' St. Catherine of Bologna has assured us
that she obtained many favors by the prayers of the holy souls in
Purgatory which she had asked in vain through the intercession of the
saints. The Holy Ghost says: 'He who stoppeth his ear against the cry
of the poor, shall also cry himself and shall not be heard,' and St.
Vincent Ferrer says, in expounding that passage, that the holy souls in
Purgatory cry to God for justice against those who on earth refuse to
help them by their prayers, and that God will most assuredly hear their
cry. Let us, therefore, do all in our power to relieve the holy souls
in Purgatory, and avert from ourselves the punishment that God is sure
to inflict on those whose faith is too dead, or whose hearts are too
cold to heed the cry that rises, day and night, from that sea of fire:
'Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you my friends!'" Job xix.
21.
PURGATORY.
CHATEAUBRIAND.
That the doctrine of Purgatory opens to the Christian poet a source of
the marvellous which was unknown to antiquity will be readily admitted.
[1] Nothing, perhaps, is more favorable to the inspiration of the muse
than this middle state of expiation between the region of bliss and
that of pain, suggesting the idea of a confused mixture of happiness
and of suffering.
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