CHAPTER XLV.
Advantages of Devotion towards the Holy Souls — Their Gratitude — St Margaret of Cortona — St. Philip Neri — Cardinal Baronius and the Dying Woman.
Is it difficult to understand the gratitude of the holy souls? If you had ransomed a captive from the galling yoke of slavery, would he be grateful for such a benefit? When the Emperor Charles V. took possession of the city of Tunis, he restored to liberty twenty thousand Christian slaves, who before his victory had been reduced to a most deplorable condition. Penetrated with gratitude towards their benefactor, they surrounded him, blessing him and singing his praises. If you gave health to a person dangerously sick, fortune to an unhappy creature who had been reduced to poverty, would you not receive in return their gratitude and their benedictions? And those souls, so holy and so good, will they conduct themselves differently with regard to their benefactors? — those poor souls whose captivity, poverty, suffering, and necessity far surpass all captivity, indigence, or malady to be found upon earth. They come especially at the hour of death, to protect them, to accompany and introduce them into the happy abode of their eternal rest.
We have already spoken of St. Margaret of Cortona, and of her devotion to the holy souls. It is related in her biography that at her death she saw a multitude of souls that she had delivered from Purgatory form in procession to escort her to Paradise. God revealed this favour granted to Margaret of Cortona through the medium of a holy person in the city of Castello. This servant of God, wrapt in ecstasy at the moment when Margaret departed this life,
