Purgatory, Mary Anne Madden Sadlier [books to get back into reading .txt] 📗

weary perseverance in well- doing! Jesus will not help Himself here, because He loves to see us helping Him, and because He thinks our love will rejoice that He still leaves us something we can do for Him. There have been Saints who have devoted their whole lives to this one work, mining in Purgatory; and, to those who reflect in faith, it does not seem, after all, so strange. It is a foolish comparison, simply because it is so much below the mark; but on all principles of reckoning, it is a much less work to have won the battle of Waterloo, or to have invented the steam-engine, than to have freed one soul from Purgatory.


WHY THE SOULS IS PURGATORY ARE CALLED "POOR" SOULS.

FATHER MULLER, C.S.S.R. [1]

[Footnote 1: Charity to the Holy Souls in Purgatory]

We have just seen that the Jews believed in the doctrine of Purgatory; we have seen that their charity for the dead was so great that the Holy Ghost could not help praising them for it. Yet for all that, we may assert in truth that the people of God under the Old Law were not so well instructed in this doctrine as we are, nor had they such powerful means to relieve the souls - in Purgatory as we have. Our faith, therefore, should be more lively, and our charity for the souls in Purgatory more ardent and generous.

A short time ago a fervent young priest of this country had the following conversation with a holy Bishop on his way to Rome. The Bishop said to him: "You make mementoes now and then, for friends of yours that are dead - do you not?" The young priest answered: "Certainly, I do so very often." The Bishop rejoined: "So did I, when I was a young priest. But one time I was grievously ill. I was given up as about to die. I received Extreme Unction and the Viaticum. It was then that my whole past life, with all its failings and all its sins, came before me with startling vividness. I saw how much I had to atone for; and I reflected on how few Masses would be said for me, and how few prayers. Ever since my recovery I have most fervently offered the Holy Sacrifice for the repose of the pious and patient souls in Purgatory; and I am always glad when I can, as my own offering, make the 'intention' of my Masses for the relief of their pains."

Indeed, dear reader, no one is more deserving of Christian charity and sympathy than the poor souls in Purgatory. They are really POOR
souls . No one is sooner forgotten than they are.

How soon their friends persuade themselves that they are in perfect peace! How little they do for their relief when their bodies are buried! There is a lavish expense for the funeral. A hundred dollars are spent where the means of the family hardly justify the half of it. Where there is more wealth, sometimes five hundred or a thousand, and even more, dollars are expended on the poor dead body. But let me ask you what is done for the poor living soul ? Perhaps the poor soul is suffering the most frightful tortures in Purgatory, whilst the lifeless body is laid out in state, and borne pompously to the graveyard. You must not misunderstand me: it is right and just to show all due respect even to the body of your deceased friend, for that body was once the dwelling-place of his soul. But tell me candidly, what joy has the departed, and, perhaps, suffering soul, in the fine music of the choir, even should the choir be composed of the best singers in the country? What consolation does the poor suffering soul find in the superb coffin, in the splendid funeral? What pleasure does the soul derive from the costly marble monument, from all the honors that are so freely lavished on the body? All this may satisfy, or at least seem to satisfy, the living, but it is of no avail whatever to the dead.

Poor unhappy souls! how the diminution of true Catholic faith is visited upon you while you suffer, and those that loved you in life might help you, and do not, for want of knowledge or of faith!

Poor unhappy souls! your friends go to their business, to their eating and drinking, with the foolish assurance that the case cannot be hard on one they knew to be so good! Oh, how much and how long this false charity of your friends makes you suffer!

The venerable Sister, Catherine Paluzzi, offered up, for a long time, and with the utmost fervor, prayers and pious works for the soul of her deceased father. At last she thought she had good reason to believe that her father was already enjoying the bliss of Paradise. But how great was her consternation and grief when Our Lord, in company with St. Catherine, her patroness, led her one day, in spirit, to Purgatory. There she beheld her father in an abyss of torments, imploring her assistance. At the sight of the pitiful state the soul of her father was in, she melted into tears; she cast herself at the feet of her Heavenly Spouse, and begged Him, through His precious Blood, to free her father from his excruciating sufferings. She also begged St. Catherine to intercede for him, and then turning to Our Lord, she said: "Charge me, O Lord, with my father's indebtedness to Thy justice. In expiation of it, I am ready to take upon myself all the afflictions Thou art pleased to bestow upon me." Our Lord graciously accepted this act of heroic charity, and released at once her father's soul from Purgatory. But how heavy were the crosses which she, from that time, had to suffer, may be more easily imagined than described. This pious sister seemed to have good reason to believe that her father's soul was in Paradise. Yet she was mistaken. Alas! how many are there who resemble her! How many are there whose hope as to the condition of their deceased friends is far more vain and false than that of this religious, because they pray much less for the souls of their departed friends than she did for her father.

* * * * *

It is related in the life of St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, that one day she saw the soul of one of her deceased sisters kneeling in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, in the church, wrapped up in a mantle of fire, and suffering great pains, in expiation of her neglecting to go to Holy Communion on one day, when she had her confessor's permission to communicate.

The Venerable Bede relates that it was revealed to Drithelm, a great servant of God, that the souls of those who spend their whole lives in the state of mortal sin, and are converted only on their death-bed, are doomed to suffer the pains of Purgatory to the day of the last judgment.

In the life and revelations of St. Gertrude we read that those who have committed many grievous sins, and who die without having done due penance, are not assisted by the ordinary suffrages of the Church until they are partly purified by Divine Justice in Purgatory.

After St. Vincent Ferrer had learned the death of his sister Frances, he at once began to offer up many fervent prayers and works of penance for the repose of her soul. He also said thirty Masses for her, at the last of which it was revealed to him that, had it not been for his prayers and good works, the soul of his sister would have suffered in Purgatory to the end of the world.

From these examples you may draw your own conclusion as to the state of your deceased friends and relatives. Rest assured that the judgments of God are very different from the judgments of men.

* * * * *

In heaven, love for God is the happiness of the elect; but in Purgatory it is the source of the most excruciating pains. It is principally for this reason that the souls in Purgatory are called "poor souls," they being, as they are, in the most dreadful state of poverty - that of the privation of the beatific vision of God.

After Anthony Corso, a Capuchin Brother, a man of great piety and perfection, had departed this life, he appeared to one of his brethren in religion, asking him to recommend him to the charitable prayers of the community, in order that he might receive relief in his pains. "For I do not know," said he, "how I can bear any longer the pain of being deprived of the sight of my God. I shall be the most unhappy of creatures as long as I must live in this state. Would to God that all men might understand what it is to be without God, in order that they might firmly resolve to suffer anything during their life on earth rather than expose themselves to the danger of being damned, and deprived forever of the sight of God." [1]

[Footnote 1: 1 Aunal. Pp. Capuc., A.D. 1548.]

* * * * *

The souls in Purgatory are poor souls, because they suffer the greatest pain of the senses, which is that of fire . Who can be in a poorer or more pitiful condition than those who are buried in fire? Now, this is the condition of these poor souls. They are buried under waves of fire. It is from the smallest spark of this purgatorial fire that they suffer more intense pains than all the fires of this world put together could produce....

Could these poor souls leave the fire of Purgatory for the most frightful earthly fire they would, as it were, take it for a pleasure- garden; they would find a fifty years' stay in the hottest earthly fire more endurable than an hour's stay in the fire of Purgatory. Our terrestrial fire was not created by God to torment men, but rather to benefit them; but the fire of Purgatory was created by God for no other purpose than to be an instrument of His justice; and for this reason it is possessed of a burning quality so intense and penetrating that it is impossible for us to conceive even the faintest idea of it.

* * * * *

In the year 1150 it happened that, on the Vigil of St. Cecilia, a very old monk, one hundred years of age, at Marchiennes, in Flanders, fell asleep while sacred lessons were being read, and saw, in a dream, a monk all clad in armor, shining like red-hot iron in a furnace. The old man asked him who he was. He was told that he was one of the monks of the convent;