Reader, take the story as it passed, thus: [1] A devout religious man, in his return from Jerusalem, meets with a holy hermit in Sicily; he assures him that he often heard the devils complain that souls were so soon discharged of their torments by the devout prayers of the monks of Cluny, who never ceased to pour out their prayers for them. This the good man carries to Odilo, then Abbot of Cluny; he praises God for His great mercy in vouchsafing to hear the innocent prayers of his monks; and presently takes occasion to command all the monasteries of his Order, to keep yearly the commemoration of All Souls, next after the feast of All Saints, a custom which, by degrees, grew into such credit, that the Catholic Church thought fit to establish it all over the Christian world; to the incredible benefit of poor souls, and singular increase of God's glory. For who can sum up the infinite number of souls who have been freed out of Purgatory by this invention? or who can express the glory which accrued to this good Abbot, who thus fortunately made himself procurator-general of the suffering Church, and furnished her people with such a considerable supply of necessary relief, to alleviate the insupportable burthen of their sufferings?
[Footnote 1: Sigeb. in Chron. An. 998.]
St. Bernard would triumph when he had to deal with heretics that denied this privilege of communicating our suffrages and prayers to the souls in Purgatory. And with what fervor he would apply himself to this charitable employment of relieving poor souls, may appear by the care he took for good Humbertus, though he knew him to have lived and died in his monastery so like a Saint, that he could scarce find out the fault in him which might deserve the least punishment in the other world; unless it were to have been too rigorous to himself, and too careless of his health: which in a less spiritual eye than that of St. Bernard, might have passed for a great virtue. But it is worth your hearing, that which he relates of blessed St. Malachy, who died in his very bosom. This holy Bishop, as he lay asleep, hears a sister of his, lately dead, making lamentable moan, that for thirty days together she had not eaten so much as a bit of bread. He starts up out of his sleep; and, taking it to be more than a dream, he concludes the meaning of the vision was to tell him, that just thirty days were now past since he had said Mass for her; as probably believing she was already where she had no need of his prayers…. Howsoever, this worthy prelate so plied his prayers after this, that he soon sent his sister out of Purgatory; and it pleased God to let him see, by the daily change of her habit, how his prayers had purged her by degrees, and made her fit company for the Angels and Saints in heaven. For, the first day, she was covered all over with black cypress; the next, she appeared in a mantle something whitish, but a dusky color; but the third day, she was seen all clad in white, which is the proper livery of the Saints….
This for St. Bernard. But I cannot let pass in silence one very remarkable passage, which happened to these two great servants of God. St. Malachy had passionately desired to die at Clarvallis, [1] in the hands of the devout St. Bernard; and this, on the day immediately before All Souls' Day; and it pleased God to grant him his request. It fell out, then, that while St. Bernard was saying Mass for him, in the middle of Mass it was revealed to him that St. Malachy was already glorious in heaven; whether he had gone straight out of this world, or whether that part of St. Bernard's Mass had freed him out of Purgatory, is uncertain; but St. Bernard, hereupon, changed his note; for, having begun with a Requiem, he went on with the Mass of a bishop and confessor, to the great astonishment of all the standers-by.
[Footnote 1: Clairvaux.]
St. Thomas of Aquin, that great champion of Purgatory, gave God particular thanks at his death, for not only delivering a soul out of Purgatory, at the instance of his prayers, but also permitting the same soul to be the messenger of so good news. (Pp. 169-174.)
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And now, we are come down to the fifteenth age, where the Fathers of the Council of Florence, both Greeks and. Latins, with one consent, declare the same faith and constant practice of the Church, thus handed down to them from age to age, since Christ and His Apostles' time, as we have seen; viz., that the souls in Purgatory are not only relieved, but translated into heaven, by the prayers, sacrifices, alms, and other charitable works, which are offered up for them according to the custom of the Catholic Church. Nor did their posterity degenerate, or vary the least, from this received doctrine, until Luther's time; when the holy Council of Trent thought fit again to lay down the sound doctrine of the Church, in opposition to all our late sectaries. And I wish all Catholics were but as forward to lend their helping hands to lift souls out of Purgatory, as they are to believe they have the power to do it; and that we had not often more reason than the Roman Emperor to pronounce the day lost; since we let so many days pass over our heads, and so many fair occasions slip out of our hands, without easing, or releasing, any souls out of Purgatory, when we might do it with so much ease. (P. 175.)