How beautifully our Holy Mother the Church bridges over the terrible chasm of the grave! How faithfully and tenderly she comes to our aid in the saddest of our griefs and sorrows! She leaves us not to mourn uncomforted, unsustained. She chides us not for shedding tears over our dear lost ones--a beloved parent, a darling child, a loving brother, affectionate sister, or deeply-cherished friend or spouse. She bids us let our tears flow, for our Saviour wept at the grave of Lazarus. She whispers words of comfort--not unmeaning words, but words of divine hope and strength--to our breaking hearts. She pours the oil of heavenly consolation into our deepest wounds. She bids us cast off all unseemly grief, assuring us that not even death itself can sever the bond that unites us; that we can be of service to those dear departed ones whom we loved better than life itself; that we can aid them by our prayers and good works, and especially by, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Thus may we shorten their time of banishment, assuage their pains, and continue to storm Heaven itself with our piteous appeals until the Lord deign to look down in mercy, open their prison doors, and admit them to the full light of His holy presence, and to the everlasting embrace of their Redeemer and their God. EXTRACTS FROM "CATHOLIC BELIEF." VERY REV. FAÁ DI BRUNO. [1] [Footnote 1: Catholic Belief, or, A Short and Simple Exposition of Catholic Doctrine, by Very Rev. Joseph Faá Di Bruno. D. D., Rector- General of the Pious Society of Missions of the Church of San Salvatore in Onde, Ponte Sisto, Rome, and St. Peter's Italian Church in London. American Edition, edited by Father Lambert, author of Notes on Ingersoll, &c.] As works of penance have no value in themselves except through the merits of Jesus Christ, so the pains of Purgatory have no power in themselves to purify the soul from sin, but only in virtue of Christ's Redemption, or, to speak more exactly, the souls in Purgatory are able to discharge the debt of temporal punishment demanded by God's justice, and to have their venial sins remitted only through the merits of Jesus Christ, "yet so as by fire." The Catholic belief in Purgatory rests on the authority of the Church and her apostolic traditions recorded in ancient Liturgies, and in the writings of the ancient Fathers: Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Origen, Eusebius of Cæsarea, Arnobius, St. Basil, St. Ephrem of Edessa, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ambrose, St. Epiphanius, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Augustine. It rests also on the Fourth Council of Carthage, and on many other authorities of antiquity. That this tradition is derived from the Apostles, St. John Chrysostom plainly testified in a passage quoted at the end of this chapter, in which he speaks of suffrages or help for the departed.