All Souls’ Day. 2 November. “The Liturgical Year”. By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.

“The Day Of The Dead”

Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905).

Date: 1859.

Collection: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Text from “The Liturgical Year”.

By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.

   Volume 15.

   Time After Pentecost.

   Book VI.

“We will not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as others who have no hope.” [I Thess. iv. 13]

The Church today has the same desire as the Apostle thus expressed to the first Christians. The truth concerning the dead not only proves admirably the union between God’s justice and His goodness; it also inspires a charitable pity which the hardest heart cannot resist, and, at the same time, offers to the mourners the sweetest consolation.

If faith teaches us the existence of a Purgatory, where our loved ones may be detained by unexpiated sin, it is also of faith that we are able to assist them; and Theology assures us that their more or less speedy deliverance lies in our power.

Let us call to mind a few principles which throw light on this doctrine. Every sin causes a two-fold injury to the sinner: It stains his Soul, and renders him liable to punishment.

Venial sin, which displeases God, requires a temporal expiation. Mortal sin deforms the Soul, and makes the guilty man an abomination to God: Its punishment cannot be anything less than eternal banishment, unless the sinner, in this life, prevent the final and irrevocable sentence.

But, even then, the remission of guilt, even though it revokes the sentence of damnation, does not cancel the whole debt.

Although an extraordinary overflow of Grace upon the prodigal may sometimes, as is always the case with regard to Baptism and Martyrdom, bury every remnant and vestige of sin in the abyss of Divine oblivion; yet it is the ordinary rule that, for every fault, satisfaction must be made to God’s justice, either in this World or in the next.

On the other hand, every supernatural act of virtue brings a double profit to the Just Man: It merits for his Soul a fresh degree of Grace; and it makes satisfaction for past faults, in exact proportion to the value, in God’s sight, of that labour, privation, or trial accepted, or that voluntary suffering endured, by one of the members of His Beloved Son.

Now, whereas merit is a personal acquisition and cannot be transferred to others, satisfaction may be vicarious; God is willing to accept it in payment of another’s debt, whether the recipient of the boon be in this World or in the next, provided only that he be united by Grace to the Mystical Body of Our Lord, which is one in Charity.

This is a consequence of the mystery of The Communion of Saints, as Suarez explains in his treatise on suffrages. Appealing to the authority of the greatest and most ancient princes of science, and discussing the objections and restrictions since proposed by others, the illustrious theologian does not hesitate to formulate this conclusion, with regard to the suffering Souls in particular: “I believe that this satisfaction of the living for the dead is a matter of simple justice, and that it is infallibly accepted with its full value, and according to the intention of him who applies it.

“Thus, for instance, if the satisfaction I make would, if kept for myself, avail me in strict justice for the remission of four degrees of Purgatory, it will remit exactly the same amount to the Soul for whom I choose to offer it.”