I’m sending this message, Reverend Father; I have always admired the Dominican Order, and right now I truly need help.

My mother passed away recently after 61 years of living together.

I am devastated by grief and terrible anguish, so much so that I long to find a medium to communicate with her.

You, Reverend, will say it’s blasphemous and condemn this behavior.

But I am desperate and have no peace. Of all fears, loneliness is the worst for me. In fact, I am alone; alone in my pain, alone in my grief; alone in the knowledge that even my closest relatives have abandoned and deserted us in the moment of this painful tragedy. What, then, should I do?

I would like at least the consolation of knowing my mother is at peace with God.

Please answer me, because my state of prostration isn’t improving and I can’t get out of this state.

Giovanni Daniele

Priest’s answer

Dear Giovanni Daniele,

1. First of all, I offer you my deepest condolences on the passing of your dearest mother.

After 61 years of living together, I can imagine how much you feel the need to continue living in communion with her.

You can do this. In fact, you are encouraged to do so, but not through the path you envisioned.

2. Mediums have no way of putting people in communion with the deceased.

If they are truly mediums, they effectively put themselves in communion with demons. And they place those who turn to them under the devil’s slavery.

Jesus, who knows the devil better than anyone else, called him “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Why seek instruction from the father of lies?

3. St. Thomas Aquinas, recalling that according to Sacred Scripture, any contact with the devil is always illicit, offers two reasons.

The first stems from the fact that a pact with the devil is made and his slavery is placed upon it.

The second stems from the consequences that follow: “For the demon who intends man’s perdition endeavors, by his answers, even though he sometimes tells the truth, to accustom men to believe him, and so to lead him on to something prejudicial to the salvation of mankind…For it is wicked, while we have the divine Scriptures, to seek knowledge from the demons” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, 95, 4).

The devil’s will is by its nature confirmed in evil, and “although at times he does something good, yet he does not do it well; as when he tells the truth in order to deceive” (Ibid., I, 64, 2, ad 5).

Therefore, the path of taking information from the father of lies is not even worth considering.

4. Rather, hoping that our deceased live in God, why not enter into communion with God through prayer?

Why not enter into communion with them by going to Mass every day?

If our dead could speak to us, they would repeat God’s very words because they know they are the truest, most fruitful, and most consoling for us.

5. My advice, therefore, is this: go to Mass every day and receive Holy Communion.

Go to enter into communion with your mother, to hear what she says to you, and to make her happy. She speaks to you with the same words Jesus read in the Gospel, and when you receive Holy Communion, together with Jesus, she enters into perfect communion with you.

Furthermore, recite the Holy Rosary every day for her: it is a communion that is rekindled. It is a mutual giving and receiving.

I invite you to experience it.

6. I like to share with you what Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, a 23-year-old youth irremediably struck by the plague and near death, wrote to his mother: “Beware of offending the infinite goodness of God by mourning as dead those who live in the presence of God and who, through his intercession, can meet your needs far more than in this life.

The separation will not be long.

We will meet again in heaven, and together, united with the Author of our salvation, we will enjoy immortal joys, praising him with all our souls and singing his graces endlessly.

He takes away from us what he had previously given us only to place it in a safer and more inviolable place and to adorn us with those goods we ourselves would choose.” T-N

You can well imagine that your mother is speaking these words to you at this moment.

7. It seems to me that your mother is telling you from Heaven: “The Lord has placed my life in a safer and more inviolable place“.

And precisely for this reason she says to you: “The separation will not be long.

We will see each other again in heaven, and together, united with the author of our salvation, we will enjoy immortal joys“.

Finally: “Do not mourn as dead those who live in the presence of God and who, through their intercession, can meet your needs much more than in this life“.

This is the true communion that Our Lord wants us to have with our dead.

Assuring you of a prayer for you and your dearest mother, I bless you and wish you all the best.

Father Angelo

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