The Viaticum, the bread of life, is denied to the passing soul, and the draught of comfort of devout prayer withheld from the beloved in the fires of expiation; but the tombstone will be considered with loving thought, and erected over the insensible dust.
The Old Faith shows a profound knowledge of and tenderness for the mere human side in its hour of anguish, even while providing for the paramount needs of the soul. There is one, one only comfort for the bereaved—to be able to help still, and of that they are deprived.
“It isn’t as if I could do any good,” said poor Mrs. Adam, when she turned away from her husband’s deathbed.
She had the power to do such infinite good if she had only known it. What prayer could be so far-reaching as that of the cry of the wife for the chosen one, from whom God alone reserved Himself the right to part her? What act of resignation could be so meritorious as that of her who was making the sacrifice of her all?
“I sent down to tell them to ring the passing-bell,” said the widow. She was eager to accomplish every detail of respectful ceremony that had been left to her.
The passing-bell! Touching institution of the ages of belief, the call for prayers for the soul in its last struggle, the summons to friend and stranger, kindly neighbour and stray passer-by, the cry of the mother for the last alms for her child!
“Oh,” exclaimed our daughter that night, reflecting on these things, “my heart burns when I think how the poor have been robbed of their faith!”
And the mighty lesson which the ancient Church taught by her attitude to the dying is that by calmly turning the eyes of the faithful towards the need for preparation, the duty of warning the sick in time, the immeasurable gain of the last Sacraments as compared to the loss of an unfounded earthly hope, she is giving the only possible comfort alike to the living and the dying; she is placing within reach of the mourners just the one factor that makes their grief bearable—the power of being of use.
Mrs. MacComfort, our Irish cook, who is as near a saint herself as one can ever hope to meet, said to us, the tears brimming in her soft eyes: “Oh, doesn’t it make us feel ashamed of ourselves when we see what our holy religion is, and how little we live up to it!”
And, indeed, that our poor fellow-countrymen are so good without these helps is at once a wonder and a rebuke to us. Mrs. Adam made her sacrifice with a most touching submission: “God must know best.”