AFTER having heard the
theologians and doctors of the Church, let us listen to doctors of another
kind; they are saints who speak of the sufferings of the other life, and who relate
what God has made known to them by supernatural communication. St. Catherine of
Genoa in her treatise on Purgatory says, The souls endure a torment so extreme that
no tongue can describe it, nor could the understanding conceive the least notion
of it, if God did not make it known by a particular grace. ”No tongue,” she
adds, “can express no mind form any idea of what Purgatory is. As to the
suffering, it is equal to that of Hell’s. Teresa, in the “Castle of the Soul,”
speaking of the pain of loss, expresses herself thus : The pain of loss, or the
privation of the sight of God, exceeds all the most excruciating sufferings we
can imagine, because the souls urged on towards God as to the centre of their
aspiration, are continually repulsed by His Justice. Picture to yourself a
shipwrecked mariner who, after having long battled with the waves, comes at
last within reach of the shore, only to find himself constantly thrust back by
an invisible hand. What torturing agonies! Yet those of the souls in Purgatory
are a thousand times greater.” Father Nieremberg, of the Company of Jesus, who
died in the odour of sanctity at Madrid in 1658, relates a fact that occurred
at Treves, and which was recognised, says Father Rossignoli, by the Vicar-General of the diocese as possessing
all the characteristics of truth.
On the Feast of All Saints, a
young girl of rare piety saw appear before her a lady of her acquaintance who
had died some time previous. The apparition was clad in white, with a veil of the
same colour on her head, and holding in her hand a long rosary, a token of the
tender devotion she had always professed towards the Queen of Heaven. She
implored the charity of her pious friend, saying that she had made a vow to
have three masses celebrated at the altar of the Blessed Virgin, and that, not
having been able to accomplish her vow, this debt added to her sufferings. She
then begged her to pay it in her place.
The young person willingly
granted the alms asked of her, and when the three masses had been celebrated,
the deceased again appeared, expressing her joy and gratitude. She ever continued
to appear each month of November, and almost always in the church. Her friend
saw her there in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, over whelmed with an
awe of which nothing can give an idea; not yet being able to see God face to
face, she seemed to wish to indemnify herself by contemplating Him at least under
the Eucharistic species. During the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, at the moment
of the elevation, her face be came so radiant that she might have been taken
for a seraph descended from Heaven. The young girl, filled with admiration,
declared that she had never seen anything so beautiful.
Meanwhile time passed, and,
notwithstanding the masses and prayers offered for her, that holy soul remained
in her exile, far from the Eternal Tabernacles. On December 3, Feast of St.
Francis Xavier, her protectors going to receive Communion at the Church of the
Jesuits, the apparition accompanied her to the Holy Table, and then remained at
her side during the whole time of thanksgiving, as though to participate in the
happiness of Holy Communion and enjoy the presence of Jesus Christ.
On December 8, Feast of the
Immaculate Conception, she again returned, but so brilliant that her friend
could not look at her. She visibly approached the term of her expiation.
Finally, on December 10, during Holy Mass, she appeared in a still more
wonderful state. After making a profound genuflexion before the altar, she
thanked the pious girl for her prayers, and rose to Heaven in company with her
guardian angel.
Some time previous, this holy
soul had made known that she suffered nothing more than the pain of loss, or
the privation of God ; but she added that that privation caused Jier
intolerable torture. This revelation justifies the words of St. Chrysostom in
his 47th Homily “Imagine” he says,“ the torments of the world, you will not
find one equal to the privation of the beatific vision of God” In fact, the
torture of the pain of loss, of which we now treat, is, according to all the
saints and all the doctors, much more acute than the pain of sense. It is true
that, in the present life, we cannot understand this, because we have too
little knowledge of the Sovereign Good for which we are created ; but, in the
other life, that ineffable Good seems to souls what bread is to a man famished
with hunger, or fresh water to one dying with thirst, like health to a sick
person tortured by long suffering it excites the most ardent desires, which
torment without being able to satisfy them.
