ST. JOSEPH'S INTERCESSION FOR THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED.
(From "Le Propagateur de la Devotion a Saint Joseph.")
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES says: "We do not often enough remember our dead, our faithful departed." Thus the Church, like a good mother, recalls to us the thought of the dead when we have forgotten them, and therefore she consecrates the month of November to the memory of the dead. This pious and salutary practice of praying for an entire month for the dead takes its rise from the earliest ages of the Church. The custom of mourning thirty days for the dead existed amongst the Jews. The practice of saying thirty Masses on thirty consecutive days was established by St. Gregory, and Innocent XI. enriched it with indulgences. "God has made known to me," says the venerable sister Marie Denise de Martignat, "that a devotion to the death of St. Joseph obtains many graces for those who are agonizing, and that, as St. Joseph did not at once pass into heaven—because Jesus Christ had not opened its gates—but descended into Limbo, it is a most useful devotion for the agonizing, and for the souls in Purgatory, to offer to God the resignation of St. Joseph when he was dying and about to leave Jesus and Mary in this world, and to honor the holy patience of this great Saint waiting calmly in Limbo until Easter-day, when Jesus Christ, risen and glorious, released him." And if St. Joseph consoles the souls in Purgatory, none will be so dear to him as those who were devout to him in life, and zealous in spreading a devotion to him.