for priests and Religious as for the ordinary faithful living in the midst of the corruption of the world. (See Note 8.)
A too frequent cause of the long continuance of Purgatory is that many deprive themselves of a great means established by Jesus Christ for shortening it, by delaying, when dangerously sick, to receive the last Sacraments. These Sacraments, destined to prepare souls for their last journey, to purify them from the remains of sin, and to spare them the pains of the other life, require, in order to produce their effects, that the sick person receive them with the requisite dispositions. Now, the longer they are deferred, and the faculties of the sick person allowed to become weak, the more defective do those dispositions become. What do I say? Very often it happens, in consequence of this imprudent delay, that the sick person dies deprived of this absolutely necessary help. The result is, that if the deceased is not damned, he is plunged into the deepest abysses of Purgatory, loaded with all the weight of his debts.
Michael Alix [1] speaks of an ecclesiastic who, instead of promptly receiving the Extreme Unction, and therein giving a good example to the faithful, was guilty of negligence in this respect, and was punished by a hundred years of Purgatory. Knowing that he was seriously ill and in danger of death, this poor priest should have made known his condition, and immediately had recourse to the succours which the Mother Church reserves for her children in that supreme hour. He omitted to do so; and, whether through an illusion common among sick people, he would not declare the gravity of his situation, or whether he was under the influence of that fatal prejudice which causes weak Christians to defer the reception of the last Sacraments, he neither asked for nor thought of receiving them. But we know how death comes by stealth; the unfortunate man deferred so long that he died without having had the time to receive
- ↑ Hort. Past,, Tract. 6, Cf. Rossignoli, Meweilles, 86.
