want to achieve something, they
turn to him seeking his help.
-And does the demon help them, mum?
-Yes, my daughter. The demon, having first succeeded in
getting a soul to follow him in whatever evil and vile things he commands him, afterwards
he uses him to deceive other people with the power of witchcraft. So, many
people instead of turning to our good God to be redeemed from something bad, they
go to magicians, to fortune tellers and mediums. Then the demon, because he is
the source of all evils, binds this foolish person even more tightly with his
satanic bondage and makes him his blind, obedient and faithful follower. So,
all these people who denied the true God and did not repent, allow the demons to
easily grab their souls from the hands of their guardian angels and lead them directly
to the most horrible hell.
-Are there also other sins, mummy, in which Satan can
easily grab a soul from the hands of his guardian angel?
-Yes, my daughter, there are also other terrible sins
which give Satan much power to destroy a soul. They are murder and abortion
that some women commit depriving life to a soul, that our good God himself granted.
Also suicide is one of the most terrible sins which leads a soul directly into
the darkness of hell and gives extreme joy to the demon that encouraged him.
-How can some people deprive themselves of the life which
our good God so lovingly gave them?
-When, my child, a man stops trusting our good God,
then Satan easily convinces him to do this terrible deed. He ignores the fact that
with it, he is not redeemed from what torments him, but on the contrary, he surrenders
his soul into the eternal power of Satan to torment him horribly in hell.
-I feel very sorry for these people who will be
tormented forever in hell! Are there also other sins, mummy, which allow Satan to
acquire great power over us?
-Another great sin, my child, is immorality. The evil
Satan knows, my Angela, that man's body is the temple of God and the house of
our soul, as long as he lives on this earth; therefore he tries to pollute it in
various ways. One of
these is licentiousness. Unfortunately, this demon of licentiousness is easily
able to lead many souls, especially young children, into his cunning nets and at
the time of death he claims this soul with great audacity.
-Finally, we must all take care, mummy, not to give
power to Satan to overcome our soul so he can claim it at the moment of our
death!
-My sweet little girl, we should never forget that on
this earth we are tested by our deeds to our good God, in order to prove to Him
whether we love Him and whether we want to live happily in His divine embrace. He
leaves us alone to choose in whose embrace we want to be. Those
who choose to be in the arms of our good God have to be good, compassionate, charitable,
kind, humble and full of love towards our fellow man. When we live on this earth as
our good God wants, neither the devil nor any toll-house can scare us and take
us from the embrace of our guardian angel.
-I will try, mummy, to be a good daughter to our
beloved God and not to embitter Him with my disobedience to His will. I
understand how much He wants me to love Him with all my heart and to trust Him
completely, as I love you mummy and I try to be obedient to whatever you tell
me.
-Well done, my little girl. Your effort makes our good
God rejoice with you and want to enclose you more and more into His motherly Heart.
-What else must I be careful of mummy in order to
become better and make my sweet Father God happy?
-Three things, my little girl, are very important and
I would like you to be careful of them in your whole life. These are the mind, the heart and the mouth. The
happiness or the misery of a soul depends on these three things, because from the
use of these three things it will depend whether someone will be flooded by the
light of the grace of the Holy Spirit or by the darkness of sin.
-What should I do with them, mum?
-With your mind
to think always of our good God and never allow anything evil to pollute it.
You should always have good thoughts for all people and not criticize any
creature of God. Never allow your mind to think proudly and selfishly. Our God
is very upset with this because with your proud thoughts you give much right to
Satan to tempt you and to rule over your soul. With your heart,
love our good God and don’t let Satan pollute your little heart with obscenities.
-What are the obscenities of the heart, Mum?
-They are the various jealousies, envy, hate, malice, cruelty
and other errors of the heart with which Lucifer himself manages, not to simply
so much pollute a soul, but also to claim him as his follower. My child, wherever love doesn’t exist, our good God is not
there, but only the presence of the evil Satan. A heart which lives only with envy,
hate and malice doesn’t have our good God as king but Lucifer himself.
Therefore, at the time of death he will come with much daring to claim it from his
guardian angel and to throw it into the abyss of hell.
-You spoke to me also mummy about the errors of the
mouth. What must I be careful of?
-I left for last, my Angela, the errors of the mouth
because although many people do not count them, however, they are so important
and so dangerous that they can very easily destroy a soul suffering in hell.
-What sins of our mouth are so very dangerous, mum?
-Blasphemies, criticisms and slander are the great errors of the mouth. Many
people were destroyed by criticisms and slander. Don’t forget that the evil
devil also used words in Paradise to slander our good God to Adam and Eve with
the well known tragic consequences for all humanity. Many people, my Angela, lost
Paradise because they allowed their mouth to speak uncontrollably giving out
poison instead of honey. The evil demons always record the errors we commit by
our mouth with much joy! The toll-houses use these errors at the moment of
death to gain the troubled soul.
-How can someone be saved from the toll-houses?
-By apologizing regularly for his mistakes and struggling
to correct them, but mainly, when he
learns to tell them to his confessor with humility and contrition. Then with
the power of the holy Sacrament of Repentance, our good God Himself erases them
and completely purifies his soul.
-After our confession, will the demons still have recorded
them and will mention them at the time of death?
-No, my Angela. When we confess our mistakes with
remorseful heart then they are erased from their records. That’s why the Sacrament
of Repentance is the greatest for our souls’ salvation.
-Mum, my friend who died was a little and good girl.
Did she pass by the toll-houses at the time of her death?
-Little girls who live with simplicity, love and
obedience to their parents are angels and don’t pass by the toll-houses. They go
straight into the arms of God. It is a great honour for a little soul, like
your girlfriend Maria’s, to be chosen by God among so many others, and to be
taken close to Him so quickly in order to be put among His holy angels. It is a
special honour that all the saints who love and worship our holy God would be jealous
of. Therefore,
don’t feel sorry for your girlfriend but be glad and proud of her that from her
childhood she is enjoying the beauties of Heaven in the arms of the most sweet,
affectionate Father who is our beloved God!
