Prayer.
Release, O Lord, etc., etc.
Tenth Day.
In the fulness of time the divine Saviour Jesus Christ appeared on earth. While disowning in His teaching all the false theories and erroneous traditions of Scribes and Pharisees, while condemning with the greatest precision their errors on the subject of death and resurrection, He never uttered one syllable against the general belief in purgatory, or against the public practice of praying for the dead. On the contrary He left it just as it existed under the Old Law. Could the Son of God, Who had come down to make known the will of His Father, have acted thus if this were not a holy, just, and pious custom? The Redeemer did not find it necessary to give lengthy proofs of the existence of this place of punishment. It was enough to simply remind the people of it. For, in truth, He addressed [pg 447] a people who had never entertained the smallest doubt on the subject. In one of His sermons He unmistakably alludes to purgatory, where He speaks of a prison from which no one can be delivered except on the payment of the full debt. What other prison but purgatory can here be meant? Heaven cannot be meant, and out of hell there is no redemption. The Gospels have preserved another saying of the Son of God which presupposes the existence of purgatory: “And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the world to come.” There are, then, sins which can be atoned for in the next world.
Prayer.
Release, O Lord, etc., etc.
Eleventh Day.
With regard to the doctrine of purgatory the apostles taught as their divine Master did. St. Paul says: “For other foundation no man can lay but that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be manifest; for the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide, which he hath built thereon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work burn he shall suffer loss: but he himself [pg 448] shall be saved, but so as by fire.”—1 Cor. iii. 12. He who appears before the Judgment Seat of God with works still stained and imperfect, will reach indeed his happy end, but not before those stains and imperfections have been cleared away by a process which is like unto the crucible of fire. The fire which the Apostle speaks of cannot be the fire of tribulation, or the sufferings of this life; for he speaks of a fire which burns on the Judgment Day; that is, after this life. Again, it cannot mean the mere ordeal of the Judgment, because here the soul is not only tried, but also burns and suffers from the burning. Nor can it mean the fire of hell, because he who burns in the fire will come out of it and be saved, which cannot be said of those in hell. The Apostle could only have had the fire of purgatory in view—that fire which burns for the purification of souls not quite spotless, and which will continue until the Day of General Judgment.