[Footnote 118]
[Footnote 118: The month of November is usually set apart by pious Catholics for commemoration of the souls in purgatory, and for prayers and offerings in their behalf. As specially befitting the season, therefore, we republish anew the beautiful Treatise on Purgatory by St. Catharine of Genoa, with the above prefatory remarks by the translator. There have been several translations of the treatise heretofore published, and it might seem a needless work to give another. But besides its appropriateness to the season, and that many will read it in the pages of The Catholic World who might not elsewhere see it, the new translation we now give has special merits of its own which will justify its publication.—ED. C. W.]
When the gates of purgatory opened to Dante and his companion with awful thunderous roar, he heard mingling with the sound a chorus of voices—"We praise thee, O God!"—rising and fading away like a solemn chant and sound of the organ under the arches of some vast cathedral.
And afterward, while pursuing their journey, they felt the whole mountain of purgatory tremble. A shout arose—"Glory be to God in the Highest!"—swelled by the voice of every suffering soul in that vast realm. It was the expression of universal, unselfish joy over the deliverance of one soul from its bounds.
Such are the tones that ring all through the Treatise on Purgatory by St. Catharine of Genoa—full of praise, of holy joy, and of unselfish love. It ought to be read beneath the mild eyes of the Madonna in some old church, to the sound of solemn music. If you do not meet in it the dazzling angels of the great Florentine poet, you feel their presence, and you rejoice like him in the nooks of beauty where "spring sweet, pale flowers of penitence," refreshed by the fragrant dews of God's mercy.
The patient, silent suffering of the tried souls she describes, which are living on the glimpse they had of the divine Splendor at the moment of death, is full of eloquence. They suffer intensely, but peace and joy rise above pain, as in the beautiful bay of Spezia, we are told, the sweet water rises up out of the salt and bitter sea.
While reading this production of genius and of inspiration, we no longer shrink from that dark region, lighted up, as it is, by rays of God's wonderful goodness. With St. Catharine, we regard it as a provision of great mercy which the soul gladly avails itself of as a means of purification, which will fit it for the awful presence of him in whose sight the very stars are not pure—a presence the soul could not endure till it had purged "the world's gross darkness off." As Faber says, "The moment that in his sight it perceives its own unfitness for heaven, it wings its voluntary flight to purgatory, like a dove to her proper nest in the shades of the forest." It cries:
"Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be,
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There, motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn,
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain,
Until the morn.
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb, and pine, and languish, till possessed
Of its sole peace.
There will I sing my absent Lord and Love:—
Take me away,
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see him in the truth of everlasting day." [Footnote 119]
[Footnote 119: Dream of Gerontius, by Father Newman.]