"Oh, my friends, let us pray much, and let obtain many prayers from others, for the poor dead; the good God will render us
back the good we do to them a hundredfold. Ah! if every one knew how useful this devotion to the holy souls in purgatory is
to those who practice it, they would not be forgotten so often; the good God regards all that we do for them as if it were done to Himself."
-- St. John Mary Vianney (Blessed Sacrament Book, Fr. Francis X. Lasance)
The Church is ever solicitous for the dead. The souls of her faithful departed are always a source of anxious care for her, and she neglects no opportunity to raise her voice in their behalf. Hardly has the soul left the body when the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the sublimest offering she can make, is sent up to Heaven's chancery in its behalf. Again on the third and on the seventh after the demise her liturgy prescribes a special remembrance. Thirty days and then comes the Month's Mind. Each recurring year brings its solemn anniversary, an throughout the year to nearly all of her prayers is added the supplication: "May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen." As if all this were not enough, one whole month, that upon which we are now entering, is consecrated entirely to remembrance of the dead. How admirably suited is the provision of the Church! It calls us to a sense of duty in behalf of the suffering souls in Purgatory. During the rest of the year, notwithstanding the frequent monitions of the Church, we are apt to turn away our thoughts from so mournful a subject, and we are too ready to forget our obligations toward the dead.. But with November, the month of all souls, comes the solemn question. What are we doing of the dead? For most people the claims of nature are sufficient to awaken a prayerful remembrance for relatives and friends, but it is for another class which is too often forgotten that we would bespeak your charity here. It is for the souls of your dead priests. How few there are who think to pray for them!
When November eve comes around and the names of the dead are handed in; when the priest looks over the list, and that often with dimmed eyes, seldom does he find mention of the priests who have gone before. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, distant relatives, even strangers, but the dead priest's name is not there. Is it because he is forgotten? no, his memory may be still fresh, his words quoted, his example cited. Is it because the people whom he served are ungrateful? No, that is not one of the failings of Catholics. Why, then, is his name so seldom found upon their lips in prayer, or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is never asked in his behalf? We have often heard people say of their dead priests, "They do not need prayers," "If they do not go to heaven who will?" Ah, my brethren, that may be very flattering for the living, but it is poor consolation for the dead. The priest himself feels no such assurance. He knows better than any one else how much he needs the prayers of his people. If Saint Paul asked his brethren to pray for him, lest while he preached to others he himself should be cast away, with how much more reason can the everyday priest, far from the holiness of saint Paul, ask his brethren to intercede with God for him?
It is true that the priest is the channel through which grace comes to the souls of men for their salvation. But he is only a human channel withal, and that grace may pass by and leave him barren and dry. He receives special graces from God, it is true, and helps for sanctification which others do not share, but his accounting will be the greater for that, "To whom much is given, much shall be required," and what priest is there who does not tremble at his responsibilities? The fact that he is a priest does not imply that his salvation is assured. And even though he save his souls, how many defects have entered into his work! He has been dealing with souls, and God's graces have been the talents entrusted to his care. Can he say, " Of those whom thou hast given me I have not lost any one?" Though God, in His mercy, may save him in the end, yet, his reckoning will be great and his punishment severe.
What Claims has the dead priest upon your prayers?
He was your father in Christ. He it was who engendered you in the Lord, he who poured the saving waters of baptism upon your head and made you children of God, with the right to heaven. He it was who cleansed you again and again from sin, in the Sacrament of Penance. He it was who broke for you the bread of Life. In sickness he succored you, in sorrow he consoled you. He blessed your marriage, instructed your little ones in their duty towards God, and lighted the dim vision of your dying with the glory of heaven beyond. He prayed for your dead and lightened your bereavement. Who can count his many offices for you? and are not all these so many claims upon your Christian charity? How can you better repay them than by the tribute of your prayers? Ah. your poor dead priest will prize these more than anything else earth can bestow. It matters little to him whether a costly monument be raised over his last resting place, or that his form be molded in imperishable bronze. A place in the hearts of a grateful people and a memento in their prayers he prizes more than these. It is for this reason that many a great and holy bishop has asked to be buried, not in the crypt of a cathedral church, but in a the chapel of an orphanage, where the little ones will see his simple monument and offer a prayer for his soul, or, like the late bishop of Portland, whose wish was to lie in the common cemetery with the hope that his name would find place in the prayers of the people who came there to pray for their beloved dead.
If you, the sheep of his fold, do not pray for him, who will? Father and mother he has none. They have gone before him. Children, he leaves none behind. Family and friends be forsook for your sake. Surely you will not turn a deaf ear to the voice of his petition coming from the grave: "Have pity, on me, have pity on me, at least you my friends, the hand of God hath touched me."
-- The life and Writing of the Right Reverend John Bernard Delany, D.D. Second Bishop of Manchester N.H. 1911
The maple leaf lies crimsoned on the grass.
Through the trees and across the russet fields there moves a mild yet bracing air that
is softer and more soothing in the autumn sunshine, than at any other season. It seems
almost a contempt of God's good gifts to stay indoors during these fine days of mellowed
and colorful beauty. In the great outdoors, in nature's kingdom, the season of production
has come to a solemn closing, and the season of rest begins.
What a sweet living parable and likeness of death all this is! Death is the graduation of
a soul. "I am come that you may have life," said the Life Giver, "and that you may have it
more abundantly." His definition of death, therefore, is: the entrance into a fuller life.
The seed of the forest falls when it is ripe. The Reaper divine takes the soul when to Him
it has reached its best development. That soul has answered every question which the Master
put before it; the intellect saw each problem, and the will freely accepted or rejected;
every answer created new form of development in that soul and the finished product, the
character, was ripened for eternity. Then came the death-bed Graces, the clearer seeings,
and the final endorsement or the cancellation of the entire life-work. Another soul is
homeward gone. So passes the deathless spirit of man. Thus the good soul finds that single
step, called death – strangely enough, a glad going-home.
Nothing defiled shall enter Heaven, is the teaching of the Holy Bible (Revel. 21:27).
How saddening this teaching must be to all those who believe that the only alternative
is hell! How many of our nearest and dearest friends have passed out of this life suddenly
with un-repented faults on their souls! "There is no man that sinneth not." (3 Kings 8:46),
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. (1 Jn. 1:8) Surely, we all know of many
a one who passed suddenly out of this world, who, in the estimation of everyone, was a person
of good life and character, and yet there were faults, imperfections, lesser sins, in that soul
at the instant of death. Who would be brutal enough to assert that that soul is in hell?
And who would be unscriptural and rash enough to insist that he has directly gone into the
presence of the Almighty Rewarder?
Saint Paul distinctly speaks of such, and in terms of mercy and reason: "He shall be saved,
yet so as by fire," (I Cor. 3:15) Aha, the Author of the Scriptures is also the Author of man's intelligence.
Christianity is in perfect harmony with the finest and highest "common sense." Reason compels
us to distinguish between a man who strives to lead a good moral Christian life, though he has
faults, and the vicious man who is proudly, resolutely, and hatefully rebellious against his God,
and unjust and cruel towards his fellow-creature. There is a vast difference, too, between a crime
or grievous sin, and a fault of human beings committed without full consent, or in matters of less
importance. "Sin, when it is completed, begetteth death," says Saint James the Apostle in his
Epistle (1;15.) Hence the ancient Catholic Church has always distinguished between mortal sin
and venial sin. Mortal sin, like mortal wounds, is unto death – deserving of the loss of Heaven.
Venial sin a lesser offense, is not enough to keep us from the attainment of Heaven. The man,
therefore, who repents of his serious sins, and who dies with lesser sins upon his soul shall
certainly be saved. "He shall be saved, yet so as by fire." A person who does not believe in
the existence of such a place as purgatory, must close his eyes indeed to many passages of
Sacred Scripture.
In the last part of the Old Testament (2 Machabees 12:46) we read the admonition;
"It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins."
Ecclesiasticus 7:37 urges us too to be mindful of our dear departed ones: "Restrain not grace from the dead."
Many other passages of the Bible refer to a place of cleansing after death:
"The cleansing fire", "The refining pot", "The pit", "The place under the earth", "The furnace
of purification", "The last farthing shall be paid!", "I say unto you, that every idle word that
men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment."
And the learned and holy Fathers of the early Church are full of exhortation to the faithful
not to forget in the charity of their prayers "those who are gone before us" into their eternity.
St. Chrysostom writes: "It was not without good reason ordained by the Apostles that mentioned
should be made of the dead in the tremendous mysteries (the New Testament Sacrifice, the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass, in which the living Body and Blood of the Redeemer are daily offered for
the living and the dead), because they knew well that they would receive benefit from it."
Saint Augustine, a holy Bishop and one of the most brilliant minds in all Christendom,
who lived in the early part of the fifth century tells us, in his Confessions, that his dear
Christian mother shortly before her death made this last request of him: "Lay this body anywhere;
let not the care of it in any way disturb you. This only I request of you, that you would remember
me at the altar of the Lord, wherever you be."
Others writers, by the dozen might be quoted, Tertullian, Eusebius, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem,
Saint Ephrem, Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, all showing their belief in prayer for the dead who
have not yet been admitted to the presence of God but shall be.
Hence, it is only the insincere and unscholarly "historian" who can state that the teaching
of Purgatory is a fiction of the middle ages. He knows little of the Middle Ages, so truly
brilliant in the career of the Church, and he knows nothing of the early writings of the
best and most outstanding Christian minds. The writings of early Christian years are the
best test whether it has meddled with by destructive hands or whether it has properly and respectfully
been handed down to us unchanged and unmutilated. Dear Christian, do you ever make this test of YOUR
FAITH? Do you ever compare the sermons you hear with the writings of the first holy bishops of Christ's
Church? You will be enlightened greatly if you do.
Be not terrified therefore at the saying, "Nothing defiled shall enter Heaven," as the Scriptures
assure us that our Heavenly Father does not take us unawares from earth in order to deprive us
from the share in His glory which is ours. "The Son of Man is come to seek and save that which
was lost." "I have loved you with an everlasting love." Therefore He created us to share His glory
and enjoy His unspeakably blessed company forever. He only needs to fear who has made peace in his
heart with mortal sin, with grievous wrongdoing, and who excludes God from his heart, his life, and his home.
"He that shall confess Me before men, I will confess him before My Father who is in Heaven; and,
he that shall deny Me before men, I shall also deny him before My Father who is in Heaven.
The Scriptures were written for us by the holy Bishops of the Church in order to be our guide
through a wholesome Christian life into a happy eternity. They were left as evidence of Christ's life,
his character, His Divinity, His Church, and His Sacraments. They are the written credentials of
the Priesthood which he ordained, as men specially consecrated to renew daily the Sacrifice established
for the New Testament at the time of the last supper. They tell us plainly, "My yoke is sweet, and My
burden is light." "He that followeth Me walketh not in darkness." Hence, it is only when we have but
a portion of Christ's doctrine in our minds that it can terrify any good-living person. If all the
Christian world had continued in the unity of the Mother Church we should all still feel quite assured
that "His mercy is above all His works," and it would still be an unshakable Christian conviction that
there is a Heaven for the just, a hell for the reprobate, and a state of cleaning, or purgatory, for
perhaps the great majority of erring humans. And the Christian world would be one in its charitable
prayers for the dead. "It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed
from their sins."
-- by the Rev. Leo. G. Doetterl (The Guardian, November 11, 1933)
There are a great many ways in which we can come to the assistance of the Souls in Purgatory.
Foremost among the means by which our charity may be shown is to have the Holy Sacrifice of
the Mass offered for them. No other good work prayer or penance can be at all compared to this
supreme act of infinite worship and satisfaction. Yet how few there are who use this means of
discharging their bounden duties to the faithful departed!
What parity is there between the amount set aside for the celebration of Masses for the repose
of the soul of a departed father or mother, and the sum expended for a handsome casket, costly
funeral trappings, and the polished shaft that surmounts the grave? These are evidences of filial
respect, no doubt, and perhaps more or less conscious tributes to personal vanity. The simple Cross
that marks full many a grave has oftentimes been placed by one who has laid out for Masses a sum
that would have procured a towering granite monument; and, alas! not a few columns reared above
trimly-kept graves are sterile tributes to the worth of those from whose eternal rest few prayers
have been offered.
During November, at least, let us remedy our remissness in this respect. As often as may be, let us
have the ever-blessed currents of the Precious Blood poured on the flames
that torment our dear ones in God's purgatorial crucible. Most of us, too, can apply to them our
share in the merits of the daily Mass, at which we may be present, with very slight inconvenience.
Among other suffrages that certainly lighten the woes of the Holy Souls in Purgatory is the offering
of devout Confessions and Holy Communions. Our devout recitation of the Beads for the eternal repose
of departed relatives or friends will insure for them the special patronage of the Queen of Purgatory.
Indulgences almost without number, and all applicable to the Souls in Purgatory may be gained by
making the Way of the Cross, the Stations. Many indulgenced prayers, the giving of alms to the poor
and to the church, the performing of penances of all kinds are most excellent methods by which to
come to the relief of our Dear Dead. If ever we entertained for any of those hapless Prisoners
of the King sentiments of tender affection, of engrossing love, now is the time to prove the
genuineness of our love.
-- Our Young People, A Home Magazine, 1916.
When those we love have departed this life we are very careful to have many Masses offered up for
the repose of their souls. We pray for them continually, and go to holy Communion for them, and ask
the prayers of others in their behalf. But as our grief subsides into gentle regrets, we begin to
think, and say: "Oh, so and so was so good, or humble, or charitable, or pious that surely by this
time he or she must be in heave. Quite oblivious of the fact that "God's ways are not our ways."
As the years pass onward, how often, perhaps, is the anniversary of the dear one overlooked
(we don't like to say forgotten), and Communions and prayers offered at irregular intervals that grow
wider as the claims of this world absorb the attention of careless people.
Meanwhile, how many souls are suffering, and crying out to their relations, and friends:
"Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you, my friends, because the hand of the Lord hath touched
me." It is really melancholy to reflect how soon the dead are forgotten, especially by millions who have
the inexpressible misfortune of being outside the pale of the Catholic Church. But for us, her children,
whom she has instructed in the knowledge of Purgatory, surely there can be no excuse for careless neglect
in praying for the Holy Souls. Therefore, should we make this devotion, this royal yet hidden exercise
of charity be, as it were, our daily bread, our habitual recollection.
-- Our Young People, A Home Magazine, 1916.