Offering everything for the holy souls

Giving away your own satisfactions for the dead.

The Heroic Act is a formal offering by which a person gives to the souls in purgatory all the satisfactory value of their good works in life, and all the suffrages offered for them after death — keeping nothing back for themselves.

The Act

O heavenly Father,
in union with the merits of Jesus and Mary,
I offer to You, for the souls in purgatory,
all the satisfactory value of the works of my life,
and all the suffrages that will be offered for me after my death,
placing them entirely in the hands of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
that she may apply them as she wills
to the souls she desires to deliver.

Accept this offering, Lord,
and grant me the grace to persevere in it. Amen.

What It Does and Does Not Do

• It offers the satisfactory value of good works — what makes reparation for temporal punishment — not their merit, which cannot be transferred.
• It does not affect one’s own salvation, which does not depend on satisfaction.
• It is revocable: it may be made and later withdrawn.
• It is not a vow, and it binds no one under sin.

About This Act

It has been recommended by popes since the eighteenth century and is traditionally made in November. The logic is bracing: you give away the thing you might most want to keep, on the grounds that the souls in purgatory can no longer help themselves and you still can.