BY BROTHER AZARIAS.
Mary, from her nearness to Jesus, has imbibed many traits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She shares, in a preeminent degree, His Divine compassion for sorrow and suffering. Where He loves and pities, she also loves and pities. Nay, may we not well say that all enduring anguish of soul and writhing under the pangs of a lacerated heart, are especially dear to both Jesus and Mary? Was not Jesus the Man of Sorrows? and did He not constitute Mary the Mother of suffering and sorrowing humanity? And even as His Divine breast knew keenest sorrow, did not a sword of sorrow pierce her soul? She participated in the agony of Jesus only as such a Mother can share the agony of such a Son; in the tenderest manner, therefore, does she commiserate sorrow and suffering wherever found. Though now far beyond all touch of pain and misery, still as the devoted Mother of a pain-stricken race, she continues to watch, to shield, to aid and to strengthen her children in their wrestlings with these mysterious visitants.
II.
Nor does Mary's interest cease upon this side of the grave. It accompanies souls beyond. And when she beholds those souls undergoing their final purgation, before entering upon the enjoyment of the beatific vision, she pities them with a pity all the more heartfelt because their suffering is so much greater than any they could have endured in this life. See the state of those souls. They are in grace and favor with God; they are burning with love for Him; they are yearning, with a yearning boundless in its intensity, to drink refreshment of life, and love, and sanctification, and to be replenished with goodness and truth, and to perfect their natures at the Fountain-head of all truth, all goodness, all love, and all perfection. They are yearning; but so clearly and piercingly does the white light of God's truth and God's holiness shine through them and penetrate every fold and recess of their moral natures, and reveal to them every slightest imperfection, that they dare not approach Him and gratify their intense desire to be united with Him. Their weaknesses and imperfections; the traces in them of, and the attachments in them to, former sins, incident upon the frailties of feeble human nature, still cling to them, and must needs be consumed in the fiery ordeal of suffering before their enjoyment of the beatific vision can be completed and their union with the Godhead consummated.
III.
That there should be for souls after death such a state of purgation is all within the grasp of human reason. It is a doctrine that was taught in the remotest ages of the world. Here is a condensed version of the tradition as handed down in clearest terms, beautifully expressed by one of the world's greatest thinkers and writers: "All things are distinctly manifest in the soul after it has been divested of the body; and this is true both of the natural disposition of the soul and of the affections that the man has acquired from his various pursuits. When therefore the soul comes before the Judge … the Judge finds all things distorted through pride and falsehood and whatsoever is unrighteous, for as much as the soul has been nurtured with untruth … and he forthwith sends it to a prison state where it will undergo the punishment it deserves. But it behooveth that he that is punished, if he be justly punished, either become better and receive benefit from his punishment, or become a warning to others…. But whoso are benefited … are such as have been guilty of curable transgressions; their benefit here and hereafter [1] accrues to them through pains and torments; for it is impossible to get rid of injustice by other manner of means." This reads like a page torn from one of the early Fathers of the Church. [2] More than five centuries before the Christian era it was penned by Plato. [3] Clearly does he draw the line between eternal punishment for unrepented crimes and temporal punishment for curable Idmpa trangressions. Virgil in no uncertain tone echoes the same doctrine, making no exception to the rule that some corporeal stains and traces of ill follow all beyond the grave; and therefore do they suffer punishment and pay the penalty of old wrongs. [4] What antiquity has handed down, and reason has found to be just and proper, the Church has defined and decreed. She has gone further. She has supplemented and completed the pagan conception of expiation by that of intercession; and she has added thereto, for the comfort and consolation of the living and the dead, that the souls so suffering "may be helped by the suffrages of the faithful, but principally by the acceptable Sacrifice of the Altar." [5] And in her prayers for deceased friends, relatives and benefactors, she is mindful of Mary's sweet influence with her Son, and asks their deliverance through her intercession. [6]
[Footnote 1: Kai enthude kai en Aidou]
[Footnote 2: There is a passage in Clement of Alexandria, not unlike this in statement of the same doctrine ("Stromaton" 1. vi. m. 14, p. 794 Ed. Potter). The passage is quoted in "Faith of Catholics." Vol. Ill p. 142.]
[Footnote 3: Gorgias, cap. lxxx, lxxxi.]
[Footnote 4: Æneid, lib. vi. 735, 740.]