penance. What proportion exists between those days of penance and the duration of the sufferings of Purgatory? This is a secret which it has not pleased God to reveal to us.
Indulgences are, in the Church, a true spiritual treasure laid open to all the faithful; all are permitted to draw therefrom, to pay their own debts and those of others. It was under this figure that God was one day pleased to show them to Blessed Mary of Quito. [1] One day, rapt in ecstasy, she saw in the midst of a large space an immense table covered with heaps of silver, gold, rubies, pearls, and diamonds, and at the same time she heard a voice saying, "These riches are public property; each one may approach and take as much as he pleases." God made known to her that this was a symbol of indulgences. [2] We may say with the pious author of the Merveilles how culpable we are if in such abundance we remain poor and destitute ourselves and neglect to assist others. Alas! the souls in Purgatory are in such extreme necessity, they supplicate us with tears in the midst of their torments; we have the means of paying their debts by indulgences, and we make no endeavour to do so.
Does access to this treasury demand painful efforts on our parts, such as fastings, journeys, and privations insupportable to nature? "Even though such were the case," says with reason the eloquent Father Segneri, "we should submit to them." Do we not see how men for love of gold, in order to preserve a work of art, to save a part of their fortune or a precious fabric, expose themselves to the flames of a fire? Ought we not then to do at least as much to save from expiatory flames those souls ransomed by the Blood of Jesus Christ? But Divine goodness asks nothing so painful: it requires only such works as are ordinary and easy — a Rosary, a Communion, a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, an alms,
