AN APPARITION OF A SOUL FROM PURGATORY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 461, 10 February 1882, Page 13

AN APPARITION OF A SOUL FROM PURGATORY.

A most remarkable apparition of a soul from purgatory is related in a small work under the title of " Three Apparitions of Souls from Purgatory," published at Paris in 1872, by Paline ; and, as no notice of the woTk has appeared in the American Catholic press, one instance quoted by Abbe Postel in " Les Doleurs de la Vie, la Mort, le Purgatoire, may be of interest,.

Towards the middle of the month of September, 1870, a Belgian religous experienced an altegothor inexplicable grief which pressed upon her spirit like a heavy weight. The Sister was no other than Mary Seraphine of the Sacred Heart. It seemed to her that she was beset by an invisible and invincible power which surrounded and pursued her everywhere. She felt, also, a weight upon her shoulder, as though, to use her own expression, she had been shot in the shoulder, and the charge of lead or bullet had remained embedded in the flesh. At last, on September 29, the Feast of St. Michael she received a letter from France which seemed to her to explain everything. The letter contained news of the death of her father, who had died at exactly the time when she first began to experience the sensation mentioned. But the pains continued to increase, and, added to them, she sometimes heard stifled groans, and a voice distinctly crying in her ear : "My daughter, have pity on me!" A few days afterwards, as she was retiring to rest, her deceased father appeared to her enveloped in flames, while the expression on his face was inexpressibly sad. He spoke in a distinct voice, and said : " 1 suffer for my impatiences and other faults which T am not permitted to mention." " But," said the daughter, "do you receive no relief from the Masses which have been offered for the repose of your soul ? " "Oh yes," he replied, " I feel every morning a sweetness like that of a rose, which comes to refresh my soul, but next to that I attain most relief from the intentions of those pious, who make the way oi the cross in our behalf. But, alas, I have already been in purgatory a year and you have no pity for me." "My poor father I" exclaimed the Sister, "it is hardly a month since you quitted this life." He replied :"Ah ! you do not know what eternity is ; when the soul has come into the presence of God it is devoured by a burning thirst to possess Him ; I am condemned to six months of purgartory. It is to you I have now to look for relief, for my other children believe me to be in Heaven, and hardly one of them has said even aDe Prof undis for me. Think ; think of this cistern of fire into which lam plunged. Oh, if people only knew what it is to be in purgatory, they would suffer anything and everything to avoid it and they would make every effort to succour the poor souls who are imprisoned there." The apparition disappeared, and replunging into the cistern of fire he cried. " I thirst ! I thirst 1 "

The apparition appeared again, and this time, the Sister, to be Bure that it was not an illusion, asked her father to touch her. He did so ; he placed his haiid first upon her shoulder and then upon her heart. She instantly experienced a feeling of burning, accompanied with a sense of inexpressible sorrow, the Bkin assuming a blackish hue, without the clothes exhibiting the least visible trace of fire. Although this was remarkable, still more so was the fact, that although the eoul could do nothing for itself, God heard its prayers' for a Sister of the community who was ill, and the disease instantly left her. On All Soul's Day the apparition said to the religious, •' We have been much relieved to-day ; a large number of souls hare taken

their flight to Heaven." Sister Mary Seraphine, by permission of her confessor, addressed the following questions to her father • "Do the soul 8 in purgatory know those who pray for them and ran they nrar themselves for the faithful on earth f" He replied by a formal " TVs " «Do the souls in purgatory," asked the Sirtp.r ,« suffer in thinkin^o* the sins which they daily committed while they wore here on earth !•• « Yes," replied her father, " that is one of their chastisement He also said to the Sister that he had been permitted to see t-> the end of the P resent life ' he had al8 ° Been God° » His DiriJ splendorrthe Sacred Humanity of Our Lord, and the Blewed Virgin and St. Joseph and tkat uince that time his thirst for God grew daily more and more ardent. That was in fact the most insupportable of the purifying aufferings. He added also that his guardian angel came often to console him.