Surely, if the charity of the Church do not
inspire them--if they do not feel, with the valiant Macchabeus of old,
that "it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the Dead that
they may be loosed from their sins"--if natural affection, even, do not
move them to think of the probable sufferings of their own near and
dear--sufferings which they may have it in their power to alleviate--at
least, a motive of self-interest ought to make them reflect that when
they themselves are with the dead, retributive justice may leave them
forgotten by their own flesh and blood, as they forget others now. But
to those who do faithfully unite with the Church in her solemn
commemoration of the faithful departed on All Souls' Day, nothing can
be more soothing to the deep heart of human sadness, as nothing is more
imposing, or more strikingly illustrative of that Catholic charity,
that all-embracing charity which has its life and fountain within the
Church.
CEMETERIES.
THE respect due to cemeteries is too closely connected with the
doctrine of Purgatory for us to omit observing here that those asylums
of the dead, being the objects of pious reverence, even amongst
infidels, ought to be still more so amongst us. It was in this
connection that Mgr.
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