How do we express our love for our deceased brothers and sisters?

During the month of November, especially, we should remember those who who have died and we should, as Archbishop Burke reminds us in today's column, "cultivate, with particular attention, our relationship with our brothers and sisters in purgatory." He reminds us that if we love them, we should "understand their condition."

We are reminded, with clarity, of the existence of Purgatory and that there is "temporal punishment due to sin."

[This] temporal punishment due to our sins is not imposed by God in anger at us. Rather, it is the consequence of our sins, namely, a wrong attraction or attachment which must be purified with the spiritual tools of prayer and penance so that we can enjoy full communion with our Lord and all the saints.

Let us not forget that, as St John tells us, "nothing unclean" can enter heaven. (Apoc 21:27)

Only when we have undergone the purification of our sinful attractions and attachments, connected with both mortal and venial sin in our lives, will we be ready to meet our Lord and enjoy His company forever. When we reflect on the conversion of mind and heart to our Lord, which we all desire and seek through prayer and penance, then we realize how immensely good God is in providing purgatory, a state in which, after death, we undergo the purification which was lacking during our days on earth (Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 1472-1473).

How do express our love for the dead?

...[W]e want to assist our deceased brothers and sisters to satisfy the temporal punishment due to their sins, so that they may enter the eternal joy of heaven.

We...show our love for them by offering prayers and sacrifices for the remission of the temporal punishment due to their sins.

If we love those who have died, we will have Masses offered, and will pray and do penance for their eternal rest.

Archbishop Burke reminds us that we do a great disservice to our deceased brothers and sisters when we presume that they are already in heaven. How many of us have heard homilies at funerals where a priest has already canonized the deceased member of the Church family? While we certainly hope and pray that the dead are in the glory of the Almighty God, such a presumption ignores reality. It tends to minimize or eliminate our need to offer our prayers and sacrifices for our loved one. Let us not fall prey to a certain naivete that tends to diminish God's mercy and justice. Few there are who are free of all attachment to sin.

None of us knows the temptations and trials which another, even a person of great holiness, has undergone in life. We know that the great saints often expressed sorrow at their imperfect love of God and neighbor.

As member of the Church Militant, we have an obligation, in authentic charity, to pray for those who have gone before us, the Church Suffering.

The souls in purgatory depend upon us, upon our loving prayers and acts of penance, so that the purification of sin may be complete in them.

Archbishop's Burke's article is here.