New Britain Herald Newspaper, November 1, 1917, Page 9

§ { i — ALL SAINTS AND ALL SOULS 'Affaits of Moment Touched.: Upen' by Cardinal Mercier, Famous Belgian Prelate, in Pastoral Letter Which Is Classic. Dearly Beloved Brethren, 3 I do not think that there exists, in any literature, so glorious a proces- #on as that which the Catholic Litur- &y brings before our eyes on the Day ot All Baints and on the Day of the Pead. Already, on the preceding day, the urch has made us familiar with this ought—that our dead, when they #leave us in a state of grace, are gath- ered into the hand of God, sheltered from evil and sorrow; and that, how- ever foolishly we may imagine them t0 be no more, they are none the less living, and in peace. On the day of the Feast of All 4Saints, as the priest goes up to the aMar, and the sub-deacon sings the epistle, the faithful, transported with joy, have eyes only for the halt opened heavens, where Christ Jesus, conqueror of death and sin, displays the tokens of his triumph, before the, heavenly city. The centuries before Christ have sent their legions thither. Each of the twelve tribes of Israel is represented by twelve thousand gf the chosen. Then comes a great multi- tude, which no man cduld number, of 411 nations, kindreds, people, and tongues. They stand before the throne, where reigns the Lamb ' of @God, who has washed away the sins ©of the world. Their robes are of a Whiteness unstained, they wave palm Branches ‘in their hands; and from to West, from North to South, ' the heavens sound with the mighty ice of their Hosannahs: “Thanks be our God, the King of all, thanks dnto the Lamb, through Whom we are faved!"” “'The angels take part in the rejoic- ing; their choirs surround the royal rone; the heralds of Nature and of e Gospel stand, each in his place; d all this mighty assembly, bowing wn in adoration, repeats ‘“Amen! ediction and glory and wisdom, d thanksgiving, honour and power, ahd strength to our God, for ever and It pleased Providence to entrust to the apostle whom the Saviour loved best the duty of giving the world a specially distinct nvnlnuo; of the div- inity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the merciful designs of His Sacred Heart. After the Evangelists St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke had finished writing the history of the birth, tho | God. 5 No, a thousand times no (answers the seer of the Apocalypse). No, you are not alone. Christ prophesied unto you that “The servant is not greater than His master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you”; and Christ keeps the promise He has made. But in the hour of farewell, Christ also predicted that He would dwell with you until the consummation of the world. . Here, again, He has kept His word. He promised to send you His Holy Spirit, Whom He has sent, and he who will yield his heart to the divine love, shall surely feel in him- self that Christ is with him and lives in him evermore. No longer, elther, is the Christ the defenceless Lamb, who is led to the slaughter.- He is no longer the Jesus Who sWfered Himself to be reviled, mocked and crucified. He is now the victorious Lamb, the avenger of truth and right, the Monarch steadfastly as- sured of the final triumph awaiting Him. He is, says St. John, “the Prince of the Kings of the earth.” When He shall will it, “‘He shall rule them with a rod of iro “Emperors and kings are but His servants. When they shall fight with the Lamb, the Lamb shall overcome them.” The day shall come whén the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains shall tremble before Him like the last of the bond- meh. “Fear not,” sald He to His Church, “I am the first and the last. And, alive. and was dead. hold, I am lving for ever and ever, and have the keys of death and hell,” The history of the Church is sym- bolised in the ‘Apocalypse by a Book, whose pages are sealed in seven differ- ent places with seals, which He alone, the Sovereign Master of history, the New David, is worthy and able to break. The breaking of the seals gives rise to a long series of famines, plagues, wars and persecutions; but above all these visions of suffering and mourn- ing hovers the heavenly smile of Him Whom you have heard the tribes of Israel and the serried ranks of the blessed hall as their Saviour and their How good it is, my Brethren, in our hours of distress and ruin, in the weary waiting for our deliverance at hand, to listen to the prophetic words I have already recalled to you—"And public _ministry, ,the Passion and [one of the ancients answered, and said Death, the Resurrection and Ascen- revealed the many aspects of the mys- to me: slon of our Lord Jesus Christ; after [ white robes, who Bt. Paul, St. Peter, and 8t. Jude had | whence came they? Him, My Lord, thou knowest. And he These that are clothed in are they? And And I said' to tery of the Kingdom of Heaven, it was | said to me: These are they who are fiecessary to untold the ways of Love | come out of great tribulation and have to the souls: of all men of goodwill. _ especially of him who had the priv- flege of resting his head atjyf supper on the breast of the reternal I'night in His temple. sitteth - on the threne shall dwell over High Priest. It was for him to gath- washed their rob: “This was the apostolic duty more them white in the Therefore they are before the throne last | of God; and they serve Him day and and " have made lood of the Lamb. And He that er; at the foot of the cross, side by | them. They shall no more hunger. ide with the Queen of Martyrs, the | nor thirst, neither shall the sun fall 1ast breath of the divine Crucified, the | on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb, last drups. of blood. and water that} which is in the midst of the throne, were set flowing by the lance of Lon- ginus. from ' the Sacred Heart which 10 shall rule them, and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life, mankind so well, and which, my | and God shall wipe away all. tears ren, despite such love for us, i8 | from their eyes. stilfand evermore so little loved by each of us in return. By’ the light of these predictions, the most torturing problemi that can It seems that St. John wrote . his | harass the consclence of the people is Gospel, his three letters, lypse, in order to acquaint us, m much with the Jesus of his- and his | get at rest, doubts disappear, blasphemies are brought to confusion. and For the moral point of view the tosy; as with the divine Jesus, eternal- | great problem is that of evil and suf- 1y.- eonsubstantial with the Father; Jesus, the revealer of the profound . muystery of the divine life; the Jesus Who ascended, through His own pow- er, to the regions of glory, where He shares the throne of the All Holy Trin- ity, realises the fulfillment of the pro- , “Thou art & priest for ever ac- oording to the order of Melchisedech”, and@: offers an everlasting sacrifice to His Father on our behalf—the sacri- fiee of Calvary—and-for us also and always, his living intercession, until the day when He shall come again to prenounce His judgment upon the werld for the/last time. This Jesus is Who, in all His glory with His Foiner, sontinually sends his beloved spouse, the Church, that divine com- forter, Whom He promised in His parting discourse. ‘In his Apocalypse, that is, in his “Revelation,” the last of the divinely- Inspired books, St. John has at heart above all the task of strengthening e troubled souls of them that suffer. The first pagan persecutions have already broken out in their fur others are imminent. The aged apo: tle's heart bleeds. The Church of his Jesus Christ is struggling, suf- _ foring, mourning. There are martyrs who are triumphant, but there are | also thelr weaker brethren who show signs of bending under the storm. And , as far as his prophetic gaze ex- tehds, he sees, all down that long road of the centuries to be trodden by the Christian community, nothing but gote labour, and tears mingled with And Christ is no more with us. The apostles and their first disciples had at jeast the consolation of ing Him, of, hearing His voice, and sometimes o rtaking food with Him. The most unbelieving of them, such as Thomas, could kiss the wounds in His feet and His hands, or put his finger in the open wound of His Sacred Heart. But as for us, we are alone, and our Jesus joves us only from very far away. re {8 more Catarrh in this section the country _(h'n:' all other diseases ', & it was sup- to be incural Dactors pre- local remed| d by constant- falling to cure wif treatment, it _incurable. Catarrh is a , greatly inflnenced by con- conditions and thersfore re- constitutional treatment. Hall's manufactured by F. J. ledo, Ohio, is ‘s consti- is taken fi System. One Hun« 4@ cftered for any case Hall's C: Cure falls to cure. for circulars and testim J. CHENRY & CO., Toledo, Ohlo. ' ‘:"m%mm fering. Why must we suffer as we do? Why have the innocent to suffer? And why, I add, why are they the victims chosen for such suffering by God? +Every European nation is at this moment overshadowed by sorrow; but does it not seem that Providence has singled out the most Christlan races from among them to take the largest part in the sacrifice? Poland, whose name alone conjures up in our minds the idea of martyrs dom, Poland obstinately faithful to her faith and freedom, is ravasged, plundered, and immersed in blood. Her episcopate has addressed an ap- peal for help to the Catholie nations. We must make it our endeavour to reply to this appeal with our prayers and our offerings of charity, tried though we be ourselves. Must I speak to you once more of our own troubles? The whole life of our nation is sus- pended; our workshops, our factories and our universities are closéd; our King is absent from amongst us; hun- dreds of young people and heads of families languish in foreign prisons or expose their lives day and night on the field of battle. Wives and mothers are in tears; and in the words of our Holy Father Pope Benedict XV., the hour is charged with hatred and bloodshed. Yes. indeed, my Brethren, ' the Christian nations suffer. - They are the heroes of the devastating tragedy of 1914-15, a tragedy which proves once more that Providence has no mind to depart from its general law, which would have those it loves best occupy the position of greatest honour in the solemn procession of sorrow. ‘Why, you will aske me, why this ap- parent stern determination that the in- nocent should suffer? ‘“Wherefore, O my God,” sald Job, “Why hidest Thou Thy face, and thinkest me Thy enemy? Against a leaf that is oarried adway with the wind, Thou showest Thy pow. er. Wilt Thou pursue a dary straw? O, my Brethren, we must spgak to you without roundabout phrases. Say not, I pray you, “Why are the Christ- ian nations suffering; eeing that they are Christian?’" Say:rather: {Ougibe- loved, Belgium is Christiany knewn-to be Christian, from ' the depth of her heart and by her age-longytradition: Surely, then, she is worthy to claim a place of distinction on the mount of Calvary.” ‘Would you forget that the Founder |of the society to which we are proud | to belong wae Himself crucified? -Do you net know that His Mother, whom the sweet Jesus loved, humanly and divinely, as never a son loved before or since, was told at the dawning of her motherhood that the Son Whom she ‘would bring into the world would be the victim chosen by God to redeem the sins of Mankind—that she herself would have her heart pierced, and that before she became the Queen of Heaven, she would be the Queen of Martyrs? ~ Do you not know the ground on which the foundations of our holy Catholic apostglic and Roman Church ‘were laid was almost continuously wu- tered for three centuries by the blood of legions of martyrs? The Leader of our army proclaimed it: “Whosoever will come after Me, let him take up his cross.” And have you not heard the Apostle 8t. Paul recall to you, again and again, the law of your origin? In his Epis- tle to the Romans (viil.,, 15) he says: “You have received the spirit of adop- tion of sons, whereby we cry, Abba (Father). For the Spirit Himself giv- eth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God.” “And if sons, heirs also,” continues the Apostle, “heirs indeed ‘of God, joint heirs with Christ; yot so if we suffer with Him, hat we may be also glorified with ‘81 tamen compatimur, ut et conglorificemur.’ " You are the disciples of Christ, says the .brave apostle elsewhere, and you are desirous of showing yourselves worthy of His gospel. What does that mean? That you have faith in Christ? Yes, without a doubt. But also that you receive the privilege of suffering for Him. “For unto you it is given for Christ, not only to believe in Him, but to suffer for Him.” In reality, we are only the children of God in that we are the brothers of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the strictest sense of the word, the Eternal Father has only one Son, His Word, and if He condescenda to adopt us into the di- vine family, it is in order to give His only Son.the honour and joy of hav- ing a host of brothers. So they shall be made on the model of their elder brother. According to the divine plan, St. Paul tells us further, those “whom He foreknew, ‘he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image ot His Son; that He might be the first- born amongst many brethren.” v Now, our elder brother is the Word Incarnate. Not only was He born and suffered, but He was born in order to be able to suffer. The Incarmation and the Redemp- tion form but a single mystery; the first is onl;: a step towards the second, as 8t. Thomas Aquinas teaches. ‘Would not your generous hearts, my Brethren, have been unwilling to al- low that our divine Jesus should be alone in His suffering? Would He not have cruelly humiliated yow hed He said unt ! #I have desired . to ot fig«fi ‘to_the # ‘Vfirig‘j‘of empty very di 03] the goblet of ml “th the 30 ‘Will yuu not rather receive your small portion of the Holy Cross, on bended knees, with a gratitude even greater than your reverence? The Passion of our divine Saviour is not a work come yet to its completion, says St. Paul (Colos. 1-24): “I now re- Joice,”” says he, “in my sufferings for you, and fill up-those things that are wanting of the: sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church. And then, turning to us in the con- clusion of his Epistle to the Hebrews, the noble apostle cries unto us:all: “And therefore we also having so great a cloud ‘of witneases over our head, laying aside every weight and- sin which surrounds us, let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us looking on Jesus, the author and fin- isher of faith, who, having joy set be- fore Him, endured.-the cross, despis- ing the shame, and now sitteth the rght-hand of the throne of God. ‘The horrors of the war have roused the indifference of many, and for that we give thanks unto the wisdom and pity of Him who knows so admirably how to bring good out of evil. But those horrors have another object . in God's inteption, and ought to produce in us another effect, which is to make us accept and love the law of suffer- ing and pain. The good things of this world ex- orcise their fascination upon you: be- ware of their attractions. Do not make riches the one or supreme ideal of your life. ‘You suffer privations; your tears flow; you are the victims of annoy- ances, vexations, calumnies, it may be, or persecutions. Do not rebel. Do not complain. . Just now you heard the Epistie of | the Mass which proclaimed the final triumph. Now read, too, the Gospél for this same Day of All Saints. Our divine Saviour repeats his Beatitudes to you. This i# the programme of the struggles that come before the vic- tory. Alas, I seem to hear from amongst your ranks a volce rising in protest: “Impossible,”” it says, ‘“Impossible that happiness should be found in the midst .of privations and tears!" Imposible, my brethren? But try, only try. Our Lord deceives nobody. When He announces the conditions of happiness we are bound to believe that he who fulfills them cannot fail to be happy. Let it be well understood that there is no question here of that superficial contentment which thoughtlegs heads and frivolous hearts find for a mom- ant in mere pleasure. No, it is a ques- tion of the profound happiness of the soul of that perfect peace which pre- sides over all fleeting feelings, of that (secure possession of ourselves which is not affected either by surface agita- tion or by ‘the tooth of time. ‘In' a wdtd, it 18 a’questiont now of that hap- piness called eternal rest by the' Gos- pel and the Church. _ . All will not understand, I know. Some will say in fheir hearts what cer- taln witnesses of the Word of Christ, mecking in faith, used to say: “This 'saying is hard, and who can hear it? | “Some then will certainly refuse to hear us. But you at least, fervent souls, whom our Lord Jesus Christ has N DAILY HERALD, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1917. already perhaps’ formed in the school of difficulty and misfortune; you who more than others have suffered pov- erty, anxiety and loss in the past year; Yyou, religious souls, who have vowed faithfully to walk upon the - blood- stained tracks of the road of the Cross; you, above all, pastors and edu- cators of our youths, priestly souls, Whose mission it is to make known to the world not an insipid gospel adapt- ed to the taste of human frivolity, but the true austere and fortitying gospel of cur Lord Jesus Christ, who was “born of the Virgin Mary, suffered un- der Pontius Pilate, was crucified; dead and buried”—it is for you to form that chosen company, spoken of in the Book of Machabees, through which the salvation of Israel shall come. Certain philosophers, the Stoics, made a pretence of asserting that “Grief is but & word"; and they imag- ined thus that they would escape from the grasp of grief. No, grief is no mere word. Grief tears, undermines, Penetrates and sometimes kills. One must not deny it, but love it. “Do but grant me a man that knows how to love,” says St. Augustine, “and he will understand me. “Da amantem et sentit quod dico.” ‘What sacrifices are not readily un- dertaken for the sake of a place to be won in the world, or for the love of travel, or for an ambition, or for a profane and even & guilty passion, or for a mother's devatlon, or for love of one's native land? You dread the surgeon's lancet, yet You submit to the operator, because you. expect the restoration -of your shaken health from his art. Amd yet the lancet that wounds you cannot at the same momept heal thé fibres of your flesh. But the divine surgeon of. your bod- les and souls pours the balm together with the grief, so that the souls that most ardently love our Lord come at last to love suffering in itself, as an in- fallible means of keeping alive with- in them the flame of love divine. And 80 we see that the marvellous saying of St. Augustine s verified: “Love and you shall suffer no more: or if you suffer still, even your suffering shall be loved by you.” “Ubi amatur, non laboratur, vel, si laboratur, ipse labor amatur,” You have heard the consolation of this teaching concerning the puritying nature of suffering. It forms a natur- al transition between the Feast of All Saints and the Commemoration of the Dead, and it will help us to under- stand the state, at once sorrowful and peaceful, of the souls in purgatory. The plous English Oration, Father Faber, in his winning book, “All for Jesus,” gives us a delicate analysis of the two contrasting aspects of the theological doctrine of Purgatory. The first of these aspects is painful, sorrowful; for the souls in purgatory suffer. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas suppose that those that suffer the least there—for there are degrees in the penalties inflicted—¢qndure 'a keener agony than any torture con- ceivable here on earth. The souls in purgatory have indeed left this life in a state of grace. They are designed by right for heavenly bliss. This they well know, and, with .| all the impetuosity of their ardent im- pulse, at once natural and Christian, they long to throw themselves.into the arms of Him on Whom all their love is fixed for evermore. But like that bird held by a thread, spoken of somewhere by St. John of the Cross, they are in captivity. The thread is slender; it is the thread of “inordinate dispositions”; left in the soul by past, although absolved, sins; it is the debt still owing on account of penalties due for Sins forgiven, but expiated insuffi- ciently. Yet the slender thread—slen- der by comparison with the mortal sin which for ever excludes the dead man from Paradise—holds captive for a while the soul In its expectation of God—an expectation all the more poignant, in that God is now better known and desired, and because the lack of bodily organs has cut short all the distractions or dissipations that man found on earth In the satisfaction of his senses. St. Thomas calls it by . the same name as the punishment 'of the damned—the punishment of “loss”; not that it is identical in the two cases, for the chastisement of the dammed is accompanied by hate, while that of the souls in purgatory is re- lieved by love; but the punishment of both has a common character for a time, it deprives the soul of the sight and poseession of God. With some such thought as this, councils and theologians occasionally contrast heaven and hell with one an- other, as though there were no inter- mediate state between the state of the blessed and that of the accursed. In such ceses, under the elastic term of lower or infernal regions, they group together, at one and the same time, the eternal hell of the reprobate and the temporary imprisonment of pur- gatory. The torment of the privation of God produces a sorrowfully sensi- tive echo in the soul. Theology as- sures us that in this case the second- ary punishment of ‘‘sense” is added to the principal punishment of *losa.”” The fact that our physical sufferings result from a lesion or an alteration of our bodily organs sometimes sug- gests the idea that an incorporeal soul must be lacking in this fundamental power of sensibility. Here we forget two things: first, that in the human organism the source of the vitality and sensibility of the various organs composing it is in the soul; next, that it is not the lesion or alteration as such that causes suffering, but such lesion or al- teration as reflected in consciousness. This is shown by the fact that in a fainting fit pain ceases; absence of feeling and lack of consciousness go together. Now the soul, though freed from the flesh, still keeps none the less the root of the organic and sensi- tive powers which used to grow up from it, and which again will grow from it in our bodies at the resurrec- tion. As to donscigusness, the soul possesses it more keenly in its state of separation from the body than in its | state of union with it. This con- sclousness, then, is now even more accessible to the feeling of pain than it was here below. Thus St. Thomas Aquinas is of opin- fon that the pains which spring from the faculty of sense are greater than | those of which we have experience. Fools that we are, to expose our- selves so lightly to these hard but necessary sentences of Justice, when all the time our divine Saviour is gen- erous with His warnings and His help that we may yet be spared them! A perfect act of contrition, or confes. slon with an imperfect contrition, the Christian acceptance of the laws of labour and the toils of life, the fasts and abstinences imposed upon us by the Church, or voluntarily undertaken, the duties of almsgiving, prayer, the Holy Mass, and the Holy Communion —these are the means whereby we may expiate our sins by our merits, or merit by the,expiation of our sin Murmur no more against divine Justice, I beseech you, since you your- selves have provoked it, but strike your breast and resolve to do pen- ance without delay. And, in view of your death, which shall come upon you in the hour when least you look for it ask vour relations and friends, and the priest of your parish to per- form a great act of charity. Our divine Saviour, who conde- scended to pity all our weaknesses, in- stituted a sacrament with the object of supporting our moral strength in the last struggles of our life, and of effacing even the last traces of sin in our souls, ere they appear before the tribunal of God. Extreme Unction, or, more exactly, the Holy Unction of the sick—Sacra infirmorum Unctlo, as the Council of Trent and the Roman Ritual express it—will give you back health, if it be healthful to you, and will, if you leave this world, cause you to escape from the penalties of purgatory. Is it not deplorable that foolish prejudices, maintained, you may be sure, by the perfidy of Satan, have given ‘credit to the idea that this blessed sacrament is the precursor of death? It is given to the dying, but we are afrald of giving it to the sick! You must, then, while you are still well enough, require of your priest, your doctor, and those near you, that they should procure you the Holy Unction of the Sick, not when you are irretrievably lost, but as soon as there is a seribus probability that your life is in dange Thus, in all peace of mind and in clear consciousness, you will receive what the Council of Trent calls “the most powerful of all aids” —*firmissimum praesidium’—for the great crossing, and so you will respond -to the ardent longing of the Heart of God, Who desires you to ascend straight from the earth into His para- dise. Under its first aspect, then, purga- tory is the place of anguish, of suffer- ing. ) But, on the other hand, Father Fa- ber goes on, in the interpretation of the consolatory revelations vouchsafed to St. Catherine of Genoa, there Is nothing more beautiful, next to heav- en, nothing more peaceful, nothing more closely submitted unto God than the kingdom of suffering souls. Dante, the great Italian poet, whose philo- sophical and theological learning are as great as his genius as a writer, sees the souls of purgatory carried across Ina little boat which hardly skims the surface of the waters. An angel, like a heavenly bird, beats the air with its wings, and the. boat obeys. The souls all siig in chorus the psalm of dellverance: '“In exitu Israel de Aegypto.” Their sole care is to become purer—'‘more beautiful,” as the poet puts it—so as no longer to be unworthy to appear before the in- finite holiness of God. In thp Canon of the Mass the priest has every day a special prayer for the sotils of ‘the departed. ‘‘Remember them,"” he says t6 our Lord, “they have preceded us Into eternity with the sign of faith, and they rest in the slumber 6t peace—in somno paci: . They do. not yet.enjoy eternal rest in refreshment and light, but they are none the less safe in Christ, t6 Whom they bava the joy of belonging. The Council of Trent speaks of them as 'dead in Christ”—defunctae in Chris- to.. They.are confirmed in grace, shel- tered from sin, and even (thanks to the special protection of God) shel- _tered from venial sin. They no longer have the power of adding to the sum of their merit; -but they are none the less generous in putting into practice both theoiogical and moral virtues, and also those gifts of the Holy Spirit with which they were enriched at the moment of their leaving the earth. And now their time of trial 1s spent in acts of hope, of courage, of patience, charity and re- ligious obedience to the most holy will of God. They suffer intensely; they will suf- fer perhaps for years, even for cen- turies, but they love the Justice that purifies them; they respect the infin- ite purity that holds them at a dist- ance, and there comes from purgatory no blasphemy or murmur of .impa- tience. These noble and lovable souls “slumber truly in peace and rest in s they wait for their final 'c all souls that rest in says the Liturgy of the Mass, “mercifully grant, Lord, the refresh- ing place of your Paradise, full of light and peace.” *0 Christ, our God, Thou art the Resurrection and the Life and the Re- pose of Thy servant N. in his sleep,” says a touching prayer of the Greco- Slav liturgy for the dead; ‘‘we glorify Thee with Thy Father Who knows no beginning, and with Thy most holy beneficient and life-giving Spirit, now, always, and for ever and ever. Amen.” And yet, my Brethren, you must not deceive yourselves: suffering, though accepted and loved, is suffering none the less. The desolation of spuls in purger tory is all the more painful in that they are utterly unable to help them- selves. Fortunately, God has excellently or- dered the matter. Though reduced to impotence as regards: themselves, the souls of purgatory are able to pray for us. And we on our side have a thou- sand means of helping them. In sip there is the gullt involved and there s aleo the penaity which is not always pald as soon &% the sin is par- doned. In every good and salutary action, accomplished by & soul in a state of grace, there is ,apart from the strictly personal and inallenable merit, con- sisting in an increase of grace and constituting new and certaln claim to an increase also of heavenly glory— is also, T say, “satisfying” value which expiates the penalties dus for sins mortal or venlal that have al- ready been pardoned. * Divine generosity has willed that this satisfying value should be com- municable to others. You have no fac- culty, therefore, of depriving your- selves of it, by act of intentlon, for the good of your brothers; and espe- clally, if you wish it, for the good of the souls in purgatory. The Church, which is in possession of the satisfying value of the human- divine works of our Lord, as well as that of the works of the Blessed Vir- gin, the martyrs, and the saints, puts it partially at our disposition, under the form of indulgences, so that, by means of actions of penance and piety, We may transfer it to the suffering souls. That being so, you must see, Brethren, how very far your power. help and. explation can go in this di- my rectlon. Good works, labour, suffer: ings loved or supported in Christian fashion, voluntary mortifications, almsgiving, public and private prayers, use of the sacraments—here are so many -means within your power of | bringing relief to those poor souls who, llke the paralytio of the Gospel, see close by them the health-giving bath that would refresh them, but must await the charitable hand of help to plunge them into it. The Church has approved an act that is called herolo. It consists in renouncing, for the.sake of souls in purgatory, all our satisfactions, even the suffrages that others offer or will offer to God on our behalf now and af- ter our death. This act does indeed imply an gb- negation so complete that it partakes of the nature of herolsm. Do not con- sent to perform it without full re- flection; but if grace prompts you to it, and if the director of your con- sclence approves your proceeding, perform it resolutely. For, indeed, the more you forget yourself, the more will your personal merlt grow, and 80, thanks to the su- perabundant mercy of God, which sur- rounds us on all rides, you will lose only to gain more in the end. | For the rest, the souls in purgatory will give you back, now and after their liberation, all that you have sacrificed for them. Some fervent souls, desirous of sim- PUfying their spiritual life, have de- clded to abandon to the Blessed Vir- gin, “consoler of the afflicted,” the cdre of distributing their suffrages to the Church suffering. This act of filial renunociation is also a means of purifying and Increasing your charity. The Church sets the example. She will not permit the celebration of a single Mass unless the priest adds to his special intentions the intention of succouring all faithful Chritians, Hv- ing or dead. Strive to enter into this spirit of the Liturgy. The Holy 8acrifice of the Mass, above all, is the means of shortening the length of their time in purgatory for the suffering souls, The Council of Trent has expressly declared it. “There is & purgatory,” says the Holy Council, “and it is in the power of the faithful to aid with their suffrages the souls that are detained there; but of all such suffrages the most power- ful is the offering of the Sacrifice of the altar.” ) Certain theologians hold that purga- tory is more densely populated than the earth. We do not know what may be the degree of probability in this conjecture, but what is very likely, !s that death has mown down so many lives in the last year that the number of souls who sorrowtully. await our generous pity must be very consider- ably increased. 3 For that reason one cannot suffi- clently admire the great heart of the Sovereign Pontiff, our Holy Father the Pope Benedict XV., who has gracious- ly granted all the priests of the Cath- olic world the privilege of celebrating three Masses for the departed on All Souls' Day. Pope Plus X, too, in oneé of the last acts of his pontificate, allowed the faithful to gain on All Souls’ Day a plenary indulgence—toties quotiesr— applicable only to the souls of purga- tory. So that the faithful, so long as they confess and communicate, will sain a plenary indulgence, on the 2nd of November, as many times as they visit a church, or a public or a semi- public oratory to pray there for the departed, with the intentions of His Holiness. My Brethten, you will, I am sure, assist this generous impulse of our beloved Popes. You will make it a duty several times to visit our churches on All Souls’ Day. Also on that day I re- quest that there may be, in all the parishes of the dlocese, a solemn Mass for our brave men fallen on the fleld of battle. I should like this High Mass to be said at a very early hour so that the parishionors may associate them- selves more intimately with the Holy Sacrifice by communicating gt it with the priest. The celebrant will then better understand the lovely prayer of the Canon: “All powerful God, ac- cept our sacrifice: that all of us who at_the table of the altar partake of the nourishment of the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of Thy Son, may receive in their fullness all the bless- ings of heaven with divine grace. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.” If it is only too true that the na- tions are warring one against the other, all the souls are nevertheless of one family. You must exclude none of your suffrages, not even the souls of the soldiers fallen as they brand- ished their weapons against us. Yet you must pray with especlal predilec- tion for the souls of your compatriots and their allies. You must be assid- uous in your attendance at Holy Mass, for their intention, during the whole month of November. Further, I re- quest that in every village and in each generous decanal church of the towns, there may be on one day of the month of November—Wednesday 17 November, for example—a most solemn Requiem for the repose of the souls of the sol- dlers who have sacrificed their lives fr the defence of our independence. On the occasion of this service, a col- lection will be made for the benefit of our brothers in Poland. The patriotism of one against that of another. race ¢l o It is goa j to refresh our minds, after this cru sight, by contemplation of the dogn of the communion of saints. 0. Heaven, purgatory and the e form but a single Catholic family which the souls have all one Fai 3 our thrick Holy God, Father, Soa anil Holy Ghost; one Mother in the heay- ens, the Blessed Virgin Mary; o1 Mother only on earth during their ile, the Holy Roman Church; one Mi diator only, between God and men, Christ Jesus. s As between inhabitants of thesd! three kingdoms, let us practice ' exchange of our prayers, our works, and our sufferings. It is written, in the first Book Machabees that Jonathan, anxious to= maintain friendly relations with thae «afl| Lacedemonians, caused them to be a sured that always, at all solemn fe the Jewish people kept a memory o3 them, in sacrifices and religious obs" servances; “for,” he added, “it is meet 3 and becoming to remember brethren.*: In the second Book of the same in spired work, it is recorded that Jud Machabeus, on the day after a b that had demanded a great number victims, ordered that there should be: collection, 56 that a sacrifice of exs & plation for the dead might be held ati Jerusalem. “Thinking well and rel jously,” adds the Book, “inspired faith in the resurrection of the (For if he had not hoped that that were slain should rise again, would have seemed superfluous vain to pray for the dead.) He 0 sidered, moreover, that they who hi fallen asleep with godliness had g grace laid up for them, and was & holy and wholesome. u Whereupon he had celebrated for th dead a service of expiation, to the. that they might be delivered their sins.” ‘With a better claim even than thé just of the Old Law, wa sons af ti New Alllance desire to protest, by plous memory we hold of our brothers, by our almsgiving and suffrages for the dead, that % lieve in the communion of saints, the remission of sins, in the u tion of the flesh gnd In the life” nal redo in orum comn ionem, remissionem peccatorum, ¢ nis resurrectionem, vitam aetern Amen.’ ¢ (Signed) D. J. Card. MERCIE}] Archbishop-of The pastor of the Swedish Beth church, Rev. G. E. Pihl, left Brockton, Mass., today and ‘will turn Sunday afternoon. Sunday mef ing Rev. Ragnar A. Lindblad Orange, i in the afternoon at a special mi of the Young People’s society, to held at 4 o’clock, he will speak. address on camp life will alsp given by Councilman Edward Peters” son, president of the society, who I8 at Camp Devens with the Nationkl Army. U J. P. Johnson. who was the first president of the church, now resjds ing in Kansas, has mailed Rev. Pihl $100. Someone had comm! cated with Mr. Johnson and explaine that a fund was being taken up. an organ and he responded in d above generous manner. Last Sunday $82 was donated at the annusl Suf day school festival by the children for the poor of the church: H TO ATTEND MERIDEN GAME. New Britain will be well representadl’ at the football benefit game in M den next Saturday afternoon, the 301st Machine Gun company el en, which defeated the local team ha Baturday, will play a Silver clty & gregation for the benefit of the athlef- ic fund. ¢ i Diseased Ski ¥ SRR ‘D. o Clark & Brainerd Co., Druggists; = e STOP CATARRH! 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