CHAPTER LXV.
Means to Avoid Purgatory—Holy Acceptation of Death—Father Aquitanus—St. Alphonsus Liguori—Venerable Frances of Pampeluna and the Person who was not Resigned to Die—Father Vincent Caraffa and the Condemned Man—Sister Alary of St. Joseph and Mother Isabella—St. John of the Cross—Sweetness of the Death of the Saints.
The sixth means to avoid Purgatory is the humble and submissive acceptation of death in expiation of our sins: it is a generous act, by which we make a sacrifice of our life to God, in union with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross.
Do you desire an example of this holy resignation of life into the hands of the Creator? On December 2, 1638, there died at Brisach, on the right bank of the Rhine, Father George Aquitanus, of the Society of Jesus. Twice he had devoted his life to the service of the plague-stricken. It happened that on two different occasions the pest raged with such fury that it was almost impossible to approach the sick without being attacked by the contagion. Every one fled and abandoned the dying to their unhappy fate. But Father Aquitanus, placing his life in the hands of God, made himself the servant and the apostle of the sick; he employed himself exclusively in relieving their sufferings and in administering to them the Sacraments.
God preserved him during the first visitation of the pest; but when it again broke out with renewed violence, and the man of God was called upon for the second time to devote himself to the care of the sick, God this time accepted his sacrifice.
