Example 4 - A MOTHER AND HER SON.

— In March of 1865, Mr. M. C…, a merchant in a small town in the surroundings of Paris, had in his house, gravely ill, the eldest of his children, who was 21 years of age. This young man, foreseeing the outcome, called his mother and had strength still to embrace her. She, shedding copious tears, said to him: “Go, my son, precede me, for I shall not delay in following you.” Having said this, she withdrew, hiding her face in her hands.

The persons present at that desolating scene considered the words of Mrs. C… a simple outburst of grief, grief that time would calm. The sick man having died, they sought her throughout the house and found her hanged in a barn. The burial of the suicide was carried out together with that of the son.

Evocation of him, many days after the fact: — Q. Do you know of the suicide of your mother, in consequence of the despair caused her by your loss?

A. Yes, and, but for the grief caused by that fatal resolution on her part, I would judge myself completely happy.

Poor, excellent mother! She could not bear the trial of that momentary separation, and took, in order to unite herself to her son, the path that should rather keep her apart from him. And for how long!

Thus, she indefinitely delayed a reunion that would have been so prompt had her soul conformed itself submissively to the wills of the Lord; had she been resigned, humble, repentant before the trial that was imposed upon her, before the expiation that should purify her!

Pray, oh! pray for her!… and above all do not imitate her, you others, mothers who are moved by the narrative of her death. — Do not believe that she loved more than other mothers that son who was her pride, no; it is that she lacked courage and resignation.

Mothers who hear me, when agony dims the gaze of your children, remember that, like the Christ, they ascend to the summit of Calvary, whence they shall rise to eternal glory.

BENJAMIN C…

Evocation of the mother. — A. I want to see my son. Have you the power to give him to me? Cruel ones!… They took him from me to lead him to the light, and left me in darkness. I want him… I want him because he belongs to me!… Is maternal love worth nothing, then? Why! to have carried him in the womb for nine months; to have nursed him; nourished the flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood; guided his first steps; taught him to stammer the sacred name of God and the sweet name of mother; to have made of him a man full of activity, of intelligence, of probity, of filial love, only to lose him when he was fulfilling the hopes conceived regarding him, when a brilliant future lay before him! No, God is not just; he is not the God of mothers, he does not understand their pains and despairs… And when I gave myself death so as not to be separated from my son, behold, they rob me of him again!… My son! my son, where are you?

The evoker. — Poor mother, we share in your pain. You sought, however, a sad recourse to be reunited with your son: — Suicide is a crime in the eyes of God, and you must know that God punishes every infraction of his laws. The absence of your son is your punishment.

The mother. — No; I judged God better than men; I did not believe in his hell, but I believed in the reunion of the souls that had loved one another as we loved one another… I was mistaken… God is neither just nor good, since he does not understand the greatness of my pain any more than of my love!… Oh! who will give me my son? Shall I have lost him forever? Pity! pity, my God!

The evoker. — Come, calm your despair; consider that, if there is a means of seeing your son again, it is not by blaspheming God, as you now do. By that, instead of attracting his mercy, you make yourself deserving of greater severity.

The mother. — I was told that I would see him no more, and I understood that they had taken him to paradise. And shall I, perchance, be in hell? in the hell of mothers? It exists, I see it all too well…

The evoker. — Your son is not lost forever; certainly you will see him again, but you must merit it by submission to the will of God, whereas revolt may indefinitely delay that moment.

Hear me: God is infinitely good, but he is also infinitely just. Thus, no one is punished without cause, and if on Earth He inflicted great pains upon you, it is because you merited them.

The death of your son was a trial of your resignation; unfortunately, you succumbed to it while in life, and behold, after death you succumb again; how do you expect God to reward rebellious children? The sentence is not, however, inexorable, and the repentance of the guilty is always welcomed.

Had you accepted the trial with humility; had you waited with patience for the moment of your disincarnation, on entering into the spiritual world, in which you find yourself, you would immediately have caught sight of your son, who would have received you with open arms. After the absence, you would see him radiant. But what you did and even now do places between you and him a barrier. Do not judge him lost in the depths of Space, but rather nearer than you suppose — it is that an impenetrable veil withdraws him from your sight.

He sees and loves you always, deploring the sad condition into which you have fallen through the lack of confidence in God, and anxiously awaiting the happy moment of presenting himself to you. On you alone does it depend to shorten or delay that moment. Pray to God and say with me: “My God, forgive me for having doubted your justice and goodness; if you punished me, I acknowledge that I merited it. Deign to accept my repentance and submission to your holy will.”

The mother. — What a light of hope you have just made dawn in my soul! It is like a flash of lightning in the night that surrounds me. Thank you, I am going to pray… Farewell.

C…

Death, even by suicide, did not produce in this Spirit the illusion of judging herself still alive. She presents herself conscious of her state: — it is that for others the chastisement consists in that illusion, through the bonds that bind them to the body. This woman wished to leave Earth to follow her son into the other life: it was, therefore, necessary that she know herself to be really there, in the certainty of disincarnation, in the exact knowledge of her situation.

Thus it is that each fault is punished according to the circumstances that determine it, and that there are no uniform punishments for faults of the same kind.