But, oh! the agony, oh! the desolateness, to be cut off from the sweet guerdon of immediate release! Oh! the pain of expiating every fault, measure for measure! Oh, the grief of knowing that my own deeds were the chains of my captivity, and my unfulfilled duties the barriers that withheld me from beholding the Beatific Vision!
Sometimes a gracious face would gleam through the mist—a face so tender, so human, so full of love, that I yearned to hear it speak to me, to have those radiant eyes turned on me. My companions called her "Mary!" and I knew it was the Virgin of Nazareth. Often she would call them by name, and say: "My child, my Son bids thee come home."
Why had I never known this gentle Mother! Why could I not catch her mantle, and clinging to it, pass from waiting to fulfilment!
Once when I had grown grief-bowed with waiting, worn with longing, I saw again the vision of the Church. At a long railing knelt many young girls, and they received at the hands of the priest what I had learned to discern as the Body of the Lord. One—God bless her tender heart!— whispered as she knelt: "O dearest Lord, I offer to Thee this Holy Communion for the soul that has no one to pray for her."
And through the grayness rang at last my name, and straight to heaven I went, ransomed by that mighty price, freed by prayer from prison.
O you who live, who have voices and hearts, for the sake of Christ and His Holy Mother; by the love you bear your living, and the grief you give your dead, pray for those whose friends do not know how to help them; for the suddenly killed; for the executed criminal; and for those who, having suffered long in Purgatory, need one more prayer to set them free.—Ave Maria, November 10, 1883.
THE STORY OF THE FAITHFUL SOUL.
Founded on an old French Legend.
ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER.
The fettered spirits linger In purgatorial pain,
With penal fires effacing
Their last faint earthly stain,
Which Life's imperfect sorrow
Had tried to cleanse in vain.