The faith of our fathers - Carmel Apologetics

"PURGATORY, ETC. 255you, that you would remember me at the altar ofthe Lord, wherever you be."And that pious son prays for his mother s soul inthe most impassioned language:"I, therefore," hesays, O God of my heart, do now beseech Thee forthe sins of my mother. Hear me through the medicine of the wounds that hung upon the woodMay she then be in peace withher husbandAnd inspire, my Lord, .... Thy servants, my brethren, whom with voice and heart and pen I serve,that as many as shall read these words may remember at Thy altar, Monica, Thy servant. . . . ." lThese are but a few specimens of the unanimousvoice ofthe Fathers regarding the salutary practiceof praying for the dead.You now perceive that thisdevotion is not an invention of modern times, but a doctrine universallyenforced in the first and purest ages of the Church.You see that praying for the dead was not a devotion cautiously recommended by some obscure orvisionary writer, but an act of religion preached andinculcated by all the great Doctors and Fathers ofthe Church, who are the recognized expounders ofthe Christian religion.You see them, too, inculcating this doctrine not asa cold and abstract principle, but as an imperativeact of daily piety, and embodyingit in their ordinary exercises of devotion.They prayed for the dead in their morning and1 Confessions, Book ix