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Dear father,

My beloved father passed away recently. I wonder why God doesn’t allow our deceased loved ones to interact with us. Because they “disappear” and there is no longer any way to talk to them. I know that spiritism and all methods of communicating with the dead are sinful things that break the first commandment and that, unless they are the work of deceivers, the devil himself  is deceiving, but why doesn’t God allow a safer channel?

I talk a lot with my father and he almost seems to give  answers … I am not a child and I am ashamed of these things, but when I remember what Padre Pio said about guardian angels, I sometimes instruct my guardian angel to give news to my father , precisely because as an angel he has the opportunity to act as a bridge between me and heaven. The messages contain only sentences of affection and nothing more….

Since my father was an honest man, both in marriage and in family and in society, I thought he was in heaven, is that a presumptuous hypothesis?

Forgive me for all these arguments, but I really suffer from missing my father.

Yours

S.

Dearest S.,

1. you write to me: why does God not allow our deceased loved ones to interact with us?

Indeed: why does He not allow communion with them through a safer means than that of spiritism, where the actions of the devil and cheaters’ are easily mixed? 

2. Well, the answer is that God wants us to interact with our dead in precisely the safest way.

And for this reason He offers us very safe means that allow us to enter into communion with them.

3. The surest way is not to see or hear them because we know that demons can do all of this.

But the demons are liars and for this reason we cannot be at all sure.

4. Our faith in Christ is not based on what we see or hear.

  • Yet despite this, it is very certain.

It is based on the action of God within us.

St. John says that “whoever believes has the testimony of God within himself” (1 Jn 3:10).

Thus our faith is not “founded on human wisdom, but on the power of God” (1 Cor 2: 5).

What is more certain than this?

5. It is a question of a certainty that is not human, but divine and supernatural.

It is a certainty that gave the martyrs the strength to even shed their blood for what they believed. They were more certain of these realities than of themselves.

St. John of Avila, doctor of the Church, writes: “The faith that God infuses is based on divine truth, and makes one believe much more firmly than by  seeing with one’s own eyes and touching with one’s hands, and with greater certainty than the notion that four is more than three, or other similar things, which are seen by the intellect, with such clarity as not to have the slightest hesitation and not to be able to doubt it even if one wanted to ”(Audi, filia, ch. 43)

6. This certainty embraces all the truths of faith, even those about our communion with the Saints and with the souls in Purgatory.

What we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church also applies to these truths:

“Faith is certain, more certain than all human knowledge, because it is founded on the very Word of God, who cannot lie.

Undoubtedly, the revealed truths may seem obscure to reason and human experience, but “the certainty given by divine light is greater than that offered by the light of natural reason” (St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, II-II, 171, 5, ad 3). “Ten thousand difficulties do not make a single doubt” (J. H. Newman, Apologia pro vita sua) “(CCC 157).

7. There is therefore an intercommunion between us and them.

The Saints listen to our prayers and become intercessors.

If we have a willing mind and if we ask for things that are useful for our sanctification, we will not find it difficult to see the confirmation.

For this reason the Catechism of the Catholic Church, taking up an affirmation of the Second Vatican Council (LG 49), says that “the union … of those who are on the way with the brothers who died in the peace of Christ is not broken in the least, indeed, according to perennial faith of the Church, is consolidated by the communication of spiritual goods “(CCC 955).

To be persuaded, it is enough to experience it and go from words to deeds.

8. The same thing also applies to the holy souls in Purgatory: “Our prayer for them can not only help them, but also make their intercession effective in our favor” (CCC 958).

Of course, we don’t have the experience that comes from seeing, touching and hearing. In other words, it is not a sensitive experience, that is, visual, auditory and tactile.

But it is an even higher, safer and stronger experience.

If we do not have the certainty that they are in Paradise, in hell or in Purgatory, we nevertheless have the certainty that in Christ nothing is lost and that the prayers and suffrages we do redounds always and most certainly for our benefit and that in any case an answer always comes to us. It is enough to have spiritual hearing.

With the hope that you can continue to live the bond with your dear father in an even more solid way than you did when he was here, I wish you well, I remind you to the Lord and I bless you.

Father Angelo