Look at that vast kingdom of Purgatory, with its empress-mother, Mary! All those countless throngs of souls are the dear and faithful spouses of Jesus. Yet in what a strange abandonment of supernatural suffering has His love left them! He longs for their deliverance; He yearns for them to be transferred from that land, perpetually overclouded with pain, to the bright sunshine of their heavenly home. Yet He has tied His own hands, or nearly so. He gives them no more grace; He allows them no more time for penance; He prevents them from meriting; nay, some have thought they could not pray. How, then, stands the case with the souls in the suffering Church? Why, it is a thing to be meditated on when we have said it--they depend almost more on earth than they do on heaven, almost more on us than on Him; so He has willed it on whom all depend, and without whom there is no dependence. It is clear, then, that Jesus has His interests there. He wants His captives released. Those whom He has redeemed He now bids us redeem, us whom, if there be life at all in us, He has already Himself redeemed. Every satisfaction offered up to God for these suffering souls, every oblation of the Precious Blood to the Eternal Father, every Mass heard, every communion received, every voluntary penance undergone; the scourge, the hair- shirt, the prickly chain, every indulgence gained, every jubilee whose conditions we have fulfilled, every _De Profundis_ whispered, every little alms doled out to the poor who are poorer than ourselves, and, if they be offered for the intention of these dear prisoners, the interests of Jesus are hourly forwarded in Mary's Kingdom of Purgatory.... There is no fear of overworking the glorious secretary of that wide realm, the blessed Michael, Mary's subject. See how men work at the pumps on ship-board when they are fighting for their lives with an ugly leak. Oh! that we had the charity so to work, with the sweet instrumentality of indulgence, for the Holy Souls in Purgatory! The infinite satisfactions of Jesus are at our command, and Mary's sorrows, and the Martyr's pangs, and the Confessor's weary perseverance in well- doing! Jesus will not help Himself here, because He loves to see us helping Him, and because He thinks our love will rejoice that He still leaves us something we can do for Him. There have been Saints who have devoted their whole lives to this one work, mining in Purgatory; and, to those who reflect in faith, it does not seem, after all, so strange. It is a foolish comparison, simply because it is so much below the mark; but on all principles of reckoning, it is a much less work to have won the battle of Waterloo, or to have invented the steam-engine, than to have freed one soul from Purgatory. WHY THE SOULS IS PURGATORY ARE CALLED "POOR" SOULS. FATHER MULLER, C.S.S.R. [1] [Footnote 1: Charity to the Holy Souls in Purgatory]