Second Day
We are told that few of those who save their souls, except children who have not lost their baptismal innocence, go to heaven without passing through purgatory. How many are surprised by death in venial sin! how many who receive forgiveness for the guilt of mortal sin still owe some temporal debt for it! how few leave this life without some stain on their souls! Yet every stain must be wiped away, every farthing of the debt paid, before the soul can leave the prison of purgatory. We have no time to lose, death may be at our doors. Why not now use the means of avoiding purgatory? Why do we count a suffering in the future which in the present we would be in no way ready to accept, but would employ every effort to escape? How soon must we leave this world never to return! How soon will day and night have no meaning for us! Our bodies, mouldered into dust, will come to life again only at the sound of the last trumpet, and then only for judgment. Friends who love us, possessions on which we have set our hearts, will be taken from us. We will leave as we came, alone. Why, then, attach ourselves to those things in such a way as to bring upon us the displeasure of God, and the sufferings which His displeasure entails? Better far to live here with the thought of the bitterness which goes with wrongdoing and a sense of security for the future, than thoughtlessly to incur the punishment which is to be found in purgatory.
Prayer.
Release, O Lord, etc., etc.