THE SOULS . . . . . . . . in PURGATORY : : : by : : : JAMES J. DALY, S. J. THE QUEEN'S WORK 3742 West Pine Boulevard ST. LOUIS, MO. Imprimi potest: Samuel Horine, S. J. Praep. Prov. Missourianae Nihil obstat : F. J. Holweck Censor Librorum Imprimatur: »^Joannes J. Glennon Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici Sti. Ludovici, die 31 Martii, 1932 Third Edition, December 19)4 ANY FINANCIAL PROFIT made by the Centtal Office of the Sodality will be uied for the advancement of the Sodality movement and the cause of Catholic Action. Copyright 193 2 THE QUEEN'S WORK. Inc. Deackffffed THE SOULS IN PURGATORY By JAMES J . DALY, S. J. WH E N we are si t t ing in a church while the last rites are going on over the tenant of the coffin near the sanctuary, our thoughts ought to be running fast. Yet it is probable that they are f rozen into a hard, dull inertia. Big things — mountains, the ocean, e terni ty—stupefy the mind, crush it and overwhelm it. Death is one of the big things. It is not the commonness of death that has blunted the edges of perception. Al- though few things in human experience are more commonplace than death, we have never got used to it. Every death among our relatives, our fr iends, or our acquaint- ances, even though it has been expected, is a surprise that momentar i ly strikes us mute. T h e greates t surprise .of all will probably be our own death. Death may be a commonplace of the race, but it is not a commonplace of the individual man. My death will not ma t t e r in the least to the world at large. But to me it is a subject to which my thoughts keep re turning; and I am dimly aware of a pack of rest 'css fears which will give tongue when Death un- latches the f ront gate and comes slowly up the path to my door. — S — I have been accustomed to brace myself to meet new experiences by remembering that others have met tr iumphantly the dif- ficulties and uncertainties that confronted me. But that thought will have no sus- taining power, it seems to me, when night has fallen and the ocean of eternity lies ahead and the moment has come to plunge into the shadowy regions beyond the old familiar world of sense. Millions of men have . appeared before their Creator and Judge, and gone through the ordeal of a divine sentencing, and been rewarded or punished. But that fact breathes no courage into my soul, nor tempts me to set out on my last journey with jaunty airs. A Day of Realities I . have called , the regions beyond life shadowy. Aqd s,o ;they are to our un- spiritual sqnses.... But my soul has been .whispering.to me all my life, and Christian faith, has been earnestly trying to confirm what my sojuI.whisp.ered, that when I shall leave this mortal life I shall be leaving a world of shadows and dreams to enter among the great solid realities of existence. And I know that a day of realities, whether pleasant or unpleasant, is an entirely differ- ent thing f rom a night of dreams and images. , . , '"•We all cherish the confident hope of go- ing, with 'God's grace to the white throngs .of the Blessed? The teaching of the Chorch is hardly required to > make us see the unfitness of immediate translation into that' glorious brotherhood. If heaveh is what we firmly believe it to be, a land of happy souls enjoying perfection of in- tellect and will,- of instinct and impulse^ of 'manners and habits and sweet experience, a •perfection beyond all human dreams — if heaven is this,' how can mortal man ;desirè •to join its noble populace With the con- sciousness of his wilful deficiencies protest- ing its "embarrassaient and shame in the presence of that white happiness arid high mobility? ; T h e soul criés but for delâ& for pause;"for some "conditioning" process that will accustom it to the patrician usages and tumultuous joy. I n Purifying Pain What , that conditioning ^process will be we. can at the most only vaguely conjecture. The Church, whose words: and accents"ate controlled by the divine Spirit of Truth, tells u s that it will be a crucible of-suffer- ing. I t will be, t o change the figure, a bitter sea ; to cross. But the land of leal is on the other side, and we are content to •be engulfed in purifying pain. Therè- is so much to be washed1 away! A Catholic may have led what on all hands was aalled a blaoieless life .enriched by. good works; but unlés&ihe is a great saint; he probably can look back remorsefully over : a road s trewn .with'little selfishnesses, wasted opportuni- ties;-^uncompleted 'tasks; ;adle words, indo- lences, small vanities, uncontrolled temper, impatience, shallow views, worldliness and laxities of one kind or another in the shep- herding of his thoughts and desires. Unclean' Perfection and happiness go together. Nay, they are, practically speaking, one and the same thing. Even unalloyed natural happiness would be an intolerable experi- ence to an imperfect man, just as the sensa- tion of bright light could not be borne by weak eyes. But when we speak of the happiness and perfection of heaven, we are speaking of a happiness and perfection of an unutterably higher range than anything within the compass of human capacities in their natural state. If the organs of happi- ness must be fortified by perfection, not to be shriveled by the intense brightness of a perfectly happy natural experience, what must we think of the perfection of heavenly spirits moving forever in the light of the Beatific Vision? H o w can I even so much as desire to enter into their comradeship straightway out of this smoke and dust, these languors and morbidities, with the unlovely stains and accretions of simple mortality thick upon me? The penalties of my many treasons remain unpaid. The soiled vesture of imperfection clings to me. The dust and fags of mortality have weak- ened my capacities for joy. I should be blinded by the bliss and stricken with shame by the high perfection of the saints in glory. To be ushered in among them at — 8 — once would be agony, not delight. And to appear before the unveiled Vision of Beauty and Holiness and Divine Love in all my frailty—that is too painful to be possible. For even in hell there must be a limit in the degree, if not in the duration, of pain. Dependent on the Living While we are here on earth we can shorten and allay that novitiate of pain which we see ahead and fear even when we welcome it as the vestibule of heaven. By prayers and good deeds, meritorious in the eyes of God, we can obtain remission of the satisfaction due to forgiven sins and clear our souls of venial faults. But after death that power ceases. W e cannot merit then. We have to depend upon others still among the livihg to merit for us. Christ thus links His Church Suffering with His Church Militant. The Church Triumphant contains the treasures of merit which the members of the Church Militant can draw upon and apply to the alleviation of the Church Suffering. They are, all t h r e e churches, one Church of Christ in different stages of perfection and happiness; but all are brothers, the living and the dead, in the communion of saints and the bonds of charity. God is ready to accept our prayers, sac- rifices, good deeds, indulgences, penances, and trials in payment for the debts of the dead. Above all, according to the Council of Trent , the souls detained in purgatory are aided "by the acceptable sacrifice of t h e al tar ." ; St,- Monica, holy woman tha t she was, about to die, felt the need of succor beyôiid^the grave. • " I care no t / ' she said to Augustine, "where my body will r e s t j but, my son, remember me àt ,,the al tar ." . T h e constant teaching and tradit ion of the Church lays s t ress on the grea t efficacy of the ma.ss to curtail, the suffering of the souls in purgatory . Holy Mass T h e ijuiet acceptance of pain, the courage to confront crucial trials, the patience to b e a r disappointments and humiliations cheerfully, out of a desire to suffer with the suffering Çhiist arid to help the souls in purgatory, gives Us the fortitude saints and must be precious ransom for the re- demption of the imprisoned SO.uls.. But if we harken to; 'thè Church, the .offering of t he ' s a l i f i é e of the mass for thé dçad ié still mòre pie.cìotìs. ' . Anyone can Have a mass said for the (ieaçi by going to the parish house and ar ranging fo r . i t ]wi th a priest , A stipend, or offering, usually one dollar, though in no sense "pay- ment for mass / ' makes it a grave obliga- tion for the priest to see that the mass is offered for the intent ion of the person mak- ing the offering. Thus the st ipend gives the peti t ioner for a mass 'Certain assurance that the mass will be said for his intention. Any priest who accepts a s t ipend for a mass ' and bails ' to say it for t he intention of the donof commits a grave sin. — 10 — «» i-j R i c h ' a n d Poor Catholics who are so poor that they can- not find even the stipend for a maSs need not worry, nor conclude that the ' rich en- j o y the advantages of their wealth in the next world as well as in this. That thought would , do injustice to Christ, who loved the p o o r, ' and to His Church, which, though its ministers may sometimes he worldly and prSfed, is still/ 'as it has always been, the Church of the Poor. Whatever the rule or usage of the Church may be in this matter or apy other, we can be certain on one point: namely, that the possession of money gives no undue advantages in the kingdom, of Çfirist. ; ; As a -mat te r of. fact the more masses rich peoplechave offered for their dead, the bet- ter it will be f o r the souls who have no one on earth to have masses said for them. The mass, is said;, not only for one >or . twb or three«; but for tal l- the sguls, of- JilfB; fai thful departed; arid Christ is the dispenser of re- lief to the waiting s o u l s . - , ; ) Alas, it i s ' iist the rich «who commonly arrange for masses for t h e dead; I think it is ttfue -that ' most mass offerings; come f rom the poor. Terrestrial logic and mathe- matics seem to go awry in the ' spiritual world. * One would think, for'itrstance, that thé soul of a priest in purgatory'-would be especially faVor-ed on account* of1 ,the largfe number -éf' '¿faithful ' whoiri "he had Helped during! l i fe 'and; who would 'renremt>«rs *his need$ in the next world, :; But a missionary — 11 — priest once said to me: " I have been fifteen years giving missions in all parts of the country. I have received hundreds of stipends for masses, but not one for the soul of a priest." There is a s trange de- lusion that a good priest does not need prayers either in this life or in the next. I t is a tribute to his character; but he pays dearly for it. Ruined Chantries The Catholic sightseer in England is often saddened by the chantries in the great cathedrals. They were built by rich noblemen as shrines where a priest, sup- ported by the annual income of a generous fund, was to say mass daily in perpetuity for their souls. The Reformation came; the mass was banished; the funds were diverted to other purposes or confiscated, and the beautiful chantries were t ransformed into pathetic ruins with desecrated altars. If wealth and place cannot always ensure provision in the spiritual world, we get inklings now and then of mysterious ways in which the mercy of God operates in favor of His poor. "I was named," a priest once told me, "af ter my mother 's brother. He was her favorite brother. While she was a very young girl in Ireland, the brother resolved to challenge fortune in remote Australia. Those were unsettled frontier days in the antipodes. My uncle was killed shortly after he landed. "Life was cheap on the frontiers of civil- ization, and my mother never heard details — 12 — of his death. The thought of his nameless grave in a land of strangers brought her, doubtless,-moments of sadness. She asked me when I became a priest to remember him always in my masses. I have been saying mass now every morning for thirty years, and his name has never been left out of a single mass. My uncle has been lying in his unmarked grave these sixty or seventy years. I don't suppose his grave in some obscure corner of a cemetery is still to be seen. If it were, a passer-by might entertain a fleeting reflection on the poor unknown immigrant lying there so long, with no friend to say a prayer for the repose of his soul. The strange fact is that he is probably remembered oftener at the altar than the tenants of the marble mausoleums which are the pride of the graveyard." Spiritual Tragedy W e do not all read poetry, but everyone has read sometime in his life, generally in his youth, Longfellow's story of Evangeline. Whatever else in that sweet and simple narrative may have dropped out of our memory, we are sure to remember the al- most too painful passage in which the lovers, scouring the western wilderness in their eager and untiring quest each for the other, are brought within hailing distance and yet.fail to meet. The ardent boy who has been breathlessly following the fortunes of Evangeline wants to shout to her where she lies sleeping, af ter an arduous day. on an island of the Mississippi while Gabriel is — 13 — paddling down the river "behind a screen of palmettos" under the very lee of the island. So they miss each other. "Angel of God, was .there none to waken the slumbering maiden?" It is; as we said, almbst too painftil for the purposes of art. Thé badness of missed opportunity is tfte' most poignant in human experience. It is also the most common. Life ï and literature are full of it. But if it is the pathos of life, it must! 't>e the tragedy of eternity. As t h e dewdrop re- fleet's thé starry sky, the sad littlë Story of Evangeline must represent on a diminutive scale the momentous spiritual tragedies in- volved in "the little less; and what miles away I" ' Faithful to Dim Lights For instance. There are many good men „an.d women liying outs idej the visible pale of the Church in perfect good faith, whose spiritual dispositions make them dear to God and who will be the, recipients, of His mercy and salvation. With fewer helps to sustain J,hem and greater difficulties to t ry them, than c(ppie, ,to us, t|\ey, are faithful to their dim, and .ojj^cured lights; and, theugh * W s i e a r c ^ i n e for t ru th . .¡yj4 f rus - tri t ,e,d^lwayf.by;,the en^nglemeti^s of un- ^ajypra^Le b i r,t h, ¡environment, . inherited Pj.ej.udiçe, andi jPther ciççumstances over whiclj t|iey; fiaye . no control, .t^ey ^¡11 dis- cpvejj, t,th,e truth indeed by the grace of Godi .but not in this world. T o o Late »"' In heaven of course they will be incap- able of regret. But, that is precisely the mystery to my understanding. \ H o w can these saved souls look back qn the drabness and dullness of their life on earth, .with the thrilling splendor of God's Church ,al- ways within' 'easy reach, and not be utt.erly overwhelmed and undone by the deluge of sad regrets? H o w often and how near they passed by Christ in His thousand taber- nacles with averted and alien faces! They might ' have assisted at mass and welcomed H im, whom their hearts were hungering for, into the yearning emptiness o.f their breasts ; and some thin 'veil of prejudice, some interposing Screen of custom, ex- c l u d e d ' t h e m like a despotic wall of irqtj f rom their divine Lover. He was the object of their weary journeyings by night and day, and they, ç'asséd Him by a hundred time's; upon the streets. T h W felt the lone- liness of exiles' wfyën t;hreyrimight sp easily have put their hand in 'His and gone cheer- fully down: thé' roads.» ©f the ' Wbrld.E' v . Lost Opportuni t ies If ' the •' Sadness ! '$f ' r i g re t tôu id be1 ih" heaven, such a retrospect of missed oppor- tuni t ies 'should b e ' a fertile cause of it. But a far more fertile i;causié^ it seems t o tne) should 'be"the backvvàrd ga ie of those had been" born, as it" were, ' iri the "G'hurèn and who were always only listless and cold benefîcrariés of God's fairest bounties. Their faith was à living faith, it if true, but only — IS — half alive, paralyzed and sporadic. The dis- tracting screens of the flesh and the world were allowed, in a weak spirit of resigna- tion to low aims and mean performance, to keep them apart and at distance f rom the great spiritual realities. Christ was with them, known and recognized, inviting their companionship and intimacy, and they re- mained, as a general rule, almost strangers to Him. A little more effort, a little more vigilance, a little more valor in their struggle through the thickets of natural in- dolence and inclination, and they would not have had to reckon sadly so many lost opportunities whei} Christ came to their door and went away because there was no room for Him. If they had permitted the splendor of Christ to illumine their life more brightly in patience and charity and unworldly living, there would have been less of that invincible ignorance which keeps so many good men and women in the cold and darkness encircling the blessed precincts of God's Church. The Compassionate Church The regret of these good men and women, if they shall be allowed to experience it at all, will be, as the mat ter presents itself to me, small and slight beside the regret of Catholics whose missed opportunities im- plied carelessness and culpable neglect. Perhaps this regret will be the chief ele- ment in the purifying processes of purga- tory. Regrets are bitter things to live with. And the heedlessness which occasioned — 16 — them will seem to take a summary ven- geance by visiting us with the sore con- sequences of being forgotten by others as heedless as ourselves. If we shall have to review a life of careless acceptance of the Church into which we were born, it is likely that no side of our Catholic life will be more conspicuously negligent than the free and easy way in which we took the doctrine of the value of prayers for the dead. It is all but start l ing to note the eager preoccupation of the Church Militant with her work of relief for the members of the Church Suffering who were her children. She seems to enjoy her uni6n and inter- cessory power with the Church Triumphant chiefly as a means of helping the souls of her dead to pass quickly through the fiery interval between earth and heaven. She encourages us by almost preposterous privileges and indulgences to ¿ay prayers and make small sacrifices and perform acts of virtue and to receive the sacraments and to attend masses and to have masses said for them who can help themselves no longer and must now depend upon our charity. A Stern Moment Every year the Church sets aside an entire month, a month of clouds and winds and drifting leaves, in which she concen- trates her habitual concern into a "drive" in behalf of the suffering souls. She drapes — 17 — her altars and ¡her ministers in Humming, and appeals to us, in tearful accents f rom in- numerable saiictuariesj and[ familial1. The saints apd aijgels; are waiting, fo r their de>- liv^rance. Our. ?B1 as s ed Lady • Js, ^waiting for them.. Christ is waiting for them. But the power and privilege of curtailing their anguish and their durance lie with us. By a merciful providence we can swing back the gates of their prison and cut the leashes which restrain them from the freedom of the sons of God. Our Loved Ones Among those wistful petitioners for our bounty are many whom we knew and loved —souls that beamed affectionately upon us through eyes which the dust has quenched, souls that ministered to us through hands long since folded in peace, that tended us and ran our errands on weary feet now quiet for ever. Oh, my loved ones! How can I think of them without tears? The secluded graveyards of the world contain their ashes. They hold close fellowship with the November rains and the long nights and the winter winds. H o w remote they are! And they were so close to me! They were a part of me and I a part of them. A world that meant to be kind took my hand and led me away f rom their graves, telling me that my duty lay with the living, and bade me dry my tears and to forget . Alas, I have learned that lesson but too well. I t is probable that the dear dead who loved me are suffering for faults and in- fidelities which grew out of their very love for me. If they had loved me less and God more, they would not have to suffer - 19-^ now. The thought would be too harrowing but for one thing. They are not beyond the reach of my affection. I need not sit helpless and uncomforted in my ruefulness. I can pursue them, with fond attention and grateful returns, into eternity. God be thanked who has made it possible to make up for passionate treasons and cold be- trayals towards the living by loyalties to the dead! — 20 — Why is T H E Q U E E N ' S W O R K The Magazine Which Socialists and Students Read? Beea use its articles Are crisp and modern Because its comment is up-to-the-minute Because it is filled with practicable plans and suggestions for sodalists Because it is devoted to students' spiritual activity Because it is the S O D A L I S T S ' and S T U D E N T S ' M A G A Z I N E Thousands of students in Cathol ic colleges and academies; thousands of sodalists in parishes read it DO YOU? Remember, it is the organ of the Sodality PUBL ISHED MONTHLY S I N G L E SUBSCRIPTION—50 CENTS A Y E A R (Canada, 75o—Foreign, $1.00) Bulk Rates: 25 or more copies to one address—25c a year (Canada and Foreign, 35c a year) T H E Q U E E N ' S W O R K 3742 West Pine Blvd. S T . LOUIS, MO. 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