Purgatory by Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

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[Footnote 1: Tertull. _De cor. mil. c 3; _De monogam, c. 10.]

It was not without confidence, says Eusebius, of reaping more fruit
from the prayers of the faithful, that the honor of our nation, and the
first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, took such care to be
buried in the Church of the Apostles, whither all sorts of devout
people resorting to perform their devotions to God and His Saints,
would be sure to remember so good an emperor. Nor did he fail of his
expectation; for it is incredible, as the same author observes, what a
world of sighs and prayers were offered up for him upon this occasion.

St. Athanasius [1] brings an elegant comparison to express the
incomparable benefit which accrues to the souls in Purgatory by our
prayers. As the wine, says he, which is locked up in the cellar, yet is
so recreated with the sweet odor of the flourishing vines which are
growing in the fields, as to flower afresh, and leap, as it were, for
joy, so the souls that are shut up in the centre of the earth feel the
sweet incense of our prayers, and are exceedingly comforted and
refreshed by it.

[Footnote 1: St. Augustine's views on this subject may be seen from the
extract elsewhere given, from his "Confessions," on the occasion of the
death of his mother, St. Monica.]

We do not busy ourselves, says St. Cyril, with placing crowns or
strewing flowers at the sepulchres of the dead; but we lay hold on
Christ, the very Son of God, who was sacrificed upon the Cross for our
sins: and we offer Him up again to His Eternal Father in the dread
Sacrifice of the Mass, as the most efficacious means to reconcile Him,
not only to ourselves, but to them also.

St. Epiphanius stuck not to condemn Arius for this damnable heresy
amongst others, that he held it in vain to pray for the dead: as if our
prayers could not avail them.

St. Ambrose prayed heartily for the good Emperor Theodosius as soon as
he was dead, and made open profession that he would never give over
praying for him till he had, by his prayers and tears, conveyed him
safe to the holy mountain of Our Lord, whither he was called by his
merits, and where there is true life everlasting. He had the same
kindness for the soul of the Emperor Valentinian, the same for Gratian,
the same for his brother Satyrus and others. He promised them Masses,
tears, prayers, and that he would never forget them, never give over
doing charitable offices for them.

"Will you honor your dead?" says St. John Chrysostom; "do not spend
yourselves in unprofitable lamentations; choose rather to sing psalms,
to give alms, and to lead holy lives. Do for them that which they would
willingly do for themselves, were they to return again into the world,
and God will accept it at your hands, as if it came from them." (Pp.
162-166.)

St. Paulinus, that charitable prelate who sold himself to redeem
others, could not but have a great proportion of charity for captive
souls in the other world. No; he was not only ready to become a slave
himself to purchase their freedom, but he became an earnest solicitor
to others in their behalf; for, in a letter to Delphinus, alluding to
the story of Lazarus, he beseeches him to have at least so much
compassion as to convey, now and then, a drop of water wherewith to
cool the tongues of poor souls that lie burning in the Church which is
all a-fire.

I am astonished when I call to mind the sad regrets of the people of
Africa when they saw some of their priests dragged away to martyrdom.
The author says they flocked about them in great numbers and cried out:
"Alas! if you leave us so, what will become of us? Who must give us
absolution for our sins? Who must bury us with the wonted ceremonies of
the Church when we are dead? and who will take care to pray for our
souls?" Such a general belief they had in those days, that nothing is
more to be desired in this world than to leave those behind us who will
do their best to help us out of our torments. (Pp. 167-8.)

* * * * *

Almighty God has often miraculously made it appear how well He is
pleased to be importuned by us in the souls' behalf, and what comfort
they receive by our prayers. St. John Climacus writes, [1] that while
the monks were at service, praying for their good father, Mennas, the
third day after his departure, they felt a marvellous sweet smell to
rise out of his grave, which they took for a good omen that his sweet
soul, after three days' purgation, had taken her flight into heaven.
For what else could be meant by that sweet perfume but the odor of his
holy and innocent conversation, or the incense of their sacrifices and
prayers, or the primitial fruits of his happy soul, which was now flown
up to the holy mountain of eternal glory, there enjoying the
odoriferous and never-fading delights of Paradise?

[Footnote 1: In 4, gradu scalae.]

Not unlike unto this is that story which the great St. Gregory relates
of one Justus, a monk. [1] He had given him up at first for a lost
creature; but, upon second thoughts, having ordered Mass to be said for
him for thirty days together, the last day he appeared to his brother
and assured him of the happy exchange he was now going to make of his
torments for the joys of heaven.

[Footnote 1: Dial. c. 55, lib. 4.]

Pope Symmachus and his Council [1] had reason to thunder out anathemas
against those sacrilegious persons who were so frontless as to turn
pious legacies into profane uses, to the great prejudice of the souls
for whose repose they were particularly deputed by the founders. And,
certainly, it is a much fouler crime to defraud souls of their due
relief than to disturb dead men's ashes and to plunder their graves.
(Pp. 168-9.)

[Footnote 1: 6 Synod., Rom.]

St. Isidore delivers it as an apostolic tradition and general practice
of the Catholic Church in his time, to offer up sacrifices and prayers,
and to distribute alms for the dead; and this, not for any increase of
their merit, but either to mitigate their pains or to shorten the time
of their durance.

Venerable Bede is a sure witness for the following century; whose
learned works are full of wonderful stories, which he brings in
confirmation of this Catholic doctrine and practice.

St. John Damascene made an elegant oration on purpose to stir up this
devotion; where, amongst other things, he says it is impossible to
number up all the stories in this kind which bear witness that the
souls departed are relieved by our prayers; and that, otherwise, God
would not have appointed a commemoration of the dead to be daily made
in the unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass, nor would the Church have so
religiously observed anniversaries and other days set apart for the
service of the dead.

Were it but a dog, says Simon Metaphrastes, that by chance were fallen
into the fire, we should have so much compassion for him as to help him
out; and what shall we do for souls who are fallen into Purgatory fire?
I say, souls of our parents and dearest friends; souls that are
predestinate to eternal glory, and extremely precious in the sight of
God? And what did not the Saints of God's Church for them in those
days? Some armed themselves from head to foot in coarse hair-cloth;
others tore off their flesh with chains and rude disciplines; some,
again, pined themselves with rigorous fasts; others dissolved
themselves into tears; some passed whole nights in contemplation;
others gave liberal alms or procured great store of Masses; in fine,
they did what they were able, and were not well pleased that they were
able to do no more, to relieve the poor souls in Purgatory. Amongst
others, Queen Melchtild [1] is reported to have purchased immortal fame
for her discreet behavior at the death of the king, her husband; for
whose soul she caused a world of Masses to be said, and a world of alms
to be distributed, in lieu of other idle expenses and fruitless
lamentations.

[Footnote 1: Luitprand, c. 4, c. 7.]

There is one in the world, to whom I bear an immortal envy, and such an
envy as I never mean to repent of. It is the holy Abbot Odilo, who was
the author of an invention which I would wittingly have found out,
though with the loss of my very heart's blood.

Reader, take the story as it passed, thus: [1] A devout religious man,
in his return from Jerusalem, meets with a holy hermit in Sicily; he
assures him that he often heard the devils complain that souls were so
soon discharged of their torments by the devout prayers of the monks of
Cluny, who never ceased to pour out their prayers for them. This the
good man carries to Odilo, then Abbot of Cluny; he praises God for His
great mercy in vouchsafing to hear the innocent prayers of his monks;
and presently takes occasion to command all the monasteries of his
Order, to keep yearly the commemoration of All Souls, next after the
feast of All Saints, a custom which, by degrees, grew into such credit,
that the Catholic Church thought fit to establish it all over the
Christian world; to the incredible benefit of poor souls, and singular
increase of God's glory. For who can sum up the infinite number of
souls who have been freed out of Purgatory by this invention? or who
can express the glory which accrued to this good Abbot, who thus
fortunately made himself procurator-general of the suffering Church,
and furnished her people with such a considerable supply of necessary
relief, to alleviate the insupportable burthen of their sufferings?

[Footnote 1: Sigeb. in _Chron_. An. 998.]

St. Bernard would triumph when he had to deal with heretics that denied
this privilege of communicating our suffrages and prayers to the souls
in Purgatory. And with what fervor he would apply himself to this
charitable employment of relieving poor souls, may appear by the care
he took for good Humbertus, though he knew him to have lived and died
in his monastery so like a Saint, that he could scarce find out the
fault in him which might deserve the least punishment in the other
world; unless it were to have been too rigorous to himself, and too
careless of his health: which in a less spiritual eye than that of St.
Bernard, might have passed for a great virtue. But it is worth your
hearing, that which he relates of blessed St. Malachy, who died in his
very bosom. This holy Bishop, as he lay asleep, hears a sister of his,
lately dead, making lamentable moan, that for thirty days together she
had not eaten so much as a bit of bread. He starts up out of his sleep;
and, taking it to be more than a dream, he concludes the meaning of the
vision was to tell him, that just thirty days were now past since he
had said Mass for her; as probably believing she was already where she
had no need of his prayers.... Howsoever, this worthy prelate so plied
his prayers after this, that he soon sent his sister out of Purgatory;
and it pleased God to let him see, by the daily change of her habit,
how his prayers had purged her by degrees, and made her fit company for
the Angels and Saints in heaven. For, the first day, she was covered
all over with black cypress; the next, she appeared in a mantle
something whitish, but a dusky color; but the third day, she was seen
all clad in white, which is the proper livery of the Saints....

This for St. Bernard. But I cannot let pass in silence one very
remarkable passage, which happened to these two great servants of God.
St. Malachy had passionately desired to die at Clarvallis, [1] in the
hands of the devout St. Bernard; and this, on the day immediately
before All Souls' Day; and it pleased God to grant him his request. It
fell out, then, that while St. Bernard was saying Mass for him, in the
middle of Mass it was revealed to him that St. Malachy was already
glorious in heaven; whether he had gone straight out of this world, or
whether that part of St. Bernard's Mass had freed him out of Purgatory,
is uncertain; but St. Bernard, hereupon, changed his note; for, having
begun with a Requiem, he went on with the Mass of a bishop and
confessor, to the great astonishment of all the standers-by.

[Footnote 1: Clairvaux.]

St. Thomas of Aquin, that great champion of Purgatory, gave God
particular thanks at his death, for not only delivering a soul out of
Purgatory, at the instance of his prayers, but also permitting the same
soul to be the messenger of so good news. (Pp. 169-174.)

* * * * *

And now, we are come down to the fifteenth age, where the Fathers of
the Council of Florence, both Greeks and. Latins, with one consent,
declare the same faith and constant practice of the Church, thus handed
down to them from age to age, since Christ and His Apostles' time, as
we have seen; viz., that the souls in Purgatory are not only relieved,
but translated into heaven, by the prayers, sacrifices, alms, and other
charitable works, which are offered up for them according to the custom
of the Catholic Church. Nor did their posterity degenerate, or vary the
least, from this received doctrine, until Luther's time; when the holy
Council of Trent thought fit again to lay down the sound doctrine of
the Church, in opposition to all our late sectaries. And I wish all
Catholics were but as forward to lend their helping hands to lift souls
out of Purgatory, as they are to believe they have the power to do it;
and that we had not often more reason than the Roman Emperor to
pronounce the day lost; since we let so many days pass over our heads,
and so many fair occasions slip out of our hands, without easing, or
releasing, any souls out of Purgatory, when we might do it with so much
ease. (P. 175.)

ON DEVOTION TO THE HOLY SOULS.

FATHER FABER.

Although we are mercifully freed from the necessity of descending into
hell to seek and promote the interests of Jesus, it is far from being
so with Purgatory. If heaven and earth are full of the glory of God, so
also is that most melancholy, yet most interesting land, where the
prisoners of hope are detained by their Saviour's loving justice, from
the Beatific Vision; and if we can advance the interests of Jesus on
earth and in heaven, I may almost venture to say that we can do still
more in Purgatory. And what I am endeavoring to show you in this
treatise is, how you may help God by prayer, and the practices of
devotion, whatever your occupation and calling may be: and all these
practices apply especially to Purgatory. For although some theologians
say that in spite of the Holy Souls placing no obstacle in the way,
still the effect of prayer for them is not infallible; nevertheless, it
is much more certain than the effect of prayer for the conversion of
sinners upon earth, where it is so often frustrated by their perversity
and evil dispositions. Anyhow, what I have wanted to show has been
this: that each of us, without aiming beyond our grace, without
austerities for which we have not courage, without supernatural gifts
to which we lay no claim, may, by simple affectionateness and the
practices of sound Catholic devotion, do great things, things so great
that they seem incredible, for the glory of God, the interests of
Jesus, and the good of souls. I should, therefore, be leaving my
subject very incomplete if I did not consider at some length devotion
to the Holy Souls in Purgatory; and I will treat, not so much of
particular practices of it, which are to be found in the ordinary
manuals, as of the spirit of the devotion itself.

* * * * *

By the doctrine of the Communion of Saints and of the unity of Christ's
mystical body, we have most intimate relations both of duty and
affection with the Church Triumphant and Suffering; and Catholic
devotion furnishes us with many appointed and approved ways of
discharging these duties toward them.... For the present it is enough
to say that God has given us such power over the dead that they seem,
as I have said before, to depend almost more on earth than on heaven;
and surely that He has given us this power, and supernatural methods of
exercising it, is not the least touching proof that His Blessed Majesty
has contrived all things for love. Can we not conceive the joy of the
Blessed in Heaven, looking down from the bosom of God and the calmness
of their eternal repose upon this scene of dimness, disquietude, doubt
and fear, and rejoicing in the plenitude of their charity, in their
vast power with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to obtain grace and blessing
day and night for the poor dwellers upon earth? It does not distract
them from God, it does not interfere with the Vision, or make it waver
and grow misty; it does not trouble their glory or their peace. On the
contrary, it is with them as with our Guardian Angels--the affectionate
ministries of their charity increase their own accidental glory. The
same joy in its measure may be ours even upon earth. If we are fully
possessed with this Catholic devotion for the Holy Souls, we shall
never be without the grateful consciousness of the immense powers which
Jesus has given us on their behalf. We are never so like Him, or so
nearly imitate His tender offices, as when we are devoutly exercising
these powers.... Oh! what thoughts, what feelings, what love should be
ours, as we, like choirs of terrestrial angels, gaze down on the wide,
silent, sinless kingdom of suffering, and then with our own venturous
touch wave the sceptred hand of Jesus over its broad regions all richly
dropping with the balsam of His saving Blood!

* * * * *

Oh! how solemn and subduing is the thought of that holy kingdom, that
realm of pain! There is no cry, no murmur; all is silent, silent as
Jesus before His enemies. We shall never know how we really love Mary
till we look up to her out of those deeps, those vales of dread
mysterious fire. O beautiful region of the Church of God. O lovely
troop of the flock of Mary! What a scene is presented to our eyes when
we gaze upon that consecrated empire of sinlessness and yet of keenest
suffering! There is the beauty of those immaculate souls, and then the
loveliness, yea, the worshipfulness of their patience, the majesty of
their gifts, the dignity of their solemn and chaste sufferings, the
eloquence of their silence; the moonlight of Mary's throne lighting up
their land of pain and unspeechful expectation; the silver-winged
angels voyaging through the deeps of that mysterious realm; and above
all, that unseen Face of Jesus which is so well remembered that it
seems to be almost seen! Oh! what a sinless purity of worship is here
in this liturgy of hallowed pain! O world! O weary, clamorous, sinful
world! Who would not break away if he could, like an uncaged dove, from
thy perilous toils and unsafe pilgrimage, and fly with joy to the
lowest place in that most pure, most safe, most holy land of suffering
and of sinless love!

* * * * *

But some persons turn in anger from the thought of Purgatory, as if it
were not to be endured, that after trying all our lives long to serve
God, we should accomplish the tremendous feat of a good death, only to
pass from the agonies of the death-bed into fire--long, keen,
searching, triumphant, incomparable fire. Alas! my dear friends; your
anger will not help you nor alter facts. But have you thought
sufficiently about God? Have you tried to realize His holiness and
purity in assiduous meditation? Is there a real divorce between you and
the world, which you know is God's enemy? Do you take God's side? Have
you wedded His interests? Do you long for His glory? Have you put sin
alongside of our dear Saviour's Passion, and measured the one by the
other? Oh! if you had, Purgatory would but seem to you the last,
unexpected, and inexpressibly tender invention of an obstinate love
which was mercifully determined to save you in spite of yourself! It
would be a perpetual wonder to you, a joyous wonder, fresh every,
morning--a wonder that would be meat and drink to your soul; that you,
being what you are, what you know yourself to be, what you may conceive
God knows you to be, should be saved eternally! Remember what the
suffering soul said so simply, yet with such force, to Sister
Francesca: "Ah! those on that side the grave little reckon how dearly
they will pay on this side for the lives they live!" To be angry
because you are told you will go to Purgatory! Silly, silly people!
Most likely it is a great false flattery, and that you will never be
good enough to go there at all. Why, positively, you do not recognize
your own good fortune when you are told of it. And none but the humble
go there. I remember Maria Crocifissa was told that although many of
the Saints while on earth loved God more than some do even in heaven,
yet that the greatest saint on earth was not so _humble_ as are
the souls in Purgatory. I do not think I ever read anything in the
lives of the Saints which struck me so much as that....

But we not only learn lessons for our own good, but for the good of the
Holy Souls. We see that our charitable attentions toward them must be
far more vigorous and persevering than they have been; for that men go
to Purgatory for very little matters, and remain there an unexpectedly
long time. But their most touching appeal to us lies in their
helplessness; and our dear Lord, with His usual loving arrangement, has
made the extent of our power to help them more than commensurate with
their inability to help themselves.... St. Thomas has taught us that
prayer for the dead is more readily accepted with God than prayer for
the living. We can offer and apply for them all the satisfactions of
our Blessed Lord. We can do vicarious penance for them. We can give to
them all the satisfaction of our ordinary actions, and of our
sufferings. We can make over to them by way of suffrage, the
indulgences we gain, provided the Church has made them applicable to
the dead. We can limit and direct upon them, or any one of them, the
intention of the Adorable Sacrifice. The Church, which has no
jurisdiction over them, can yet make indulgences applicable or
inapplicable to them by way of suffrage; and by means of liturgy,
commemoration, incense, holy water, and the like, can reach
efficaciously to them, and most of all by her device of privileged
altars. .... All that I have said hitherto has been, indirectly, at
least, a plea for this devotion; but I must come now to a more direct
recommendation of it.

* * * * *

It is not saying too much to call devotion to the Holy Souls, a kind of
centre in which all Catholic devotions meet, and which satisfies more
than any other single devotion our duties in that way; because it is a
devotion all of love, and of disinterested love. If we cast an eye over
the chief Catholic devotions, we shall see the truth of this. Take the
devotion of St. Ignatius to the glory of God. This, if I may dare to
use such an expression of Him, was the special and favorite devotion of
Jesus. Now, Purgatory is simply a field white for the harvest of God's
glory. Not a prayer can be said for the Holy Souls, but God is at once
glorified, both by the faith and the charity of the mere prayer. Not an
alleviation, however trifling, can befall any one of the souls, but He
is forthwith glorified by the honor of His Son's Precious Blood, and
the approach of the soul to bliss. Not a soul is delivered from its
trial but God is immensely glorified.

* * * * *

Again, what devotion is more justly dear to Christians than the
devotion to the Sacred Humanity of Jesus? It is rather a family of
various and beautiful devotions, than a devotion by itself. Yet see how
they are all, as it were, fulfilled, affectionately fulfilled, in
devotion to the Holy Souls. The quicker the souls are liberated from
Purgatory, the more is the beautiful harvest of His Blessed Passion
multiplied and accelerated. An early harvest is a blessing, as well as
a plentiful one; for all delay of a soul's ingress into the praise of
heaven is an eternal and irremediable loss of honor and glory to the
Sacred Humanity of Jesus. How strangely things sound in the language of
the Sanctuary! yet so it is. Can the Sacred Humanity be honored more
than by the Adorable Sacrifice of the Mass? And here is our chief
action upon Purgatory....

Devotion to our dearest Mother is equally comprehended in this devotion
to the Holy Souls, whether we look at her as the Mother of Jesus, and
so sharing the honors of His Sacred Humanity, or as Mother of mercy,
and so specially honored by works of mercy, or, lastly, as, in a
particular sense, the Queen of Purgatory, and so having all manner of
dear interests to be promoted in the welfare and deliverance of those
suffering souls.

Next to this we may rank devotion to the Holy Angels, and this also is
satisfied in devotion to the Holy Souls. For it keeps filling the
vacant thrones in the angelic choirs, those unsightly gaps which the
fall of Lucifer and one-third of the heavenly host occasioned. It
multiplies the companions of the blessed spirits. They may be supposed
also to look with an especial interest on that part of the Church which
lies in Purgatory, because it is already crowned with their own dear
gift and ornament of final perseverance, and yet it has not entered at
once into its inheritance as they did. Many of them also have a tender
personal interest in Purgatory. Thousands, perhaps millions of them,
are guardians to those souls, and their office is not over yet.
Thousands have clients there who were especially devoted to them in
life. Will St. Raphael, who was so faithful to Tobias, be less faithful
to his clients there? Whole choirs are interested about others, either
because they are finally to be aggregated to that choir, or because in
life-time they had a special devotion to it. Marie Denise, of the
Visitation, used to congratulate her angel every day on the grace he
had received to stand when so many around him were falling. It was the
only thing she could know for certain of his past life. Could he
neglect her, if by the will of God she went to Purgatory? Again, St.
Michael, as prince of Purgatory, and Our Lady's regent, in fulfilment
of the dear office attributed to him by the Church in the Mass for the
Dead, takes as homage to himself all charity to the Holy Souls; and if
it be true, that a zealous heart is always a proof of a grateful one,
that bold and magnificent spirit will recompense us one day in his own
princely style, and perhaps within the limits of that his special
jurisdiction.

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