want our prayers, souls in hell cannot be helped by them. So St. John Chrysostom: "It was not in vain that the Apostles settled this by law, namely, that in the venerable and sacred mysteries we should remember the dead. For they knew that the dead have much profit and advantage therefrom. At the moment when all the people stand around, their hands lifted up, and the company of priests as well, and when that Sacred Victim is offered, how should we not appease God for them by our prayers?"[1] So also the Apostolic Constitutions: "Let us pray for our brothers who rest in Christ, that the merciful God who has received the souls of the dead, may forgive all their sins and may graciously admit them to the land of the just."[2] Equally explicit are St. Cyril of Jerusalem,[3] his namesake at Alexandria,[4] St. Epiphanius,[5] But they speak of the fire of purgatory as well. St. Basil does so in several places. "If we reveal our sin in confession, we make it like dry grass which is fit to be burnt away by the cleansing fire … but, if it does not become like dry grass, it will not be devoured and burnt up by the fire."[6] He describes hell, and then says there is "a place fit to cleanse the soul."[7] He certainly distinguishes the fire of purgatory from that of hell, but his obvious allusions to 1 Cor. iii. 15 make it difficult to know whether he does not conceive the fire of purgatory to be that of the Last Day. This is the case with other Fathers, both Eastern and Western. At any rate there is no doubt about the principle: there is a pain by which those are cleansed who are eventually saved. "Some shall be saved yet so as by fire." This is the essence of the doctrine of Purgatory. St. Gregory of Nyssa says of the soul of a dead man: "It will be brought before the judgement-seat, it will hear the sentence on its past life, it will receive punishment and reward according to its desert, either to be cleansed by fire according to the words of the Gospel or to be blessed
- ↑ In Phil. hom. 3, 4. M.P.G. lxii. 204.
- ↑ Const. Apost. viii. 41. M.P.G. i. 1143.
- ↑ Cat. Myst. v. 9. M.P.G. xxxiii. 1115.
- ↑ M.P.G. lxxvi. 1423.
- ↑ Hær. lxxv. 3, 7, 8. M.P.G. xlii. 514, seq.
- ↑ M.P.G. XXX. 519. This fire is certainly a purgatorial one, since it is to be desired that it should burn away our sins.
- ↑ In Is. V. 14. M.P.G. xxx. 435.
