Purgatory: Doctrinal, Historical, and Poetical

by Mrs. J. Sadlier

You see that praying for the dead was not a devotion cautiously recommended by some obscure or visionary writer, but an act of religion preached and inculcated by all the great Doctors and Fathers of the Church, who are the recognized expounders of the Christian religion.

You see them, too, inculcating this doctrine not as a cold and abstract principle, but as an imperative act of daily piety, and embodying it in their ordinary exercises of devotion.

They prayed for the dead in their morning and evening devotions. They prayed for them in their daily office, and in the sacrifice of the Mass. They asked the prayers of the congregation for the souls of the deceased, in the public services of Sunday. And on the monuments which were erected to the dead, some of which are preserved even to this day, epitaphs were inscribed, earnestly invoking for their souls the prayers of the living. How gratifying it is to our Catholic hearts, that a devotion so soothing to afflicted spirits is, at the same time, so firmly grounded on the tradition of ages.

That the practice of praying for the dead has descended from apostolic times is also evident from the Liturgus of the Church. A Liturgy is the established form of public worship, containing the authorized prayers of the Church. The Missal, or Mass-book, for instance, which you see on our altars, contains a portion of the Liturgy of the Catholic Church. The principal Liturgies are: The Liturgy of St. James the Apostle, who founded the Church of Jerusalem; the Liturgy of St. Mark the Evangelist, founder of the Church of Alexandria, and the Liturgy of St. Peter, who established the Church in Rome. These Liturgies are called after the Apostles who compiled them. There are, besides, the Liturgies of St. Chrysostom and St. Basil, which are chiefly based on that of St. James.

Now, all these Liturgies, without an exception, have prayers for the dead, and their providential preservation serves as another triumphant vindication of the venerable antiquity of this Catholic doctrine.

The Eastern and the Western churches were happily united until the fourth and fifth centuries, when the heresiarchs Arius, Nestorius and Eutyches withdrew millions of souls from the centre of unity. The followers of these sects were called, after their founders, Arians, Nestorians, and Eutychians, and from that day to the present the two latter bodies have formed distinct communions, being separated from the Catholic Church in the East, just as the Protestant churches are separated from her in the West.

The Greek Schismatic Church, of which the present Russo-Greek Church is the offspring, severed her connection with the See of Rome in the ninth century.

But in leaving the Catholic Church, these Eastern sects retained the old Liturgies, which they use to this day….

During my sojourn in Rome, at the Ecumenical Council, I devoted a great deal of my leisure time to the examination of the various Liturgies of the Schismatic churches of the East. I found in all of them formulas of prayers for the dead almost identical with that of the Roman Missal: "Remember, O Lord, Thy servants who are gone before us with the sign of faith, and sleep in peace. To these, O Lord, and to all who rest in Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, a place of refreshment, light, and peace, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Not content with studying their books, I called upon the Oriental Patriarchs and Bishops in communion with the See of Rome, who belong to the Armenian, the Chaldean, the Coptic, the Maronite, and Syriac rites. They all assured me that the Schismatic Christians of the East among whom they live have, without exception, prayers and sacrifices for the dead.