PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 149, 10 March 1876, Page 8

PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD.

TnosE of my own Hock pray da'ly for those they have laid in the grave. They never come to the Holy Mass without making commemoration and loving prayer for the poor souls that have gone into the other world ; but I ask all others not of my flock, "What have you ever done, and what are you doing now, for those you loved so well in life and who ha-'c been taken away from you by death? Are you mourning over their memory ? Do you do anything for them— do you never put up a prayer for them ? Your father whom you loved so dearly — the lather who was the strength and the guide of your youth — have you forgotten him ? Does day pass after day without a filial memory and a loving prayer for the father that loved you so dearly ? Or your mother whom youlovedwiiha tenderness only less than the tenderness with which loved you. The mother that boreyou — the mother that so: rowed overyou — the mother whose memory, it may be, has restrained you again aud again from doing wrong. She is gone : you buried her in the carth — have you forgotten her — and when you pray for your* elf do you never offer up a prayer for her like this : " May she rest in peace — Oh, my God, majr we meet again — Oh, may she enter speedily into the bliss of jour kingdom > " Do not your hearts breathe like this? If you have hearts that love, human hearts with human sympathies, is it possible you have uot these instincts? Or it may be some friend who loved you dearly, and who sacrificed himself and all he possessed for love ot you ; have you forgotten that friend ? It may be again some friend whom you wronged, who loved you and you broke his heart, and it may be your example led some one into sin. and in their sin they died, as far as you know, and they are gone to their judgment before the great while throne ; do you never pray for them, that God in His mercy might have pity on them ? Alas, as I said in the beginning, those who lorget the dead, those who blot out the words, " may lie rest ii peace," can hive but little human love or human sympathy. There is but one other word I will say. None but saints can go straightway to God after death ; every one of us, not being saints, must be pnrifie ', '• so as by fire,"' — ne shall bare to tarry, to expiate, to suffer. — Cahdixal Mannixg.