Fabiola : or, The church of the catacombs - Digital Repository Services

good of bis poor soul. And if they had continued till now,
such prayers would long ago have helped him into heaven."
" And it is becanse he built the monastery I suppose," said
Andrew, "that those monks are placed round his tomb. How
pious they look, even in the marble, but I never observed it
before, they seem to be holding something broken in their
hands."
"Ah," sighed the verger, "it used to be their rosary, but
these, like their prayers, are wanting now ; and it would have
seemed a mockery to restore them, when that of which they
are emblems is passed away. In the days of which we are
speaking, nil England was, as it were, one great rosary ; its
villages and hamlets were like so many little beads, its cities
with their cathedrals and monasteries were the greater ones,
and they were all bound together by the communion of
saints. But it is broken to pieces now, like those that used to
be in those marble hands, and that poor knight and all of us
are the sufferers."
" It was the Reformation, as it is called, I suppose, that did
all this," answered Andrew.
'Yes," his companion answered. "And it -was not long
after the poor knight was dead that it began. The little mon-
astery was one of the first to be seized on by king
Harry the Spoiler ; the alms-houses followed in the next reign ;
then the daily mass in the Lady chapel was abolished as su-
ferings ;
and hi my own case, J, must confess most justly."
" How so ?" Andrew inquired.
"Why, yon see, when I was in life I was rather given to
grumbling, a fault which in truth is too common with us poor
folk. Most of the sins for which I am now in Purgatory have
arisen from this failing, and very probably a part of my punish,
ment consists in having these motives for grumbling constantly
before me."
"Ah, " said Andrew, "just as I have heard it sometimes
said, those who are so fond of grumbling, ought to have some-
thing to grumble for."
" Precisely so," replied the verger.
THE VISION OF OLD ANDREW THE WEAVER.
" And so now I feel all
the trouble and vexation, if I may say so, that would arise
from knowing these things if I were still alive on earth ; but
still I am not really vexed at them, you will understand ; I
know too well the value of resignation now to dojthat even if I
could ; but yet I suffer as much as if I were as vexed as I used
to be."
" Well, but," argued Andrew, "even so I^don't see how the
recollection of such a funeral as you have described can afflict
you ; for my part, it delights me to think of it. How can it at
all affect you now ?"
" How ?" the old man somewhat sharply asked; " by the
contrast of the things that were with the things that are. Such
a funeral as that was a common gain to all the souls in Purgatory,
but especially to those lying in the church-yard through
Instead of cloaks for the poor, there are gloves, and
silk scarfs and hat-bands for the rich instead of doles, a feast
for the relations instead of prayers, common-place condolo-
ments, too often laughter, and even riot and debauchery.
the many footsteps of a procession of old, slowly pacing
through the church-yard were beautiful, for you know it is
written, " How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the
gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good
things ;" (Rom. x. 15.) Their sound was truly like glad tid-
ings whispered through the regions of the dead. But th
measured tread of a modern funeral falls dull and heavy on
the soil, and finds no responsive echo in the hearts of the
sleepers.
"Now-a-days they carry us to the grave without a cross to
guide our way, or a torch to light us on our dreary path ;
O I
all is
cold and meaningless, and dark, and gloomy. Aye, and Catho-
lics too, though they profess to beb'eve in Purgatory, are little
if any better than the rest. They place us in unconsecrated
mould, without a blessing, without a prayer, because it is too
far to go to a Catholic burial ground, or because in the Protestant
one there is some other mouldering carcass to which we
were once supposed to be related. Perhaps they put up an
perstitious, and the knight has been left ever since to pray for
himself, as you see him, one night in the year and to suffer
every other day and night, till he had paid the long debt that
he owes to his master. Nor is his a solitary case there is
;
more than one here, and many elsewhere, who would long
since have gone from among us, if the institutions of the old
times had not been swept away, and their funds put into the
pockets of those who care more for the living than the dead. "
"But how is it," asked Andrew, in some astonishment,
" that you know all these things so pat, and can talk about
them so finely ? You were only a miserable beggar, and have
only just come in here you say, where have you of a sudden
got all your learning?"
" I told you before," was the reply, "that we are allowed to
know many things whilst we are here, whether they be past or
present, especially what affects our own interests. But this,
though it may seem a privilege, often unsightly tombstone, and think they
only increases our suf-
have done wonders, if
they carve a cross upon it, or add at the bottom three letters
signifying a wish that we may rest in peace. But there they
stop, and we may rest in peace for them, for they will trouble
themselves no farther about us.
" If any come to the church-yard now, it is to saunter abmit
in idleness, or to find out which is the oldest grave-stone, or to
read the doggerel rhymes that have taken the place of.the good
old charitable inscriptions and if ; they chance to light upon
one where they see a cross, they say 'O, he was a Catholic', they
see the words at the foot begging for peace for the weary soul,
but even in repeating them they mean not to pray ; they forget
that in the grave below, there is probably a brother or a sister
who needs their aid, and who cries out to them by the only emblem
which at one time a persecuting age permitted to them,
'have pity on me, at least you my friends." Grave-stones,
and tombs, and monuments, were not intended to be merely
ornaments, or memorials of mortality, or the trumpeters of
pride, but they should be humble suppliants for prayer, and
such they were once but ; who, even among Catholics, looks on
them as such now ? who, when he reads the epitaph of a brother
in the faith, ever thinks of uttering a Do profundia, or a single
Pater Noster for the welfare of his soul ?"
" I understand it now," said Andrew. "
This is why mod-
em Catholics get so much slower through purgatory than
those of old and why so few why, I do believe not one of
the bonnets and hats of my days, have as yet got beycud the
first pillar."
" You were not altogether wrong, then, you see," the verger
went "
on, in attributing this to the negligence and coldness of
modern Catholics. They are truly cold. Their faith in Pur-
gatory is cold, and so they do little in life to escape it themselves
; Their charity is still colder, and so they altogether for-
get and neglect us, their poor brethren, who are already suffering
there. How often do you think is Father Peter asked to
say a Mass for the souls in Purgatory ? I'll be bound th alms
he receives for this charitable work in a year, would barely furnish
him with a week's subsistence and ; probably if all that
has ever been given him for it was put together, it wouldn't
buy a new black vestment for him.
"
Just look at those two chapels of our Blessed Lady and St.
Edmund ; they were built and endowed in times gone by, that
Masses might be offered up daily for the souls of the founders
and their families, and for all suffering souls ; and there were
which th procession passed. The prayers that were said, the
psalms that were chanted, were not intended merely for him
who was being carried to the alms, too, and clothes to be given away
tomb, but for all who rested
beneath the sod. But who ever heard of such a funeral now ?
or what good is a modern funeral to any one but the under-
at stated days to the
poor, for them to pray for the same pic-us end. Formerly no
one ever thought of passing through a church-yard without
stopping to kneel before the cross to say a prayer for those who
lay around it no one ever entered a church ;
and went out unmindful
of the dead but now, though a man's own father, or
mother, or brother, or sister, or wife, or child, lie beneath the