Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered for the departed. We find them in the Memoirs of Father Gerard, an English Jesuit and Confessor of the Faith during the persecutions in England in the sixteenth century. After relating how he had received the abjuration of a Protestant gentleman, married to one of his cousins, Father Gerard adds, " This conversion led to another under the most extraordinary circumstances. My new convert went to see one of his friends who was dangerously ill. This was an upright man, detained in heresy more by illusion than by any other motive. The visitor urgently exhorted him to be converted, and to think of his soul; and obtained from him the promise that he would make his confession. He instructed him in everything, taught him how to excite himself to contrition for his sins, and went to seek for a priest. He had great difficulty in finding one, and in the mean time the sick person died. When about to expire, the poor dying man asked frequently whether his friend had not yet returned with the physician whom he had promised to bring; it was thus he called the Catholic priest.
" What followed showed that God had accepted the goodwill of the deceased. The nights following his death, his wife, a Protestant, saw a light moving in her room, and which came even within the curtains of her bed. Being afraid, she desired one of her servant-maids to sleep in her room; but the latter saw nothing, although the light continued to be visible to the eyes of her mistress. The poor lady sent for the friend whose return her husband had awaited with so much anxiety, related to him what had happened, and asked what was to be done.
" This friend before giving an answer consulted a Catholic priest. The priest told him that the light was, for the wife of the deceased, a supernatural sign by which God invited her to return to the true faith. The lady was deeply impressed by these words; she opened her heart to grace, and in her turn was converted.
