soul to your charity. Offer to God for him some prayers and a part of the sufferings occasioned by your malady." The holy patient promised her to do so, and some time after, in one of her frequent ecstasies, she was conducted by her angel-guardian into the subterranean dungeons, where she saw with extreme compassion the torments of the poor souls plunged in flames. One of them in particular attracted her attention. She saw him transpierced by iron pins. Her angel told her that it was the deceased brother of that woman who had asked her prayers. "If you wish," he added, "to ask any grace in his favour, it will not be refused to you." "I ask, then," she replied, "that he may be delivered from those horrible irons that transpierce him." Immediately she saw them drawn from the poor sufferer, who was then taken from this special prison and placed in the one occupied by those souls that had not incurred any particular torment. The sister of the deceased returning shortly after to St. Lidwina, the latter made known to her the condition of her brother, and advised her to assist him by multiplying her prayers and alms for the repose of his soul. She herself offered to God her supplications and sufferings, until finally he was delivered. [1]
We read in the Life of Blessed Margaret Mary that a soul was tortured in a bed of torments on account of her indolence during life; at the same time she was subjected to a particular torture in her heart, on account of certain wicked sentiments, and in her tongue, in punishment of her uncharitable words. Moreover, she had to endure a frightful pain of an entirely different nature, caused neither by fire nor iron, but by the sight of a condemned soul. Let us see how the Blessed Margaret describes it in her writings.
" I saw in a dream," she says, " one of our sisters who had died some time previous. She told me that she suffered much in Purgatory, but that God had inflicted upon her a
- ↑ Vie de Sainte Lidvine.
