Chapter IX. Purgatory

It is incredible how dear the glory of God becomes to those who are continually on the lookout for it. The very search gives them new senses whereby they can find it, while daily increasing love is perpetually sharpening their discernment. " The earth is full of Thy glory." What a joy to a loving heart! But it is not enough that heaven has overflowed, and that earth is filled with the blessed inundation of His glory. We would fain there should not be a nook of creation which is not full of it. Yet there is one place where that glory seems frustrated, one place from which there rises neither plaint of prayer, nor joy of praise, nor blessing of thanks, nor aspiration of desire. It is the home of those who have had their trial and lost their cause, and with it have lost God for ever. Here is grace which has not borne fruit, or whose fruits have rotted upon the tree. Here are sacraments which have come to nought. The cross has been a failure, and God's loving purposes have been successfully resisted and direfully overthrown. Yet it is of faith that God's harvest of glory out of that unutterable gloom is immense, for the lost soul is as much an unwilling worship of His justice, as the converted soul is a willing worship of His love. Neither is Jesus without His own interests there; for the pains, unspeakable as they are, nay, even in the bare thought of them intolerable, are less than the merit of sin, less than the righteous measure of punishment, and are so because of Him. The Precious Blood, in some sense, has reached even there. Neither is that horrible place without a most blessed result on the salvation of many souls, through the holy and salutary fear which it breeds in them, and the loose and low notions of God which it corrects in the unthinking. When our Lord showed Sister Francesca of the Blessed Sacrament, a Spanish Carmelitess, the loss of a soul, and several times in a vision compelled her positively to study the separate tortures of that place, He upbraided her for weeping: " Francesca! why weepest thou? " She fell prostrate at His sacred feet, and said, " Lord! for the damnation of that soul, and the manner in which it has been damned." He vouchsafed to reply, " Daughter! it hath chosen to damn itself; I have given it many helps of grace that it might be saved, but it would not profit by them. I am pleased with your compassion, but I would have you rather love My justice." And another time, when she was compelled to fix her gaze upon those pains, the angels said to her, " O Francesca! strive hard after the holy fear of God! " Who can doubt that there are at this hour thousands and tens of thousands in the bliss of heaven, who never would have been there if there had been no hell. Alas for the reproach it is to the unloving hearts of men! but after all, the Cross of Christ has had no better help on earth than the unbearable fire of hell.

Verily it is well for our own sakes, to think sometimes of that horrid place! As truly as fair France lies across the Channel, as truly as the sun is shining on the white walls, and gay bridges, and bright gardens, and many-storied palaces of its beautiful capital, as truly as that thousands of men and women there are, living real lives and fulfilling various destinies, so truly is there such a place as hell, all alive this hour with the multitudinous life of countless agonies, and innumerable gradations of despair. Save the blessed in heaven, none live so keen or conscious a life as those millions of ruined souls. It is not impossible that we may go there too. It is not impossible that we may have sent some there already. When we pass along the streets, we must often see those who will inhabit there for ever. There are some there now, who were not there an hour ago. There are some now in the green fields, or in the busy towns, on comfortable beds, or on the sunshiny seas, who in another hour perhaps will have gone there. This is a dreadfully real truth.

But what if more than all this be true? What if there was once a day when we should have gone thither if we had died? What if this hour it holds mere boys and girls, who have sinned far less than we have done, nay, perhaps, have sinned but once, while we have sinned a thousand times? Oh, but we may humble ourselves still more. How long should we persevere in serving God, if we were certified there was no hell? Should we have left our sins, if it had not been for hell? Oh, what a thing it is to be upon this good earth, and surrounded by all this hopeful life, when we have actually by our own hand and eye, word and thought, and evil painstaking, worked out our right and title to all this everlasting wo. Ah! just as the mist rises from the barren sea, where the corn grows not and the vines can bear no fruit, and forms the clouds which are to fall in fertilizing showers over hill and dale, so from those broad seas of fire and curse, the Divine Compassion rises like a cloud, to pour down streams of grace upon the souls of living men. Let no one ever turn away from the sight of hell, lest, by little and by little and by very little, a good opinion of himself should grow up within his soul, and send him to that drear banishment at last. Indeed it is good, very good, to think of hell, and of that kind wonder, that we are not already there this hour. Nay, do not start, — what you see is indeed the white light of earth's sun; fear not; that sound, — it is the wind that waves the branches of the wood; be assured; your eyes do not deceive you, those are the village spires that are sleeping in the misty, quiet landscape; all is right so far. We are here, and we are free; but we ought to have been, — there, and slaves!

But if we give ourselves up to seek and find God's glory, and to make this our one occupation upon earth, must we go down to hell, and learn to rejoice with those awful attributes of God which are satisfied with that terrific sacrifice? No! God be praised! this is no part of our devotion. We are creatures of hope and love. We go where God's glory is possible to us, where we can help it, and advance its interests; or if we rise into the impossible, it is only that love has carried us away into the silent eloquence of childlike extravagant desire. We have nothing to do with hell. We have seen that of our three things, the glory of God, the interests of Jesus, and the salvation of souls, the two first may be found even there. But they are not there in ways which concern us; so reflections upon hell are not necessary to my plan. Enough for us that there is such a place, and that at this hour it is full of souls, and that more and more are ever streaming into it, and that its frightful occupations are what they are, and that there is not one of us who is not running a risk, or of whom it is not possible, that that place may be his heritage and portion for ever. They who serve Jesus out of love do not on that account forget these things. Nay, they remember them the more, because they love so much.

But 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 affection ateness 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.

Rosignoli, in his Wonders of God in Purgatory,¹ which he wrote at the request of the Blessed Sebastian Valfrc, of the Turin Oratory, relates from the Dominican annals an interesting dispute between two good friars as to the respective merits of devotion for the conversion of sinners and devotion for the Holy Souls. Fra, Bertrando, was the great advocate of poor sinners, constantly said mass for them, and offered up all his prayers and penances to obtain for them the grace of conversion. " Sinners," he said, " without grace are in a state of perdition. Evil spirits are continually laying snares for them, to deprive them of the Beatific Vision, and to carry them off to eternal torments. Our Blessed Lord came down from heaven, and died a most painful death for them. What can be a higher work than to imitate Him, and to co-operate with Him in the salvation of souls? When a soul is lost, the price of its redemption is lost also. Now the souls in purgatory are safe. They are sure of their eternal salvation. It is most true that they are plunged into a sea of sorrows; but they are sure to come out at last. They are the friends of God; whereas sinners are His enemies, and to be God's enemy is the greatest misery in creation.'1

Fra. Benedetto was an equally enthusiastic advocate of the suffering souls. He offered all his free masses for them, as well as his prayers and penances. " Sinners," he said, " were bound with the chains of their own will. They could leave off sinning if they pleased. The yoke was of their own choosing. Whereas, the dead were tied hand and foot against their own will in the most atrocious sufferings. ' Now come, dear Fra. Bertrando, tell me — Suppose there were two beggars, one well and strong, who could use his hands, and work if he liked, but chose to suffer poverty rather than part with the sweets of idleness; and the other sick, and maimed, and helpless, who, in his piteous condition, could do nothing but supplicate help with cries and tears, — which of the two would deserve compassion most, especially if the sick one was suffering the most intolerable agonies? ' Now this is just the case between sinners and the Holy Souls. These last are suffering an excruciating martyrdom, and they have no means of helping themselves. It is true they have deserved these pains for their sins; but they are now already cleansed from those sins. They must have returned to the grace of God before they died, else they would not have been saved. They are now most dear, inexpressibly dear, to God; and surely charity, well-ordered, must follow the wise love of the Divine Will, and love most what He loves most."

Fra. Bertrando however would not give way, though he did not quite see a satisfactory answer to his friend's objection. But the night following he had an apparition which it seems so convinced him, that from that time he changed his practice, and offered up all his masses, prayers, and penances, for the Holy Souls. It would appear as if the authority of St. Thomas might be quoted on the side of Fra. Benedetto, as he says,² " Prayer for the dead is more acceptable than for the living, for the dead are in the greatest need of it, and cannot help themselves as the living can."

How acceptable this devotion is to Almighty God, and how He vouchsafes to seem, as it were, impatient for the deliverance of the souls, and yet to leave it to our charity, is taught us on the unimpeachable authority of St. Theresa. In the book of her Foundations, she tells us that D. Bernardino di Mendoza gave her a house garden, and vineyard, for a convent at Valladolid. Two months after this, and before the foundation was effected, he was suddenly taken ill, and lost the power of speech, so that he could not make a confession, though he gave many signs of contrition. " He died," says St. Theresa, " very shortly, and far from the place where I then was. But our Lord spoke to me and told me that he was saved, though he had run a great risk, for that He had had mercy upon him because of the gift he had given for the convent of His Blessed Mother; but that his soul would not be freed from purgatory until the first mass was said in the new house. I felt so deeply the pains this soul was suffering, that although I was very desirous of accomplishing the foundation of Toledo, I left it at once for Valladolid. Praying one day at Medina del Campo, our Lord told me to make haste, for that soul was suffering grievously. On this I started at once, though I was not well prepared for it, and arrived at Valladolid on St. Lawrence's day." She then goes on to relate, that as she received communion at the first mass said in the house, her benefactor's soul appeared to her all glorious, and afterward entered heaven. She did not expect this, for, as she observes, " although it had been revealed to me that this would happen at the first mass, I thought it must mean the first mass when the Blessed Sacrament would be reserved there." We might multiply almost indefinitely the revelations of the saints which go to prove the special favor with which our Blessed Lord regards this devotion wherein His interests are so nearly and dearly engaged. But it is time now to get a clear view of our subject.

There are, as we all know, two worlds, the world of sense and the world of spirit. We live in the world of sense, surrounded by the world of spirit, and as Christians, we have hourly and very real communications with that world. Now, it is a mere fragment of the Church which is in the world of sense. In these days the Church triumphant in heaven, collecting its fresh multitudes in every age, and constantly beautify- 25 ing itself with new saints, must necessarily far exceed the limits of the Church Militant, which does not embrace even a majority of the inhabitants of earth. Nor is it unlikely, but most likely, that the Church Suffering in Purgatory must far exceed the Church Militant in extent, as it surpasses it in beauty. Toward those countless hosts who are lost we have no duties: they have fallen away from us; we hardly know the name of one who is there, for many have thought that Solomon was saved, some have gone so far as to regard the words in the Acts of the Apostles about Judas as not infallibly decisive, and there is not quite a consent even against Saul. We are cut off from them; all is blackness and darkness about them; we have no relations with them.

But 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. Of these I shall speak hereafter. 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 conciousness 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. We are humbled excessively by becoming the benefactors of those beautiful souls who are so immeasurably our superiors, as Joseph was said to have learned humility by commanding Jesus. We love Jesus with a love beyond words, a love that almost makes us afraid, yet with what a delightful fear! Because in this devotion it is His hands we are moving, as we would move the unskilful hands of a child. Dearest Lord, that He should let us do these things! That He should let us do with His satisfactions what we will, and sprinkle His Precious Blood as if it were so much water from the nearest well! That we should limit the efficacy of His unbloody sacrifice, and name souls to Him, and expect Him to obey us, and that He should do so! Beautiful was the helplessness of His blessed infancy; beautiful is His helplessness in His most dear sacrament; beautiful is the helplessness in which for the love of us He mostly wills to be with regard to His dear spouses in purgatory, whose entrance into glory His Heart is so impatiently awaiting! 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!

There have always been two views of purgatory prevailing in the Church, not contradictory the one of the other, but rather expressive of the mind and devotion of those who have embraced them. One is the view met with in by far the greater number of the lives and revelations of Italian and Spanish saints, the works of the Germans of the Middle Ages, and the popular delineations of purgatory in Belgium, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, and elsewhere. The other is the view which has been made popular by St. Francis of Sales, though he drew it originally from his favorite treatise on purgatory by St. Catherine of Genoa, and it is also borne out by many of the revelations of Sister Francesca of Pampeluna, a Theresian nun, published with a long and able censura by Fra. Giuseppe Bonaventura Ponze, a Dominican professor at Saragossa. And each of these two views, though neither denies the other, has its own peculiar spirit of devotion.

1. The first view is embodied in the terrifying sermons of Italian Quaresimali, and in those wayside pictures which so often provoke the fastidiousness of the English traveller. It loves to represent purgatory simply as a hell which is not eternal. Violence, confusion, wailing, horror, preside over its descriptions. It dwells, and truly, on the terribleness of the pain of sense which the soul is mysteriously permitted to endure. The fire is the same fire as that of hell, created for the single and express purpose of giving torture. Our earthly fire is as painted fire compared to it. Besides this, there is a special and indefinable horror to the unbodied soul in becoming the prey of this material agony. The sense of imprisonment, close and intolerable, and the intense palpable darkness, are additional features in the horror of the scene, which prepare us for that sensible neighborhood to hell, which many saints have spoken of as belonging to purgatory. Angels are represented as active executioners of God's awful justice. Some have even held that the demons were permitted to touch and harass the spouses of Christ in those ardent fires. Then to this terribleness of the pain of sense is added the dreadfulness of the pain of loss. The beauty of God remains in itself the same immensely desirable object it ever was. But the soul is changed. All that in life and in the world of sense dulled its desires after God is gone from it, so that it seeks Him with an impetuosity which no imagination can at all conceive. The very burning excess of its love becomes the measure of its intolerable pain. And what love can do even on earth we may learn from the example of Father John Baptist Sanchez, who said he was sure he should die of misery, if any morning when he rose he should know that he was certain not to die that day. To these horrors we might add many more

S90 PURGATORY.

which depict purgatory simply as a hell which is not eternal.

The spirit of this view is a holy fear of offending God, a desire for bodily austerities, a great value put upon indulgences, an extreme horror of sin, and an habitual trembling before the judgments of God. Those who have led lives of unusual penance, and severe Orders in religion, have always been impregnated with this view; and it seems to have been borne out in its minutest details by the conclusions of scholastic theologians, as may be seen at once by referring to Bellarmine, who, in each section of his treatise on purgatory, compares the revelations of the saints with the consequences of theology. It is remarkable also that when the Blessed Henry Suso, through increased familiarity and love of God, began to think comparatively lightly of the pains of purgatory, our Lord warned him that this was very displeasing to Him. For what judgment can be light which God has prepared for sin? Many theologians have said, not only that the least pain of purgatory was greater than the greatest pain of earth, but greater than all the pains of earth put together. This, then, is a true view of purgatory, but not a complete one. Yet it is not one which we can safely call coarse or grotesque. It is the view of many saints and servants of God: and it is embodied in the popular celebrations of All Souls' Day in several Catholic countries.

2. The second view of purgatory does not deny any one of the features of the preceding view, but it almost puts them out of sight by the other considerations which it brings more prominently forward. It goes into purgatory with its eyes fascinated and its spirit sweetly tranquilized by the face of Jesus, its first sight of the Sacred Humanity, at the Particular Judgment which it has undergone. That vision abides with it still, and beautifies the uneven terrors of its prison, as if with perpetual silvery showers of moonlight which seem to fall from our Saviour's loving eyes. In the sea of fire it holds fast by that image. The moment that in His sight it perceives its own unfitness for heaven, it wings its voluntary flight to purgatory, like a dove to her proper nest in the shadows of the forest. There need no angels to convey it thither. It is its own free worship of the purity of God. This is beautifully expressed in a revelation of St. Gertrude, related by Blosius. The saint saw in spirit the soul of a religious who had passed her life in the exercise of the most lofty virtues. She was standing before our Lord clothed and adorned with charity; but she did not dare to lift her eyes to look at Him. She kept them cast down as if she was ashamed to stand in His presence, and showed by some gesture her desire to be far from Him. Gertrude marvelled at this, and ventured to question Him: " Most merciful God! why dost Thou not receive this sou\ into the arms of Thine infinite charity? And what are these strange gestures of diffidence which I behold in her?" Then our Lord lovingly stretched out His right arm, as if He would draw the soul nearer to Himself; but she, with profound humility and great modesty, retired from Him. The saint, lost in still greater wonder, asked why she fled from the embraces of a spouse so worthy to beloved; and the religious answered her, " Because I am not yet perfectly cleansed from the stains which my sins have left behind them; and even if He were to grant me in this state a free entrance into heaven, I would not accept it; for all resplendent as I look to your eyes, I know that I am not yet a fit spouse for my Lord."

In that moment the soul loves God most tenderly, and in return is most tenderly beloved by Him. To the eyes of those who take this view, that soul seems most beautiful. How should a dear spouse of God be anything but beautiful? The soul is in punishment, true; but it is in unbroken union with God. " It has no remembrance," says St. Catherine of Genoa most positively, "no remembrance at all of its past sins, or of earth." Its sweet prison, its holy sepulchre, is in the adorable will of its heavenly Father, and there it abides the term of its purification with the most perfect contentment and the most unutterable love. As it is not teased by any vision of self or sin, so neither is it harassed by an atom of fear, or by a single doubt of its own imperturbable security. It is impeccable; and there was a time on earth when that gift alone seemed as if it would contain all heaven in itself. It cannot commit the slightest imperfection. It cannot have the least movement of impatience. It can do nothing whatever which will in the least degree displease God. It loves God above every thing, and it loves Him with a pure and disinterested love. It is constantly consoled by angels, and cannot but rejoice in the confirmed assurance of its own salvation. Nay, its very bitterest agonies are accompanied by a profound, unshaken peace, such as the language of this world has no words to tell. There are revelations which speak of some who are in purgatory, but have no fire. They languish patiently detained from God, and that is enough chastisement for them. There are revelations too which tell of multitudes who are in no local prison, but abide their purification in the air, or by their graves, or near altars where the Blessed Sacrament is, or in the rooms of those who pray for them, or amid the scenes of their former vanity and frivolity. If silent suffering, sweetly, gracefully endured, is a thing so venerable on earth, what must this region of the Church be like? Compared with earth, its trials, doubts, exciting and depressing risks, how much more beautiful, how much more desirable, that still, calm, patient realm over which Mary is crowned as queen, and Michael is the perpetual ambassador of her mercy.

The spirit of this view is love, an extreme desire that God should not be offended, a yearning for the interests of Jesus. It takes its tone from the soul's first voluntary flight into that heritage of suffering. As it took God's part against itself in that act, so is it throughout. This view of purgatory turns on the worship of God's purity and sanctity. It looks at things from God's point of view, and merges its own interests in His. It is just the view we might expect to come from St. Francis of Sales, or the loving St. Catherine of Genoa. And it is the helplessness rather than the wretchedness of the souls detained which moves those who take this view to compassion and devotion; but it is God's glory and the interests of Jesus, which influence them most of all.

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 wjrkl! 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?

The publication of St. Catherine's treatise is so remarkable a feature in the history of the doctrine and devotion connected with purgatory, that it may be well to give my readers a brief account of it. Mgr.

Hardouin Perefix, archbishop of Paris, had it examined bj the doctors of the Sorboune in 1666, and in their approval, they call it a " rare effusion of the Spirit of God upon a pure and loving soul, and a marvellous token of His solicitude for His Church, and His care in enlightening her and assisting her according to her needs; " and the approbation goes on to say that the examiners consider it a providential provision for Catholics just when the heresies of Luther and Calvin were about, among their other impieties, to make war upon the dead. In 1675, Martin d'Esparza, a Jesuit, presented his censure of the treatise to Cardinal Azolini, who was ponente in the cause of the saint's beatification. In this he says that the doctrine of her treatise is "incontaminate, most salutary, and altogether seraphic," that it has been " impressed upon her soul by the Holy Spirit with a very special and secret illumination," and that its doctrine, together with that of her dialogue between the Soul and the Body, is " of itself a most efficacious proof of the heroic sanctity of the servant of God." It is remarked by Maineri, in his Life of the Saint, as a curious coincidence, that the name of purgatory was first authoritatively given to the Intermediate State in 1254 by Innocent IV., who was of the house of Fieschi, the family of our saint.

The following is an epitome of the doctrine of her treatise. No sooner has a soul, with the guilt of no mortal sin upon it, but owing to God a debt of temporal punishment, issued from the world, and been judged, than it perceives itself to be confirmed in grace and charity. It is incapable either of sinning or of meriting any more; and it is destined by an eternal and immutable decree to enter one day as a queen into the kingdom of the blessed, to see, to love, and to enjoy God, the perpetual fountain of all felicity.

In that instant all the sins of its past life are represented to the soul, whether mortal or venial, even though they have been remitted in lifetime by contrition and the sacrament of penance. But after this transitory and instantaneous view of them, the soul remembers nothing more about them. The saint's words are, " The cause of purgatory, which these souls have in themselves, they see once for all in passing out of this life, and never afterward." The reason of this exhibition of sins is, she teaches us, to enable the soul in that moment, by an act, no longer indeed meritorious, but nevertheless a real act of the will, to detest all its sins afresh, and especial!}' those venial sins for which it had no contrition in lifetime, either through the weakness of an imperfect heart, or through the accident of a sudden death, that so it may be strictly true, that no sin whatever is pardoned unless the sinner make an act of detestation of it.

After this momentary view of sins and formal detestation of them, the soul perceives in itself their evil consequences and " malignant legacies," and these form what the saint calls " the impediment to seeing God." "The rust of sin," she says, "is the impediment, and the fire keeps consuming the rust; and as a thing which is covered cannot correspond to the reverberation of the sun's rays, so if the covering be consumed, the thing is at length laid open to the sun." It is thus that purgatory wears away from the soul the obligation (reatus) of venial sin, and also the obligation of temporal punishment for remitted mortal sin. This last statement, my readers will perceive, is not really, as some have thought, at variance with the teaching of Suarez, and other scholastics, who maintain that there is no stain in the soul left by sin, and requiring the cleansing action of those penal fires. The saint speaks throughout as if purgatory was not so much a cleansing from stain, as a quitting oneself of an obligation.

As soon as the soul perceives itself to be acceptable to God, and constituted heir of paradise, but unable, because of this impediment, to take immediate possession of its inheritance, it conceives an intense desire to be rid of this hindrance, this double obligation of guilt and punishment. But knowing that purgatory alone can consume these two obligations, and that it is for that very end God condemns the soul to the fire, it desires itself to endure the punishment. " The soul separated from the body, (these are the saint's own words,) not finding in itself all the requisite purity, and seeing in itself this impediment which cannot be taken away except by purgatory, at once throws itself into it with right good will. Nay, if it did not find this ordinance of purgatory, aptly contrived for the removal of this hindrance, there would instantaneously be generated in it a hell far worse than purgatory, inasmuch as it would see that because of this impediment it could not get alongside of God, who is its end. Wherefore, if the soul could find another purgatory fiercer than this, in which it could the sooner get rid of this impediment, it would speedily plunge itself therein, through the impetuosity of the love it bears to God."

But this is not all. In the following chapter the saint goes on to teach that if the soul, laboring under this impediment, were free to choose between ascending at once, and as she is, to paradise, and descending to suffer in purgatory, she would choose to suffer, although the sufferings be almost as dreadful as those of hell. These are her words: " Of how much importance purgatory is, no tongue can tell, no mind conceive. So much I see, that its pain is almost as if it were that of hell; and yet I see also that the soul which perceives in itself the slightest flaw or mote of imperfection, would rather throw itself into a thousand hells than find itself in the presence of the Divine Majesty with that defect upon it; and therefore, seeing purgatory to be ordained for the very taking away of these flaws, forthwith it plunges into it, and it seems by its bearing, as I see, to conceive that it finds there an invention of no little mercy, simply in the being able to get quit of this impediment."

When the righteous soul has thus arrived in purgatory, losing sight of every thing else, it sees before it only two objects, the extremity of suffering and the extremity of joy. A most tremendous pain is caused by knowing that God loves it with an infinite love, that He is the Chief Good, that He regards the soul as His daughter, and that He has predestinated it to enjoy Him for ever in company with the Blessed; and hence the soul loves Him with a pure and most perfect charity. At the same time it perceives that it cannot see Him or enjoy Him yet, though it so intensely yearns to do so; and this afflicts it so much the more, as it is quite uncertain when the term of its penal exile, away from its Lord and paradise, will be fulfilled. This is the pain of loss in purgatory, of which the saint says that it is " a pain so extreme that no tongue can tell it, no understanding grasp the least portion of it. Though God in His favor showed me a little spark thereof, yet can I not in any way express it with my tongue." This pain of loss she likens to the longing for a loaf of bread. " If in all the world there were but one loaf, which was able to satisfy the hunger of all creatures, who would be satiated by simply beholding it, what would be the feelings of a man who possesses by nature an instinct to eat, when he is in health; what, I say, would be his feelings if he were neither able to eat, nor yet to be ill or to die? His hunger would be always increasing, and knowing there was but that one loaf to satisfy him, and yet not being able to get at it, he would remain in unbearable torture." This similitude, however, puts before us but a shadow of what the soul really suffers. It is continually borne with an imperceptible loving violence toward God, who alone can perfectly satisfy it. This violence is always on the increase, the longer the hungry soul is deprived of its Divine Object, for which it is unspeakably ravenous; and its torture would thus keep increasing also, were it not daily mitigated by hope, yea, rather by the certainty that it is approaching nearer and nearer to its eternal bliss. In the words of the prophet, the sufferer knows that

" because his soul hath labored, he shall see and be filled." *

The soul undergoing the pain of sense the saint likens to gold in the crucible. " Look at the gold; the more you melt it the better it becomes, and you melt it until every imperfection is annihilated. This is the effect of fire upon material things. But the soul cannot annihilate itself in God, but it can in its own self; and the more it is purified, the more it is annihilated in itself, until at last it rests itself in God quite pure. Gold, when, as their praise is, it is purified to twenty-four carats, will not waste away any more, no matter how much fire you apply to it, because in reality nothing is consumed but imperfection. The divine fire acts in like manner upon the soul. God holds it in the fire till every imperfection is consumed, and until He reduces it to the purity of twenty-four carats; every one, however, according to its own degree. When the soul is purified, it rests altogether in God, without retaining any thing in itself. God is its life. And when He has brought the soul to Himself thus purified, it becomes impassable, for there is nothing left in it to consume away; and if it were still held in the fire when it is thus purified, the fire would give it no pain, nay, it would be then the fire of Divine Love, itself eternal life, wherein the soul could experience no more contradictions."

Such is the first object before the eyes of the soul, the extremity of suffering. Now let us examine the other object, the extremity of joy. As it loves God³ with the purest affection, and knows its sufferings to be the will of God in order to its purification, it conforms itself perfectly to the divine decree. While in purgatory, it sees nothing but that this pleases God; it takes in no idea but that of His will; it apprehends nothing so clearly as the suitableness of this purification, in order to present it all fair and lovely to so great a Majesty. Thus the saint says, " If a soul, having still something left to be cleansed away, were presented to the vision of God, it would consider itself grievously injured, and its suffering would be worse than that of ten purgatories; for it would be quite unable to endure that excessive Goodness and that exquisite Justice." Hence it is that the suffering soul is entirely resigned to the w7ill of its Creator. It loves its very pains, and rejoices in them, because they are a holy ordinance of God. Thus in the midst of the ardent heat it enjoys a contentment so complete, that it exceeds the grasp of human intelligence to comprehend it. " I do not believe," says the saint, " that it is possible to find a contentment to compare with that of the souls in purgatory, unless it be the contentment of the saints in paradise. This contentment increases daily through the influx of God into those souls, and this influx increases in proportion as the impediment is consumed and worn away. Indeed, so far as the will is concerned, we can hardly say that the pains are pains at all, so contentedly do the souls rest in the ordinance of God, to whose will pure love unites them."

In another place she says that this inexplicable jubilee of the soul, while it is undergoing purgatory, 26 springs from the strength and purity of its love of God. " This love gives to the soul such a contentment as cannot be expressed. But this contentment does not take away one iota of the pain; nay, it is the retarding of love from the possession of its object which causes the pain; and the pain is greater according to the greater perfection of love of which God has made the soul capable. Thus the souls in purgatory have at once the greatest contentment and the greatest suffering; and the one in no way hinders the other." As to prayers, alms, and masses, she asserts that the souls experience great consolation from them; but that in these, as in other matters, their principal solicitude is that every thing should be " weighed in the most equitable scales of the Divine Will, leaving God to take His own course in every thing, and to pay Himself and His justice in the way His own infinite goodness chooses to select."

She concludes her treatise b}' casting one glance upon her neighbor and one upon herself. To her neighbor, she says, " Oh that I could cry so loud that I might frighten all the men who dwell upon the earth, and say to them, ' O miserable men! why have you let yourselves be so blinded by this world, as not to make any provision for that imperious necessity, which you will find at the moment of death? You all of you shelter yourselves under the hope of God's mercy. But do you not see that the very goodness of God will rise up in judgment against you, for having rebelled against the will of so good a Lord?' Do not lull yourselves into a false confidence by saying, ' When I come to die I will make a good confession, and then I will take the plenary indulgence, and thus in that last moment I shall be cleansed from all my sins, and so I shall be saved.' Think a little. Confession and contrition are necessary for a plenary indulgence; and contrition is such a hard thing to get, that if you knew how hard it was, you would tremble for very fear, and you would be much more likely to believe that such a grace would never be given you, than to expect it with such confidence as you do now."

When she looked at herself with the light of a supernatural illumination, she saw that God had set her up in the Church as an express and living image of purgatory. She says, " This form of purification, which I behold in the souls in purgatory, I perceive in my own soul now. I see that my soul dwells in its body as in a purgatory altogether conformable to the true purgatory, only in such measure as my body can bear without dying. Nevertheless it is always increasing by little and little, until it reaches the point when it will really die." Her death was indeed most wonderful, and has always been considered as a martyrdom of Divine Love. So truly from the first hasher position been appreciated, as the great doctress of purgatory, that in the old life of her, the " vita antica," examined by theologians in 1670, and approved in the Roman process of her canonization, and which was composed by Marabotto her confessor, and Vernazza her spiritual son, it is said, " Verily it seems that God set up this His creature as a mirror and an example of the pains of the other life, which souls suffer in purgatory. It is just as if He had placed her upon a high wall, dividing this life from the life to come; so that seeing what is suffered in that life beyond, she might manifest to us, even in this life, what we are to expect when we have passed the boundary." This is a mere epitome of her wonderful and exquisitely beautiful treatise, which has given St. Catherine a rank among the theologians of the Church.

The same view of Purgatory as that taken by St. Catherine is very briefly but touchingly embodied by Dante, in that beautiful scene where he and Virgil are wandering on the outskirts of purgatory. The poet is dazzled all at once by the bright light of an angel coming across the sea, and impelling a bark filled with new souls for purgatory; and he describes the boat as driving toward the shore so lightly, that it drew no wake upon the water, while the souls that had left life, and earth, and judgment, but a few minutes since, pensively yet cheeringly sang, "Inexitu Israel de Egypto." Surely it was a beautiful thought of his; and as he was a theologian as well as a poet, it seems to deserve mention here, as a proof of the view of purgatory which recommended itself to intellectual men in Dante's day.

3. But let us now see what is common to both these views of purgatory. This is a more practical consideration. I suppose there are none of us who expect to be lost. We know and feel, with more or less of alarm, the greatness of the risk we are running; but to expect to be lost would be the sin of despair. Hell is only practical to us as a motive of greater diligence, greater strictness, greater circumspectness, greater fear. But it is not so with purgatoiy. I suppose we all expect, or think ourselves sure, to go there. If we do not think much of the matter at all, then we may have some vague notion of going straight to heaven as soon as we are judged. But if we seriously reflect upon it, upon our own lives, upon. God's sanctity, upon what we read in books of devotion and the lives of the Saints, I can hardly conceive any one of us expecting to escape purgatory, and not rather feeling that it must be almost a stretch of the Divine Mercy which will get us even there. It would more likely be vain presumption than heroic hope, if we thought otherwise. Now, if we really expect that our road to heaven will be through the punishments of purgatory, for surely its purification is penal, it very much concerns us to know what is common to both the views of purgatory, which it appears prevail in the Church.

First, both these views agree that the pains are extremely severe, as well because of the office which God intends them to fulfil, as because of the disembodied soul being the subject of them. Both agree also in the length of the suffering. This requires to be dwelt upon, as it is hard to convince people of it, and a great deal comes of the conviction, both to ourselves and others. This duration may be understood in two wa}rs, first, as of actual length of time, and secondly, as of seeming length from the excess of pain. With regard to the first, if we look into the revelations of Sister Francesca of Pampeluna, we shall find, among some hundreds of cases, that by far the greater majority suffered thirty, forty, or sixty years. Here are some of the examples: a holy bishop, for some negligence in his high office, had been in purgatory fifty-nine years, before he appeared to the servant of God; another bishop, so generous of his revenues that he was named the almsgiver, had been there five jea.is because he had wished for the dignity; another bishop had been forty; a priest forty years because through his negligence some sick persons had died without the sacraments; another forty-five years for inconsiderateness in his ministerial functions; a gentleman fifty-nine years for worldliness; another sixty-four for fondness for playing at cards for money; another thirty -five years for worldliness. Bishops seem upon the whole, according to her revelations, to remain longest there, and to be visited with the extreme of rigor.

Without multiplying instances, which it would be easy to do, these disclosures may teach us greater watchfulness over ourselves, and more unwearied perseverance in praying for the departed. The old foundations for perpetual masses embody the same sentiment. We are apt to leave off too soon, imagining with a foolish and unenlightened fondness that our friends are freed from purgatory much sooner than they really are. If Sister Francesca beheld the souls of many fervent Carmelites, some of whom had wrought miracles in lifetime, still in purgatory ten, twenty, thirty, sixty years after their death, and still not near their deliverance, as many told her, what must become of us and ours? Then as to seeming length from the extremity of pain, there are many instances on record in the Chronicles of the Franciscans, the life of St. Francis Jerome, and elsewhere, of souls appearing an hour or two after death, and thinking they had been many years in purgatory. And such may be the purgatory of those who are caught up to meet the Lord at the Last Day.

Both views agree again in holding that, what we in the world call very trivial faults, are most severely visited in purgatory. St. Peter Damian gives us many instances of this, and others are collected and quoted by Bellarmine. Slight feelings of self-complacency, trifling inattentions in the recital of the Divine Office, and the like, occur frequently among them. Sister Francesca mentions the case of a girl of fourteen in purgatory because she was not quite conformed to the will of God in dying so young; and one soul said to her, " Ah! men little think in the world how dearly they are going to pay here for faults they hardly note there." She even saw souls that were immensely punished only for having been scrupulous in this life; either, I suppose, because there is mostly self-will in scruples, or because they did not lay them down when obedience was commanded. Wrong notions about small faults may thus lead us to neglect the dead, or leave off our prayers too soon, as well as lose a lesson for ourselves.

Then again, both views agree as to the helplessness of the Holy Souls. They lie like the paralytic at the pool. Not even the coming of the angel is any blessing to them, unless there be some one of us to help them. Some have even thought they cannot pray. Anyhow, they have no means of making themselves heard by us on whose charity they depend. Some writers have said, that our Blessed Lord will not help them without our co-operation; and that our Blessed Lady cannot help them, except in direct ways, because she is no longer able to make satisfaction; though I never like to hear of any thing our dearest Mother cannot do. Whatever may come of these opinions, they at least illustrate the strong way in which theologians apprehend the helplessness of the Holy Souls. Then another feature in their helplessness is the forgetfulness of the living, or the cruel flatteiy of relations who will always have it that those near or dear to them die the death of Saints. They would surely have a scruple, if they knew of how many masses and prayers they rob the souls by the selfish exaggeration of their goodness. I call it selfish, for it is nothing more than a miserable device to console themselves in their sorrow. The very state of the Holy Souls is one of the most unbounded helplessness. They cannot do penance; they cannot merit; they cannot satisfy; they cannot gain indulgences; they have no sacraments; they are not under the jurisdiction of God's Vicar, overflowing with the plenitude of means of grace and manifold benedictions. They are a portion of the Church without either priesthood or altar at their own command.

These are the points common to both views of purgatory: and how manifold are the lessons we learn from them, on our own behalf as well as on behalf of the Holy Souls. For ourselves,what light does all this throw on slovenliness, lukewarmness, and love of ease? What, does it make us think of performing our devotions out of a mere spirit of formality, or a trick of habit? What a change should it not work in our lives: What diligence in our examens, confessions, communions, and prayers! It seems as if the grace of all graces, for which we should ever be importuning our dear Lord, would be to hate sin with something of the hatred wherewith He hated it in the garden of Gethsemane. Oh, is not the purity of God something awful, unspeakable, adorable? He, who is Himself a simple act, has gone on acting, multiplying acts since creation, yet He has incurred no stain! He is ever mingling with a most unutterable condescension with what is beneath Him, — yet no stain! He loves His creatures with a love immeasurably more intense than the wildest passion of earth, — yet no stain! He is omnipotent, yet it is beyond the limits of His power to receive a stain. He is so pure that the very vision of Him causes eternal purity and blessedness. Mary's purity is but a fair thin shadow of it. Nay, the Sacred Humanity itself cannot adequately worship the purity of the Most High. And we are to dwell in His arms for ever, we are to dwell amid the everlasting burnings of that Uncreated Purity. Yet, let us look at our lives; let us trace our hearts faithfully through but one day, and see of what mixed intentions, human respects, self-love, and pusillanimous temper our actions, nay even our devotions, are made up; and does not purgatory, heated sevenfold, and endured to the day of doom, seem but a gentle novitiate for the Vision of the All-holy?

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 auger 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 Sainton earth was not so humble as are the souls in purgatory. I do not think I ever read any thing in the lives of the Saints which struck me so much as that. You see it is not well to be angry; for those only are lucky enough to get into purgatory, who sincerely believe themselves to be worthy of hell.

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. Some theologians have said that prayer for the Holy Souls is not infallibly answered. I confess their arguments on this head do not convince me; but, conceding the point, how wonderful still is the power which we can exercise in favor of the departed! St. Thomas has at least 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 thera, 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. The Communion of Saints furnishes the veins and channels by which all these things reach them in Christ. Heaven itself condescends to act upon them through earth. Their queen helps them by setting us to work for them, and the angels and the saints bestow their gifts through us, whom they persuade to be their almoners; nay, we are often their almoners without knowing that we are so. Our blessed Lord vouchsafes to look to us, as if He would say, Here are My weapons, work for me! just as a father will let his child do a portion of his work, in spite of the risk he runs of having it spoiled. To possess such powers, and not to use them, would be the height of irreverence toward God, as well as of want of charity to men. There is nothing so irreverent, because nothing so unfilial, as to shrink from God's gifts simply because of their exuberance. Men have a feeling of safety in not meddling with the supernatural; but the truth is, we cannot stand aloof on one side and be safe. If we do not enter the system, and humbly take our place in it, it will draw us in, only to tear us to pieces when it has done so. The dread of the supernatural is the unsafest of feelings. The jealousy of it is a prophecy of eternal loss, which far too often comes true.

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.

1. 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. He crowns His own gifts in that dear soul. The cross of Christ has triumphed. The decree of predestination is victoriously accomplished; and there is a new worshipper in the courts of heaven. Moreover, God's glory, His sweetest glory, the glory of His love, is sooner or later infallible in purgatory; because there is no sin there, nor possibility of sin. It is only a question of time. All that is gained, is real gain. All that is reaped is true wheat, without chaff or stubble, or any such thing.

Again, what devotion is justly more 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. Faitli in His sacraments as used for the dead is a pleasing homage to Jesus; and the same may be said of faith in indulgences and privileged altars, and the like. The powers of the Church all flow from His Sacred Humanity, and are a perpetual praise and thank-offering to It. So, again, this devotion honors Him by imitating His zeal for souls. For this zeal is a badge of His people, and an inheritance from Him.

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 worshipped* 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.

*I do not refrain from the use of this word as the English translation of cultus; weary experience shows that objectors obstinately repeat their objections, whatever we do to abate them, and they rather triumph over the show of weakness, than appreciate the charity of such-like condescensions. We lose by them ourselves, without gaining our opponents.

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 specially 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 lifetime 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, as I have said before, 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.

Neither is devotion to the saints without its interests in this devotion for the dead. It fills them with the delights of charity as it swells their numbers and beautifies their ranks and orders. Numberless patron saints are personally interested in multitudes of souls. The affectionate relation between their clients and themselves not only subsists, but a deeper tenderness has entered into it, because of the fearful suffering, and a livelier interest, because of the accomplished victory. They see in the Holy Souls their own handiwork, the fruit of their example, the answer to their prayers, the success of their patronage, the beautiful and finished crown of their affectionate intercession. And all this applies with peculiar force to. the founders of orders and congregations. Ah! those saints, those founders, are the children of the Sacred Heart; they have been conceived in its inmost cavities; they have been suckled with its choicest Blood, softer than milk, and more cheering than the wine of Engaddi's peerless grape; their charity has caught the trick of Its compression and dilation: who then can tell how Founders yearn over their children in those cleansing fires? Those souls honored them through life; they lived in their Father's and Founder's house; his voice was ever in their ears; his feasts there were days of song and joy, and spiritual sunshine; his relics were their shield; his rule their second gospel; his sayings and doings were ever on their lips; his dress and livery were dear to them as the garment of a king to his Eastern favorite; he was with them all day long; they loved him with a venturous love; they praised him till men smiled at their family pride; they feared him as one the darkening of whose eye upon their souls was a worse calamity than fire, or sword, or pestilence; and when they came to die, his name, and no other, except the names of Jesus and Mary, could so well soothe the troubled mind, so drive away the besetting demons, and so calm the starts, and frets, and catchings which, if they impair not the perfection of our patience, take away at least from death its joy-inspiring gracefulness. What wonder their Founder should love them, as he beholds them bounding immaculate and beautiful, the gems of his order, the glory of his rule, in the chastening fires of God!

2. But there is another peculiarity in this devotion for the dead. It does not rest in words and feelings, nor does it merely lead to action at last. It is action in itself, and thus it is a substantial devotion. It speaks, and a deed is done; it loves, and a pain is lessened; it sacrifices, and a soul is delivered. Nothing can be more solid. We might almost dare to compare it, in its poor measure, to the efficacious voice of God, which works what it says, and effects what it utters and wills, and a creation comes. The royal devotion of the Church is the works of mercy; and see how they are all satisfied in this devotion for the dead! It feeds the hungry souls with Jesus, the Bread of Angels. It gives them to drink in their incomparable thirst His Precious Blood. It clothes the naked with the robe of glory. It visits the sick with mighty powers to heal, and at the least consoles them '27 by the visit. It frees the captives with a heavenly and eternal freedom, from a bondage dreader far than death. It takes in the strangers, and heaven is the hospice into which it receives them. It buries the dead in the Bosom of Jesus in everlasting rest. Oh, when the last doom shall come, and our dearest Lord shall ask those seven questions of His judicial process, those interrogatories of the works of mercy, how happy will that man be, and it may be the poorest beggar among us, who never gave an alms because he has had to live on alms himself, who shall hear his own defence sweetly and eloquently taken up b}- crowds of blessed souls, to whom he has done all these things while they waited in their prison house of hope! Three times a day St. Francis of Sales put himself in the presence of God as before his judge, and tried to judge himself in his Saviour's way. Let us but do that, and we shall become so many servitors of Michael, so many guardian angels of that beautiful but melancholy land of suffering and expectant souls. 3. Another point of view from which we may look at this devotion for the dead, is as a specially complete and beautiful exercise of the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which are the supernatural fountains of our whole spiritual life. It exercises faith, because it leads men not only to dwell in the unseen world, but to work for it with as much energy and conviction as if it was before their very eyes. Unthoughtful or ill-read persons almost start sometimes at the minuteness, familiarity, and assurance with which men talk of the unseen world, as if it were the banks of the Rhine, or the olive-yards of

Provence, the Campagna of Rome, or the crescent shores of Naples, some place which they have seen in their travels, and whose geographical features are ever in their memory, as vividly as if before their eyes. It all comes of faith, of prayer, of spiritual reading, of knowledge of the lives of the saints, and of the study of theology. It would be strange and sad if it were not so. For, what to us, either in interest or importance, is the world we see, to the world we do not see? This devotion exercises our faith also in the effects of the sacrifice and sacraments, which are things we do not see, but which we daily talk of in reference to the dead as undoubted and accomplished facts. It exercises our faith in the communion of saints to a degree which would make it seem impossible to a heretic that he ever could believe so wild and extravagant a creed. It acts with regard to indulgences as if they were the most inevitable material transactions of this world. It knows of the unseen treasure out of which they come, of the unseen keys which open the treasury, of the indefinite jurisdiction which places them infallibly at its disposal, of God's unrevealed acceptance of them, and of the invisible work they do, just as it knows of trees and clouds, of streets and churches — that is, just as certainly and undoubtingly; though it often can give others no proof of these things, nor account for them to itself. The difficult doctrine of satisfaction is no difficulty to the faith of this devotion. It moves about in it with the greatest ease, makes its own arrangements, transfers its satisfactions hither and thither, turns one in one direction, another in another, making quite sure of God being agreeable to it all. The details of daily household life are not ordered with more calmness and self-possession than are these hidden things which at every turn are starting questions almost the most difficult which the understanding can find to grapple with, or break itself upon. It exhibits the same quiet faith in all those Catholic devotions which I mentioned before as centring themselves in this devotion for the dead. As the prophet and apostle say, " My just man liveth b}r faith; but if lie withdraw himself, he shall not please my soul; " and what is- faith but "the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not?"⁴ Neither is this devotion a less heroic exercise of the theological virtue of hope, the virtue so sadly wanting in the spiritual life of these times. For, look what a mighty edifice this devotion raises; lofty, intricate, and of magnificent proportions, into which somehow or other all creation is drawn, from the little headache we suffer up to the Sacred Humanity of Jesus, and which has to do even with God Himself. And upon what does all this rest, except on a simple, childlike trust in God's fidelity, which is the supernatural motive of hope? We hope for the souls we help, and unbounded are the benedictions which we hope for in their regard. We hope to find mercy ourselves, because of our mercy; and this hope quickens our efforts without detracting from the merit of our charity. If we give away our own satisfactions and the indulgences we gain, to the souls in purgatory, instead of keeping them for ourselves, what is this but an heroic exercise of hope? We throw ourselves upon God. We hardly face the thought that we ourselves are thus sentencing ourselves, it may be, to abide years and years longer in that unconquerable fire. We shut our eyes, we quell the rising thought, we give our alms, and throw ourselves on God. We shall not be defrauded of our hope. Who ever trusted Him, and his trust failed? No! No! All is right, when it is left to God. Then, again, this devotion has to do altogether with things beyond the grave, and there is the region of hope. Its dwelling-place is behind the veil. " For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For, what a man seeth, why doth he hope for? But if we hope for that which we see not, we wait for it with patience."* For the state of the dead is no dream, nor our power to help them a dream, any more than the purity of God is a dream, or the Precious Blood a dream. Thus, though there be consolations many, yet it is we who have " the strongest comfort, who have fled for refuge to hold fast the hope set before us, which we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, and which entereth in even within the vail, where the forerunner Jesus is entered for us, made a high-priest for ever after the order of Melchisedeck." f

As to the charity of this devotion, it dares to imitate even the charity of God Himself. What is there in heaven or on earth which it does not embrace, and with so much facility, with so much gracefulness, as if there were scarcely an effort in it, or as if self was charmed away, and might not mingle to distract it?

*Roni. viii. t Heb. vi.

It is an exercise of the love of God, for it is loving those whom He loves, and loving them because He loves them, and to augment His glory, and multiply His praise. There are a hundred loves of God in this one love, as we should see if we reflected on those Holy Souls, and realized all that was implied in the final entry of a soul into everlasting bliss. It is love toward the Sacred Humanity, because it magnifies the copious Redemption of Jesus. It honors His merits, satisfactions, ordinances, and mysteries. It peoples His heaven, and it glorifies His Blood. It is filled with Jesus, with His spirit, with His work, with His power, with His victories. No less is it an exercise of love to our dearest Lady, as I have shown before; and to the angels and the saints. How abundant is its charity to the souls themselves, who cau exaggerate, whether we give them the good measure of all the Church tells us to do, and some spontaneous alms besides; or the full measure of all our satisfactions during lifetime, which are not by justice due elsewhere, as St. Gertrude gave them; or the measure shaken together, which adds all that shall be done for us when we are dead, like Father Monroy's heroic act of self-renunciation; or the measure running over, which heaps upon all the rest special works of love, such as promoting this devotion by conversations, sermons, and books, and by getting masses, commun ions, penances, indulgences, from others for them. All men living on the earth, even unconverted sinners, are included in it, because it swells the Church Triumphant, and so multiplies intercessors for us who are still warring upon earth, To ourselves also it is an exercise of charity, for it gains us friends in heaven; it earns mercy for us when we ourselves shall be in purgatory, tranquil victims, yet, oh, in what distress! and it augments our merits in the sight of God, and so, if only we persevere, our eternal recompense hereafter. Now if this tenderness for the dead is such an exercise of these three theological virtues, and if again even heroic sanctity consists principally in their exercise, what store ought we not to set upon this touching and beautiful devotion!

4. But a further excellence in this devotion is to be found in its effects upon the spiritual life. It would seem as if it were a devotion specially intended for interior souls. But the fact is, that it is so full of doctrine, and embodies so much that is supernatural, that we need not be surprised at the influence it exercises over the spiritual life. In the first place, it is a hidden work from first to last. We do not see the results, so that there is little food for vain glory; neither is it a devotion the exercise of which appears in any way before the eyes of others. It implies, moreover, an utter ignoring of self, by making away with our own satisfactions and indulgences, and keeping up a tender interest in an object which does not directly concern ourselves. It is not only for the glory of God, but it is for His greater glory, and for His sole glory. It leads us to think purely of souls, which it is very difficult to do in this material world, and to think of them too, simply as spouses of Jesus. We thus gain a habit of mind which is fatal to the spirit of the world and to the tyranny of human respect, while it goes far to couuteract the poison of self-love. The incessant thought of the Holy Souls keeps before us a continual image of suffering; and not of merely passive suffering, but of a joyful conformity to the will of God under it. Yet this is the very genius of the Gospel, the very atmosphere of holiness. Furthermore, it communicates to us as it were by sympathy the feelings of those Holy Souls, and so increases our trembling yet trustful devotion to the adorable purity of God; and as, except in the case of indulgences applied to the dead, it requires a state of grace to make satisfaction for the sins of others, it is a special act of the lay-priesthood of the members of Christ. The spirit of the devotion is one of pensiveness; and this is an antidote to frivolity and hardness, and tells wonderfully upon the affectionate character which belongs to high sanctity. And who can tell what will come, after patient years, of thus keeping constantly before our eyes a model of eagerness, unspeakable, patient eagerness, to be with our dearest Lord? Oh, what a wonderful thing is the life of a fervent Catholic! It is almost omnipotent, almost omnipresent; because it is not so much he who lives as Christ who liveth in him! Oh what is it we are touching and handling every day of our lives, all so full of supernatural vigor, of secret unction, of divine force, and yet we consider not, but waste intentions and trifle time away in the midst of this stupendous supernatural system of grace, as unreflecting almost as a stone imbedded in the earth and borne round unconsciously in its impetuous revolutions, day by day.

It seems useless to enumerate the various ways in which we may practise this devotion. They are sufficiently known to Catholics, and to enter upon them at any length would require a volume by itself. The adorable Sacrifice and indulgences will of course always be the principal means of extending our charity to the Departed; and of indulgenced devotions I propose to speak at length elsewhere. It were to be wished that the beautiful devotion of setting apart the month of November for the Holy Souls, in the same way as we consecrate the month of Mary to our dearest Lady, could become naturalized among us, and of universal observance. There are hardly any devotions in the Church which so suit our character and feelings in this country, as those for the souls in purgatory. Only in all our practices let us remember, 1. what little faults good men will have to expiate, and 2. how long the process is, where there can be no merit to abridge it or enhance the value of sufferings.

But while the selection of particular practices may safely be left to the devotion of each one, something should be said of the examples of the saints. On this subject they are, as might be expected, almost inexhaustible; neither am I going to burden you with many; but I should wish to illustrate and confirm the foregoing doctrine with the examples of holy persons. The Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great may be considered as the chief fountain of the devotion to the Holy Souls in all succeeding ages: and Father Peter Faber used to say that although St. Gregory was a Saint who should be loved and honored on many accounts, yet on none more than this, because (I use his own words) he had so lucidly and transparently handed down to us the doctrine of the purgatorial fire. For he thought that if St. Gregory had not told us so many things of the Holy Souls, the devotion of subsequent ages would have been much colder in their behalf: and so, when he preached this devotion himself, he used to propagate along with it a special devotion to St. Gregory.

While devotions for the dead have characterized most of the Saints in a very special manner; for St. Thomas tells us that charity is incomplete until it includes the dead as well as the living; nevertheless, there have been certain holy persons whose lives seem almost to have been set aside by God, in sacrifices of the most supernatural kind for the souls in Purgatory. Sister Josefa de Santa Inez, Augustiuianess of Beniganim, was one of these, and Sister Francesca, of Pampeluna, a Theresian nun, was another. They both seemed to live for that one object. They had continual communications with the departed souls. Their cells were often filled with them. That of Sister Inez was almost always set apart as the place of purgation for several. And in other respects also, the character of the sanctity of these two religious was exceedingly similar. In the subject-matter of purgatory we may with the less scruple make use of such revelations, from the example of so grave an authority as Cardinal Bellarmine himself, who, in his treatise on purgatory, as I have already said, adds always some private revelations as a distinct head of proof. For man}r reasons, I have preferred to take my example from the life of Sister Marie Denise de Martignat, of the Visitation, who died in the Convent at Annecy, in 1653; and I will not apologize for the length of my narrative, because one example exhibited at length will illustrate the subject better than scores of shorter anecdotes.

At the time when Madlle. de Martignat left the French court for that of Charles Emmanuel at Turin, there was a lady living in that capital who went by the name of Mere Ante'e. She had received a special attraction from the Holy Ghost to devote herself to the service of the souls in purgatory. She had now spent many years in this way, and forming an acquaintance with Madlle. de Martignat, she had obtained from God by her prayers, that Marie Denise should succeed her in her high office; and in fact her soul was the first which Marie Denise ever saw, coming out of Purgatory after a detention of five hours there for not following inspirations she had had about certain good works. The M&re Antge had told her she was ultimately to be a nun, as St. Francis of Sales had also hinted to her at Paris years before, and in due time it was arranged that she should join the convent of the Visitation at Annecy. She was accompanied on her journey by a multitude of the Holy Souls, whose presence was so sensible to her that she never perceived the passage of the Mont Cenis, so absorbed was she in her intercourse with them. At the prayers of the Mere Antee, Marie Denise had received a powerful and mysterious grace, while praying before the Holy Winding Sheet at Turin, by which she had immense power over the souls in purgatory; and all her first years in Annecy were filled with practices on their behalf. They disclosed many things to her; as, for example, when she was infirmarian they told her there was no place where there were so many devils, or where they were so active, as in an infirmary, because it is there that the soul fights its last battle for eternity.

She was continually accompanied by them, and their presence was sensible to her. She told the Superioress that so far from being afraid, she was as much at her ease amid a troop of these souls as when with her sisters in community; and that she found more profit for her soul in conversation with them than with the living. She obtained as many indulgenced medals as she could, and at recreation she was always eloquently preaching this her favorite devotion. Her Superioress once expressed a wish to be visited by a soul from purgatory, if the visit would make her more humble and more acceptable to God. Marie Denise replied, " Truly, my dear mother, if such is your courage and your desire, let us pray our Lord to grant it you." The Superioress having consented, she was astonished that same evening at receiving a mysterious sign from a suffering soul, who from that moment became her frequent visitor. Several of the community slept in the Superioress's room, and were eye and ear witnesses of these visits: and this continued for seven entire months. At the end of this time, Marie Denise told the Superioress that the continuance in the pains of purgatory, of such a soul as the one who had visited her, would teach her how much longer souls are detained in that suffering than she had supposed before; and this for four reasons; first, because of the inconceivable purity which the soul must have before it can present itself before Him who is essential sanctity and purity, and who receives no one into His glorious city who is not as pure as the city itself. Secondly, because of the innumerable multitude of venial faults which we commit in this life, and the little pen-mice which we do for the mortal sins we have confessed. Thirdly, because of the inability of these souls to help themselves; and, fourthly, because of the lukewarmness and negligence of the greater part of Christians in praying and doing good works for these souls, as the dead fade from the memory of the living almost as soon as they have vanished from their eyes; while true charity will follow those it loves, through the flames of purgatory till the joys of Paradise.

The feast of our Lady of Angels was a day on which Marie Denise generally obtained the liberation of many souls from purgatory. Once after communion on that day, she felt a strong interior movement, as if our Lord was taking her soul out of her body, and leading her to the shore of purgatory. There He pointed out to her the soul of a powerful prince who had been killed in a duel, but to whom God had given the grace to make an act of contrition before he breathed his last; and she was ordered to pray for him especially. She did this for nine years and three months, and even gave her life in sacrifice for his soul, and yet he was not freed. She was so overcome by this vision of his soul, that the Superioress perceived that something extraordinary had happened to her. She related the vision, and added, " Yes, my dear mother! I have seen that soul in purgatory; but, alas! who shall deliver it? Perhaps it will not come out till the day of judgment. Oh, my mother!" she continued, weeping, " how good is God in His justice! How has this prince followed the spirit of the world and the lights of the flesh! How little anxiety has he had for his soul, and how little devotion in the use of the sacraments! " The effect of this vision, and of her penances for this soul, had such an effect on her bodily health, that the Superioress remonstrated with her on the subject; but she replied, that she must now suffer incessantly, as she had offered herself to God in order to procure some alleviation of pain for that poor soul. "And yet, my dear mother, I am not so much moved at the lamentable state of suffering in which 1 have seen his soul, as I am struck with wonder at the blessed moment of grace which accomplished his salvation. That happy instant seems to me an outflow of the infinity of God's goodness, sweetness, and love. The action in which he died, deserved hell. It was no attention to God on his own part which won from heaven that precious moment of grace. It was an effect of the communion of saints, by the participation which he had in the prayers that were made for him. The Divine Omnipotence lovingly allowed itself to be turned by some good soul, and in that grace acted beyond its wont. Ah! my dear mother! henceforth we must teach all the world to beg of God, our Blessed Lady, and the saints, that final instant of grace and mercy for the hour of death, and also to pave the way for it by good works; because though our Lord may sometimes derogate from His ordinary providence, we must never presume on that privilege in our own case. There were many fights in Israel, but the sun never stood still except for Josue, nor went back except for Ezekias. A million souls have been lost in the very action in which the prince was saved. He had but one instant of life in the free possession of his mind, in order to co-operate with the precious moment of grace; that moment inspired him with a real contrition, which enabled him to make an act of true final repentance." The Superioress objecting to this view, the good sister answered, " My dear mother! as the prince had not lost the faith, he was like a match ready to take fire; so that when the spark of merciful grace touched the Christian centre of his soul, the fire of charity was kindled, and brought forth a saving act. God made use of the instinct which we naturally have to invoke our First Causa when we are in urgent peril of losing the life which we hold from Him; and thus He touched the prince, and drew him to have recourse to efficacious grace. Divine grace is more active than we can even conceive. We cannot wink our eyes as quickly as God can do His work in the soul where He seeks co-operation; and the moment in which the soul makes its act of co-operation with grace is almost as brief as the one in which it receives it; and in this the soul experiences how admirably it has been created in the image and likeness of God." The Superioress seeing into what mysterious depths Marie Denise was about to plunge, interrupted her by remarking, that God had busied Himself fort}- years with the children of Israel, and even then they were not converted from their evil ways. True, my dear mother, replied the sister, but then He swore in His wrath that His hardened people should not enter into His rest. Victorious grace only required a moment to strike down St. Paul, and to triumph over his heart. The judgments and conduct of God are abysses, which it does not belong to us to fathom; but of one thing I can assure you, that if it had not been for that one blessed moment of grace, the soul of the prince would have descended into the lowest hell; and since the devil has been a devil, he has, perhaps, never been more disappointed in his expectation than in losing that prey. For he had known nothing of the interior occupation of his victim in those few seconds which the Divine Goodness accorded him after his mortal wound."

Language almost fails to describe the sufferings both of mind and body which Marie Denise went through for the alleviation of this soul. Mere de Chaugy devotes a whole chapter to them, and they are quite equal to those which are read of any of the saints. After a long martyrdom of this kind, it pleased God that she should see in a vision the suffering soul of the prince, slightly raised above the bottom of the burning abyss, and in a capacity of being delivered somewhat before the day of judgment, and also that an abbreviation of some feiv hours of his purgatory had been granted. She begged Mother de Chatel to pray for him; and that good mother, consenting to do so, could not refrain from expressing her surprise that Marie Denise had only spoken of an abridgment of a few hours; but the sister replied, " Ah! my mother, it is a great thing that the Divine Mercy has begun to allow itself to be influenced; time has not the same measure in the other life which it has in this; years of sadness, weariness, poverty, and severe illnesses in this world are not to be compared with the one single hour of the sufferings of the poor souls in purgatory! " It would take me too long to relate all the communications our Lord vouchsafed to make to her about the state of that soul. It came at last to this, that she offered her life for his simple alleviation, not deliverance, and it was accepted. Not long before her death, when the superioress was expressing herself to the effect that surely by this time the soul was free, Marie Denise said, with great warmth, " O mother! many years and many suffrages are needed yet; " and at last she died, and yet there was no word that the prince was delivered even by that heroic sacrifice crowning upward of nine years of suffering, prayers, masses, communions, and indulgences, not on her part only, but through her on the part of many others also. What a long commentary might be written upon all this! But hearts that love God will comment on it for themselves. Blessed be His most glorious Majesty for its insatiable purity.

One word more. Among the sorrows of kind hearts there is one which seems as if it grew greater in each succeeding generation of the world. It is the enormous growth of poverty and wretchedness, and our own inability to relieve it. There is hardly one among us who has not felt this. So overwhelming is the misery, that those who have little to give feel the pain as much as those who have nothing, and those who have much to give almost more. For giving opens a man's heart, and makes him love to give, and those who have more to give know best how little it is com- 28 pared with the necessity. Yet, this yearning to give alms comes from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and it must be satisfied; and how can we better satisfy it thaif by giving alms to those who need it most, the Holy Souls in Purgatory? And we can all do this. And how much might we do, even for our dear poor on earth, if we commended their cause to the souls whom God allows us to liberate, and made a sweet bargain with them that when once in the free air of heaven, their first homage and salutation over, they should pray for an abundant outpouring of grace upon rich men, that their hearts might be opened like the hearts of the first Christians, to deny themselves, and to feast the poor of Christ?

This doctrine of purgatory, and the marvellous powers put into the hands of devotion for the Holy Souls, prove more than any thing else how God has contrived all things for love, all things to show love of us, all things to win for Himself His creatures' love. No less does the neglect of this devotion illustrate the ingratitude and waywardness with which we repay God's love, and which is as wonderful as that love itself. How touchingly beautiful was the description which God vouchsafed to give of Himself, and His pursuit of souls, to St. Gertrude! " Just as a poor invalid," said He, " who cannot walk, having with difficulty got himself carried into the sunshine, to be a little cheered by the warmth, sees a storm come on suddenly, and has to wait, patient but disappointed, for bright skies again, — so am I. My love for you conquers Me, and compels Me to choose to dwell with you amid the violent tempest of your sinSt hoping for the calm of your amendment, and for the quiet harbor of your humility at last." Well may we cry out with St. Catherine of Genoa, " O Lord! if I could but know the cause of Thy so great and pure love of rational creatures! " But our Lord answered her, "My love is infinite, and I cannot help loving what I have created. The cause of My love is nothing but love itself; and seeing you cannot understand it, be at peace; and do not seek what you will never find! Whereupon the saint exclaimed, " O Love! he who feels you understands you not, and he who wishes to understand you cannot know you! "

I should only be repeating what I have already said elsewhere, if I were to draw out in detail the various ways in which this devotion promotes our three ends, the glory of God, the interests of Jesus, and the salvation of souls. In fact, the peculiarity of this devotion is its fullness. It is all quickened with supernatural life and power. It teems with doctrine. It reaches everywhere, and has to do with every thing. We are always touching some hidden spring in it, which goes further than we intended, and effects more than we hoped. It is as if all the threads of God's glory were gathered up into it and fastened there, and that when one is touched, all vibrate, and make melody to God, part of that sweet song which the Sacred Human Heart of Jesus is singing ever, in the Bosom of the most compassionate Trinity.

Footnotes

1. Opere, i. 710. ↩

2. Suppl. 3. Part. q. 71. art. 5. ad. 3. ↩

3. Isaias, liii. 11. ↩

4. Heb. x. and xi. ↩