All Saints' Day

I.

My dear brother, on this day of commemoration of the dead, I feel happy to be able to converse with you. You cannot imagine how great is the pleasure I experience. Call upon me, then, more often, and we shall both profit by it.

Here, I cannot always come to you, because, very often, I am at the side of my sisters, especially at the side of my goddaughter, whom I scarcely leave, for I asked for the mission of remaining with her. Nevertheless, I can frequently answer your call, and it will always be a joy to be able to help you with my counsel.

Let us speak of today's festival. In this solemnity full of contemplation, which brings the visible world close to the invisible, there is happiness and sadness.

Happiness, because it unites in pious sentiment the scattered members of the family. On this day the child draws near to its tomb and finds its tender mother watering the sepulchral stone with her tears. The little angel blesses her and mingles its wishes with the thoughts that fall, drop by drop, with the tears of the beloved mother. How pleasing to the Lord are these chaste prayers, tempered in faith and in longing! Thus, may they rise to the feet of the Eternal, like the gentle perfume of flowers, and, from the height of heaven, may God cast a glance of mercy upon this little corner of the Earth and send one of His good Spirits to console this suffering soul and to say to it: “Take comfort, good mother; your beloved child is in the dwelling of the blessed; he loves you and awaits you.” I said: a day of happiness, and I repeat it, because those who are led by the religion of longing to pray here for those who have departed know that it is not in vain, and that one day they will see again the well-beloved beings from whom they are momentarily separated. A day of happiness because the Spirits see with joy and tenderness those who are dear to them come to share, through their confidence in God, in the happiness they enjoy.

On this All Saints' Day, the deceased who courageously endured all the trials imposed in life, who divested themselves of worldly things and raised their children in faith and in charity, these Spirits, I repeat, willingly come to associate themselves with the prayers of those they left behind, and inspire in them the firm will to march constantly along the path of good. Children, relatives, or friends, kneeling beside the tombs, experience an intimate satisfaction, because they are aware that the remains that lie there, beneath the gravestone, are no more than a memento of the being they imprisoned and which now finds itself freed from earthly miseries. These, my dear brother, are the happy ones. Until tomorrow!

II.

Dear brother: faithful to my promise, I come to you. As I had said, on leaving you yesterday afternoon, I went to pay a visit to the cemetery. There I attentively examined the various suffering Spirits. It is enough to cause pity. That lamentable spectacle would draw tears from the hardest heart.

Nevertheless, in good number these souls are relieved by the living and by the assistance of the good Spirits, above all when they have repented of their earthly faults and make efforts to divest themselves of their imperfections, the sole cause of their sufferings. Then they understand the wisdom, the goodness, the greatness of God, and ask for the favor of new trials in order to satisfy divine justice, to expiate and repair their faults, and to win a better future.

Pray, then, my dear friends, with all your heart, for these repentant Spirits who have just been enlightened by a spark of light. Until then they had believed only in eternal torments, because, in their punishment and to the height of their torments, they were not permitted to hope. Imagine their joy when the veil of darkness was at last torn away and the angel of the Lord opened their eyes, stricken with blindness, to the light of faith. They are blessed, but, in general, they have no illusions concerning the future; many, even, do not know that they have terrible trials to suffer; thus they insistently entreat the prayers of the living and the assistance of the good Spirits, so that they may bear with resignation the difficult task that will be imposed upon them. I tell you again, and it would never be too much to repeat it, in order to convince you fully of this great truth: pray from the bottom of your heart for all the Spirits who suffer, without distinction of caste or of sect, because all men are brothers and owe one another mutual support.

Fervent Spiritists, above all you who know the situation of suffering Spirits and know how to appreciate the phases of life; you who know the difficulties they must overcome, come to their aid. It is a beautiful charity to pray for the poor unknown brothers, often forgotten by all, and whose gratitude you cannot gauge when they see themselves assisted. For them prayer is like dew, watering the earth scorched by heat. Picture an unknown man on a dark night, fallen at some crossing of an unknown road; his feet are wounded by the long march; he feels the sting of hunger and a burning thirst; to his physical sufferings are joined all moral tortures; despair is two steps away; in vain he casts to the four winds piercing cries: not one friendly echo answers the desperate appeal. Well then! Imagine that at the instant when this unhappy creature reached the very limits of suffering, a compassionate hand comes to rest gently upon his shoulder and to bring him the help that his situation demands. Imagine, then, if possible, the ecstasy of that man, and you will have a faint idea of the happiness that prayer affords to the unhappy Spirits who endure the anguish of punishment and of isolation. They will be eternally grateful to you, because, rest assured, in the world of Spirits there are no ingrates as there are on your Earth. I said that All Saints' is a solemnity marked by sadness; truly a great sadness, for it also draws attention to the class of those Spirits who, during their earthly existence, consecrated themselves to materialism, to egoism; who would not recognize other gods than the miserable vanities of their inferior world; who did not fear to employ all illicit means to increase their riches and, often, to cast honest people into misery. Among these are also found those who interrupted their existence by violent death; those who, in life, dragged themselves through the pestilent mire of impurity. For all these, my dear brother, how many terrible torments! It is as the Scripture says: There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. They will be plunged into the deep abyss of darkness. These unhappy ones are commonly called the damned and, although it is more exact to call them the punished, they nonetheless suffer torments no less terrible than those attributed to the damned amid the flames. Enveloped in the thickest darkness of an abyss that seems to them unfathomable, though not circumscribed, as you are taught, they experience indescribable moral sufferings, until they open their heart to repentance. At times, some remain for centuries in this state, without it being possible for them to foresee the end of their torments. Thus, they believe themselves condemned for eternity. For a long time this erroneous opinion enjoyed credit among you. It is a grave error, because, sooner or later, these Spirits open themselves to repentance and then God, moved with pity for their misfortunes, sends them an angel, who addresses to them consoling words and opens to them a path all the wider the more prayers have been made for them to the Eternal. As you see, brother, prayers are always useful to the guilty; and if they do not alter the immutable decrees of God, they nonetheless give no less relief to the suffering Spirits, bringing them the sweet thought that they are still in the memory of some compassionate souls. Thus the prisoner feels his heart leap with joy when, through the bars, he perceives the face of some relative or friend who has not forgotten him in his misfortune.

If the suffering Spirit is too hardened, too material, for the prayer to reach his soul, a pure Spirit gathers it up like a precious fragrance and deposits it in the celestial amphoras, until the day when it can serve the guilty one.

In order that prayer bear fruit, it is not enough to mumble the words, as the majority of men do. The only prayer pleasing to the Lord is that which springs from the heart, the only one that is taken into account and relieves the Spirits who suffer.

The sister who loves you, Margarida.

— Q. (Posed at the Society.) – What should one think of the following passage of this communication: “Rest assured that in the world of Spirits there are no ingrates as there are on your Earth?” Since the souls of men are incarnate spirits, they bring with them their vices and virtues; the imperfections of men come from the imperfections of the spirit, just as their qualities proceed from acquired qualities. In this way, and since the most ignoble vices are found among Spirits, it would not be understandable that one could not come upon ingratitude, so often encountered on Earth. Answer. – (By Mr. Perché.) – Without doubt there are ingrates in the world of Spirits, and you may place in the first rank the obsessing Spirits and the pernicious ones, who exert every effort to instill in you perverse thoughts, in spite of the good you do them by praying for them. However, their ingratitude is only momentary, because, for them, the hour of repentance sounds sooner or later. Then their eyes open to the light and their hearts will be eternally grateful. On Earth it is not so, and at every step you will meet men who, in spite of all the good you do them, repay you, to the very end, only with the most perverse ingratitude. The passage that gave rise to this observation is obscure only because it lacks development. I was considering the question solely from the point of view of the Spirits open to repentance and, for that very reason, capable of immediately reaping the fruits of prayer. Committed to the good path, and unable to turn back, it is clear that gratitude could not be extinguished in them.

In order that there be no confusion, write thus the sentence that prompted the observation: “They will be eternally grateful to you because, do not doubt it, among the Spirits, those whom you have led to the good path could not be ingrates.”

Margarida.

Remark. – These two communications, like many others of no less elevated morality, were received by Mr. Perché, in his barracks, where he counts several comrades who share his Spiritist beliefs and conform their conduct to them. We will ask the detractors of Spiritism whether these soldiers would receive better counsels of morality in the tavern. If this is the language of Satan, he has become a hermit! It is true: he is already so old!

On the same occasion we will ask Mr. Tony – the witty and, above all, very logical journalist of Rochefort, who believes that Spiritism is one of the evils that came out of Pandora's box and one of those unwholesome things, studied by public hygiene and morals – what there is that is unwholesome and contrary to hygiene in this communication, and whether these soldiers lost their morality and their health by renouncing pleasures in favor of prayer.