In the Special Announcement of the "Messenger of St. Joseph's Union" for 1885-6, we find the following interesting remarks in relation to the devotion to the Souls in Purgatory: "St. Gregory the Great, speaking of Purgatory, calls it 'a penitential fire harder to endure than all the tribulations of this world.' St. Augustine says that the torment of fire alone endured by the holy souls in Purgatory, exceeds all the tortures inflicted on the martyrs; and St. Thomas says that there is no difference between the fire of Hell and that of Purgatory. Prayer for the souls in Purgatory is a source of great blessings to ourselves. It is related of a holy religious who had for a long time struggled in vain to free himself from an impure temptation, and who appealed earnestly to the Blessed Virgin to deliver him, that she appeared to him and commanded him to pray earnestly for the souls in Purgatory. He did so, and from that time the temptation left him. The duration of the period of confinement in Purgatory is probably much longer than we are inclined to think. We find by the Revelations of Sister Francesca of Pampeluna that the majority of souls in Purgatory with whose sufferings she was made acquainted, were detained there for a period extending from thirty to sixty years; and, as many of those of whom she speaks were holy Carmelites, some of whom had even wrought miracles when on earth, what must be the fate of poor worldlings who seldom think of gaining an indulgence either for themselves or their departed friends and relatives? Father Faber commenting on this subject—the length of time that the holy souls are detained in Purgatory—says very justly: 'We are apt to leave off too soon praying for our parents, friends, or relatives, imagining with a foolish and unenlightened esteem for the holiness of their lives, that they are freed from Purgatory much sooner than they really are.' Can the holy souls in Purgatory assist us by their prayers? Most assuredly. St. Liguori says: 'Though the souls in Purgatory are unable to pray or merit for themselves, they can obtain by prayer many favors for those who pray for them on earth.' St. Catherine of Bologna has assured us that she obtained many favors by the prayers of the holy souls in Purgatory which she had asked in vain through the intercession of the saints. The Holy Ghost says: 'He who stoppeth his ear against the cry of the poor, shall also cry himself and shall not be heard,' and St. Vincent Ferrer says, in expounding that passage, that the holy souls in Purgatory cry to God for justice against those who on earth refuse to help them by their prayers, and that God will most assuredly hear their cry. Let us, therefore, do all in our power to relieve the holy souls in Purgatory, and avert from ourselves the punishment that God is sure to inflict on those whose faith is too dead, or whose hearts are too cold to heed the cry that rises, day and night, from that sea of fire: 'Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you my friends!'" Job xix. 21.
PURGATORY.
CHATEAUBRIAND.
That the doctrine of Purgatory opens to the Christian poet a source of the marvellous which was unknown to antiquity will be readily admitted. [1] Nothing, perhaps, is more favorable to the inspiration of the muse than this middle state of expiation between the region of bliss and that of pain, suggesting the idea of a confused mixture of happiness and of suffering. The graduation of the punishments inflicted on those souls that are more or less happy, more or less brilliant, according to their degree of proximity to an eternity of joy or of woe, affords an impressive subject for poetic description. In this respect, it surpasses the subjects of heaven and hell, because it possesses a future which they do not.
[Footnote 1: Some trace of this dogma is to be found in Plato and in the doctrine of Zeno. (See Diog. Laer.) The poets also appear to have had some idea of it (Æneid, v. vi), but these notions are all vague and inconsequent.]
The river Lethe was a graceful appendage of the ancient Elysium; but it cannot be said that the shades which came to life again on its banks exhibited the same poetical progress in the way to happiness that we behold in the souls of Purgatory. When they left the abodes of bliss to reappear among men, they passed from a perfect to an imperfect state. They re-entered the ring for the fight. They were born again to undergo a second death. In short, they came forth to see what they had already seen before. Whatever can be measured by the human mind is necessarily circumscribed. We may admit, indeed, that there was something striking and true in the circle by which the ancients symbolized eternity; but it seems to us that it fetters the imagination by confining it always within a dreaded enclosure. The straight line extended ad infinitum would, perhaps, be more expressive, because it would carry our thoughts into a world of undefined realities, and would bring together three things which appear to exclude each other—hope, mobility, eternity.
The apportionment of the punishment to the sin is another source of invention which is found in the purgatorial state, and is highly favorable to the sentimental…. If violent winds, raging fires, and icy cold, lend their influence to the torments of hell, why may not milder sufferings be derived from the song of the nightingale, from the fragrance of flowers, from the murmur of the brook, or from the moral affections themselves? Homer and Ossian tell us of the joy of grief aruerou tetarpo mesthagolo.
Poetry finds its advantage also in that doctrine of Purgatory which teaches us that the prayers and other good works of the faithful may obtain the deliverance of souls from their temporal pains. How admirable is this intercourse between the living son and the deceased father—between the mother and daughter—between husband and wife— between life and death. What affecting considerations are suggested by this tenet of religion! My virtue, insignificant being as I am, becomes the common property of Christians; and, as I participate in the guilt of Adam, so also the good that I possess passes to the good of others. Christian poets! the prayers of your Nisus will be felt, in their happy effects, by some Euryalus beyond the grave. The rich, whose charity you describe, may well share their abundance with the poor, for the pleasure which they take in performing this simple and grateful act will receive its regard from the Almighty in the release of their parents from the expiatory flame. What a beautiful feature in our religion to impel the heart of man to virtue by the power of love, and to make him feel that the very coin which gives bread for the moment to an indigent fellow-being, entitles, perhaps, some rescued soul to an eternal position at the table of the Lord. [1]
[Footnote 1: "Genius of Christianity." Book II., Chap. xv. pp. 338- 340.]