The book, The Month of the Holy Souls, presents daily considerations for the month of November in the form of meditations and practical examples. The example for today is as follows.

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EXAMPLE

When the children of Israel, led captive, far away from their own country, could only see the banks of the Euphrates, they seated themselves mournfully on the unknown soil and wept over the remembrance of their lost Jerusalem. Illic sedimus et flevimus dum recorderemur Sion. No longer in their midst were heard joyous words and canticles; their harps, hung on the willows that grew on the banks of the river, were silent. “Children of Israel, why weep ye?” asked the Babylonians. “We weep,” was the answer, “because we think of Sion our country; we remember it, and we mourn for it!” “But, exiled sons of Sion, why sing you not to soften your grief and distract your melancholy thoughts! . . . Sing! sing some of the canticles of your country—sing your national hymn.” “Sing, alas! Can the exile sing his country’s hymns in a stranger’s land? Far from home and country he regrets, he mourns, he weeps, he awaits in tears the consolation of returning. O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! may my tongue cleave to my palate if one day I forget thee!”

And so, without doubt, does it come to pass when the souls of our brethren, retained by Divine Justice, far from that country to which love calls them, reach the brink of the abyss where expiation condemns them to a painful exile, they halt on those shores, a thousand times more desolate than the shores of the earth: and there, filled with the thoughts of the heavenly country, they also weep that they are kept from it; but with tears, with lamentations that differ as much from our tears and sighs as heaven differs from earth, as time differs from eternity!

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This anecdote comes from Month of the Souls in Purgatory by Abbé Berlioux, originally published in English in the year 1886. This book contains meditations and an example story for each day of the month. In an effort to preserve short inspiring stories from our Catholic past, every day for the month of November you can find the example story for the day published on the website under people/stories.

The same author also published similar books for the months of March (St. Joseph), May (Our Lady), and June (Sacred Heart). We are planning to post the stories for these months in the future, as well as re-publish a collection of these four books as a set, so be sure to check back in a few months.