Purgatory

Purgatory

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Title: Purgatory
Author: Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
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PURGATORY:
Doctrinal, Historical and Poetical,
BY
MRS. J. SADLIER

LO! PURGATORY! DOCTRINE BLEST, ENGARLANDED WITH
LEGENDS WILD, HISTORIC LORE AND POETRY'S FAIR
FLOWERS!
_"Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the just wait
for me, until thou reward me."_
Ps. CXLI 8.

DEDICATION
TO THE GRACIOUS MEMORY OF MY DEARLY-BELOVED SON,
REV. FRANCIS X. SADLIER, S.J. WHOSE TENDER DEVOTION
TO THE Souls in Purgatory LED HIM TO TAKE A DEEP AND
ACTIVE INTEREST IN THE PROGRESS OF THIS WORK, BUT

WHO WAS NOT PERMITTED TO SEE ITS COMPLETION, BEING
CALLED HENCE, SCARCELY THREE MONTHS AFTER HIS
ORDINATION, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MONTH
CONSECRATED TO THOSE Holy Souls, November 14th, 1885.
R. I. P.

INTRODUCTION
I have written many books and translated many more on a great variety
of subjects, nearly all of which, I thank God now with all my heart,
were more or less religious, at least in their tendency; but the circle of
these my life-long labors seems to me incomplete. One link is wanting
to the chain, and that is a work specially devoted to the souls in
Purgatory. This omission I am anxious to supply while the working
days of my life are still with me, for, a few more years, at most, and for
me "the night cometh when no man can work."
As we advance into the vale of years and journey on the downward
slope, we are happily drawn more and more towards the eternal truths
of the great untried world beyond the grave. Foremost amongst these
stands out more and still more clearly, in all its awful reality, the dread
but consoling doctrine of Purgatory. When we have seen many of our
best beloved relatives, many of our dearest and most devoted
friends--those who started with us in "the freshness of morning" on the
road of life, which then lay so deceitfully fair and bright before them
and us--they who shared our early hopes and aspirations, and whose
words and smiles were the best encouragement of our feeble
efforts--when we have seen them sink, one by one, into the darkness of
the grave, leaving the earth more bleak and dreary year by year for
those who remain--then do we naturally follow them in spirit to those
gloomy regions where one or all may be undergoing that blessed
purification which prepares them for the eternal repose of Heaven.
Of all the divine truths which the Catholic Church proposes to her
children, assuredly none is more acceptable to the pilgrim race of

Adam than that of Purgatory. It is, beyond conception, dear and
precious as one of the links that connect the living with the vanished
dead, and which keeps them fresh in the memory of those who loved
them on earth, and whose dearest joy it is to be able to help them in that
shadowy border-land through which, in pain and sorrow, they must
journey before entering the Land of Promise, which is the City of God,
seated on the everlasting hills.
When I decided on adding yet another to the many books on Purgatory
already existing even in our own language, I, at the same time, resolved
to make it as different as possible from all the others, and thus fill up a
void of which I have long been sensible in our English Purgatorial
literature. Doctrinal works, books of devotion, e have in abundance, but
it is, unhappily, only the pious, the religiously- inclined who will read
them. Knowing this,