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

burial-grounds are places so respected that their profanation is accounted the most atrocious outrage that can be offered to an Indian village.

Is there not in all this a semblance of belief in our doctrine of Purgatory?


REMEMBRANCE OF THE DEAD AMONGST THE EGYPTIANS.

In Egypt, as all over the East, the lives of women amongst the wealthier classes are for the most part spent within the privacy of their homes, as it were in close confinement: they are born, live, and die in the bosom of that impenetrable sanctuary. It is only on Thursday that they go forth, with their slaves carrying refreshments and followed by hired weepers. It is a sacred duty that calls them to the public cemetery. There they have funeral hymns chanted, their own plaintive cries mingling with the sorrowful lamentations of the mourners. They shed tears and flowers on the graves of their kindred, which they afterwards cover with the meats brought by their servants, and all the crowd, after inviting the souls of the dead, partake of a religious repast, in the persuasion that those beloved shades taste of the same food and are present at the sympathetic banquet. Is there not in this superstition a distorted tradition of the dogma by which we are commanded not to forget the souls of our brethren beyond the grave? -
Annals of the Propagation of the Faith , Vol. XVII.

REMEMBRANCE OF THE DEAD THROUGHOUT EUROPE.


PART I.

ANNA T. SADLIER.

"Hark! the whirlwind is in the wood, a low murmur in the vale; it is the mighty army of the dead returning from the air." These beautiful words occur in one of the ancient Celtic poems quoted by Macpherson and dating some thousand years later than Ossian. For the Celts held to the doctrine of the immortality of souls, and believed that their ethereal substance was wafted from place to place by the wind on the clouds of heaven. Amongst the Highlanders a belief prevailed that there were certain hills to which the spirits of their departed friends had a peculiar attachment. Thus the hill of Ore was regarded by the house of Crubin as their place of meeting in the future life, and its summit was supposed to be supernaturally illumined when any member of the family died. It was likewise a popular belief that the spirits of the departed haunted places beloved in life, hovered about their friends, and appeared at times on the occasion of any important family event. In the calm of a new existence,

"Side by side they sit who once mixed in battle their steel."

There is a poetic beauty in many of these ancient beliefs concerning the dead, but they are far surpassed in grandeur and sublimity, as well as in deep tenderness, by the Christian conception of a state of purgation after death, when the souls of the departed are still bound to, their dear ones upon earth by a strong spiritual bond of mutual help. They dwell, then, in an abode of peace, although of intense suffering, and calmly await the eternal decree which summons them to heaven; while the time of their probation is shortened day by day, month by month, year by year by the Masses, prayers, alms-deeds and other suffrages of their friends who are still dwellers on earth, living the old life; and in its rush of cares and duties, of pleasures and of pains, forgetting them too often in all save prayer. That is the reminder. The dead who have died in the bosom of the Holy Church can never be quite forgotten. "The mighty army of the dead returning from the air" might in our Catholic conception be that host of delivered souls who, after the Feast of All Souls, or some such season of special prayer for them, are arising upwards into everlasting bliss. But it is our purpose in the present chapters to gather up from the byways of history occasions when the belief in prayer for the dead is made manifest, whether it be in some noted individual, in a people, or in a country. It is "the low murmur of the vale" going up constantly from all peoples, from all times, under all conditions.

In Russia not only is prayer for the dead most sedulously observed by the Catholic Church, but also in a most particular manner by the Schismatic Greeks. The following details under this head will be, no doubt, of interest to our readers:

"As soon as the spirit has departed, the body is dressed and placed in an open coffin in a room decorated for the purpose. Numerous lights are kept burning day and night; and while the relations take turns to watch and pray by the coffin, the friends come to pay the last visit to the deceased.... On the decease of extraordinary persons, the Emperor and his successor are accustomed to visit the corpse, while the poor, on the other hand, never fail to lament at the door the loss of their benefactor, and to be dismissed with handsome donations. Total strangers, too, come of their own accord to offer a prayer for the deceased; for the image of a saint hung up before the door indicates to every passenger the house of mourning.... The time of showing the corpse lasts in general only three or four days, and then follow the blessing of the deceased, and the granting of the pass. The latter is to be taken literally. The corpse is carried to the Church, and the priest lays upon the breast a long paper, which the common people call 'a pass for heaven.' On this paper is written the Christian name of the deceased, the date of his birth and that of his death. It then states that he was baptized as a Christian, that he lived as such, and before his death, received the Sacrament - in short, the whole course of life which he led as a Greek Russian Christian.... All who meet a funeral take off their hats, and offer a prayer to Heaven for the deceased, and such is the outward respect paid on such occasions, that it is not until they have entirely lost sight of the procession that they put on their hats again. This honor is paid to every corpse, whether of the Russian, Protestant, or Catholic Communions.... After the corpse is duly prepared, the priests sing a funeral Mass, called in Russian clerical language, panichide .... On the anniversary of the death of a beloved relative, they assemble in the Church, and have a
panichide read for his soul.... Persons of distinction found a lamp to burn forever at the tombs of their dead, and have these
panichides repeated every week, for, perhaps, a long series of years. Lastly, every year, on a particular day, Easter Monday, a service and a repast are held for all the dead."

The history of France, like that of all Catholic nations, abounds in instances of public intercession for the dead, the pomp and splendor of royal obsequies, the solemn utterances of public individuals; the celebrations at Père la Chaise, the magnificent requiems. In a nation so purely Catholic as it was and is, though the scum of evil men have arisen like a foul miasma to its surface, it does not surprise us. We shall therefore select from its history an incident or two, somewhat at random. That beautiful one, far back at the era of the Crusades, where St. Louis, King of France, absent in the East, received intelligence of the death of Queen Blanche, his mother. The grief of the Papal Legate, who had come to announce the news, was apparent in his face, and Louis, fearing some new blow, led the prelate into his chapel, which, according to an ancient chronicler, was "his arsenal against all the crosses of the world." Louis, overcome with sorrow, quickly changed his tears and lamentations into the language of resignation, and desiring to be left alone with his confessor, Geoffrey de Beaulieu, recited the office of the dead. "He was present every day at a funeral service celebrated in memory of his mother; and sent into the West a great number of jewels and precious stones to be distributed among the principal churches of France; at the same time exhorting the clergy to put up prayers for the repose of his mother. In proportion with his endeavors," continues the historian, "to procure prayers for his mother, his grief yielded to the hope of seeing her again in heaven; and his mind, when calmed by resignation, found its most effectual consolation in that mysterious tie which still unites us with those we have lost, in that religious sentiment which mingles with our affections to purify them, and with our regrets to mitigate them." [1]

[Footnote 1: "Michaud's Hist. of the Crusades," Vol. II., pp. 477-8.]

In the Instructions which St. Louis addressed on his death-bed to his son, Philip the Bold, is to be found the following paragraph:

"Dear Son, I pray thee, if it shall please our Lord that I should quit this life before thee, that thou wilt help me with Masses and prayers, and that thou wilt send to the congregations of the kingdom of France, to make them put up prayers for my soul, and that thou wilt desire that our Lord may give me part in all the good deeds thou shalt perform." [1]

[Footnote 1: These instructions were preserved in a register of the Chamber of Accounts. See Appendix to "Michaud's History of Crusades," Vol. II., p. 471.]

Philip, on the death of his father, in a letter which was read aloud in all the churches, begs of the clergy and faithful, "to put up to the King of kings their prayers and their offerings for that prince; with whose zeal for religion and tender solicitude for the kingdom of France, which he loved as the apple of his eye, they were so well acquainted." In the Chronicles of Froissart, as well as in the Grande Chronique of St. Denis, we read that the body of King John, who died a prisoner in England, was brought home with great pomp and circumstance, on the first day of May, 1364. It was at first placed in the Abbey of St. Anthony, thence removed to Notre Dame, and finally to St. Denis, the resting-place of royalty, where solemn Mass was said. On the day of his interment, the Archbishop of Sens sang the requiem. Thus did Holy Mother Church welcome the exile home.

A pretty anecdote is that of Marie Lecsinska, Queen of Louis XV., who, on hearing of the death of Marshal Saxe, a Lutheran by profession, and but an indifferent observer of the maxims of any creed, cried out: "Alas! what a pity that we cannot sing a De Profundis for a man who has made us sing so many Te Deums ."

We cannot take our leave of France, without noticing here the beautiful prayer offered up by the saintly Princess Louise de Bourbon Condé, in religion Sœur Marie Joseph de la Miséricorde , on hearing of the death of her nephew, the Duc d'Enghien, so cruelly put to death by the first Napoleon. Falling, face downwards, on the earth, she prayed: "Mercy, my God, have mercy upon him! Have mercy, Lord, on the soul of Louis Antoine! Pardon the faults of his youth, remembering the precious Blood, which Jesus Christ shed for all men, and have regard to the cruel manner in which his blood was shed. Glory and misfortune have attended his life. But what we call glory, has it any claims in Thy eyes? However, Lord, it is not a demerit before