humble Religious of her community, having crowned an exemplary life with a very pious death, God deigned to show the saint the state of the deceased in the other life. Gertrude saw her soul adorned with ineffable beauty, and dear to Jesus, who regarded her with love. Nevertheless, on account of some slight negligence not yet atoned for, she could not enter Heaven, but was obliged to descend into the dismal abode of suffering. Scarcely had she disappeared into its depths, when the saint saw her come forth and rise towards Heaven, transported thither by the suffrages of the Church. Eccesia precious sursum ferri.
Even in the Old Law prayers and sacrifices were offered for the dead. Holy Scripture relates as praiseworthy the pious action of Judas Machabeus after his victory over Gorgias, general of King Antiochus. The soldiers had committed a fault by taking from among the spoils some objects offered to the idols, which by law they were forbidden to do. Then Judas, chief of the army of Israel, ordered prayers and sacrifices for the remission of their sin, and for the repose of their souls. Let us see how this fact is related in Scripture (2 Machab. xii. 39).
"After the Sabbath, Judas went with his company to take away the bodies of them that were slain, and to bury them with their kinsmen in the sepulchres of their fathers.
" And they found under the coats of the slain some of the donaries of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbiddeth to the Jews; so that all plainly saw that for this cause they were slain.
"Then they all blessed the just judgment of the Lord, who had discovered the things that were hidden.
"And so betaking themselves to prayers, they besought Him that the sin which had been committed might be forgotten. But the most valiant Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, for so much as they saw before
