How many are there, perhaps, who during the course of eight or ten
years have received from their parents or their friends the work of
having Masses said and alms given and have allowed the whole thing to
slide! How many are there who, for fear of finding that certain good
works should be done, have not wanted to go to the trouble of looking at
the will that their parents or their friends have made in their favor?
Alas, these poor souls are still detained in the flames because no one
has desired to fulfill their last wishes! Poor fathers and mothers, you
are being sacrificed for the happiness of your children and your heirs!
You perhaps have neglected your own salvation to augment their fortune.
You are being cheated of the good works which you left behind in your
wills! ... Poor parents! How blind you were to forget yourselves! ...
You will tell me, perhaps: "Our parents lived good lives; they were very
good people." Ah! They needed little to go into these flames!
See
what Albert the Great, a man whose virtues shone in such an
extraordinary way, said on this matter. He revealed one day to one of
his friends that God had taken him into Purgatory for having entertained
a slightly self-satisfied thought about his own knowledge. The most
astonishing thing was that there were actually saints there, even ones
who were beatified, who were passing through Purgatory.
Saint
Severinus, Archbishop of Cologne, appeared to one of his friends a long
time after his death and told him that he had been in Purgatory for
having deferred to the evening the prayers he should have said in the
morning.
Oh! What years of Purgatory will there be for those
Christians who have no difficulty at all in deferring their prayers to
another time on the excuse of having to do some pressing work! If we
really desired the happiness of possessing God, we should avoid the
little faults as well as the big ones, since separation from God is so
frightful a torment to all these poor souls!
