The fourth day of November in the book, The Month of the Holy Souls, focuses on the existence of Purgatory. It presents the following story for our consideration:

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EXAMPLE

 A young Scotch Presbyterian had an only brother to whom he was much attached, and who met his death very suddenly. He had joined a party bent on pleasure, and was struck with apoplexy in the midst of his companions, who had little expected such an occurrence. Ever after the sad event the young Scotchman gave way to melancholy. He thought incessantly of the sudden transition from worldly festivities to the dread tribunal of God’s judgment, and he feared that his brother would not have been sufficiently free from stains of sin, to entitle him to enter at once into the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Protestant religion showed him no intermediate place between Heaven and the abyss of hell.

To divert his mind from the melancholy which oppressed him, he was ordered to travel. In one of his journeys in France, he met a priest to whom he told the subject of his grief. My good friend, said the priest, you will never find either comfort or hope except in the Catholic religion, which is so admirably adapted to the needs of the human heart; that Church tells us that there exists between heaven and hell a third place, where souls finish their purification and where we can help them by our prayers. You, as a Protestant, do not believe in this, and are deprived of the consolations it affords; but become a Catholic and you will then be able to pray for your beloved brother; you will hold converse with him, and each day you will pray for his admittance into heaven. Then and then only will you be freed from the grief which oppresses you.

The young man followed the advice that had been given him. He made his abjuration and was received into the Church, and as a true Catholic was often seen kneeling in prayer by his brother’s grave. How true it is, that the belief in Purgatory is a necessity for the human heart.

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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.