Twenty-fifth Day
We have the authority of Holy Scripture for the efficacy of prayers: “It is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead.” It is holy because it is most pleasing to God; it is wholesome because we have reason to believe that through the infinite mercy and compassion of His Sacred Heart, Our Lord accepts prayers offered in atonement for the sins of those suffering in purgatory. If the prayers we offer for temporal goods are often heard and granted, how much more so when we offer them for spiritual goods, for the souls tenderly loved by God? Well might St. Augustine say: “One cannot conceive a holier or more wholesome practice than praying for the dead.” The “Imitation of Christ” has the following: “Full of love and charity, we must remember in our prayers the souls of the faithful departed, but particularly the souls of our parents, friends and relations, and those who have been our benefactors on earth. For that is a work of real love and charity. As we entertain the most earnest hopes that we shall be remembered when we shall have departed this life, we ought to make every effort in our power to assist them to arrive speedily at their promised abode of bliss, and by our prayers shorten the weary days of their pilgrimage in purgatory. And we must remember that every one who actively assists in the deliverance of these poor souls, gains for himself the greatest advantages. By offering his prayers for their eternal repose, he by no means loses the fruits of those prayers, for they are remembered to him, and are before him when his time comes to die. And moreover one is rewarded even in this life for such prayers.”
Prayer.
Release, O Lord, etc., etc.