A FAST FREED A SOUL FROM FLAMES

In recent years I have kept a tradition whereby every November my blogposts are devoted to the welfare of the souls in Purgatory. More than anything, I've emphasized prayer for the suffering souls. But there is, of course, doing a fast as a voluntary suffering that may be offered to God on behalf of the souls.  

There is a case when a fast from water was the fire hydrant that quenched the flames that seared a soul. This happened sometime in the 1800s. The French priest, Monsieur L'Abbe Louvet (author of Le Purgatoire) had a relative who was a nun. Louvet did not flatter this nun, rather he emphasized that she didn't have the heroic virtue of a saint but she had simple virtue and "great regularity of life".  Louvet's point is that someone who does not have extraordinary sanctity may still make an offering that is very efficacious. 

The nun had a friend "in the world", as Louvet describes this woman who was not a consecrated virgin. The friend died and the nun thought of what she could do for her soul. One evening, she felt very thirsty and she got herself a glass of water. But before she brought the soothing liquid to her lips, she thought of fasting from it and offering her thirst for her dead friend. Moved by the inspiration that this could help her friend, the nun set aside the glass of water. The very next night, the friend appeared to the nun and thanked her profusely because the vessel of water had utterly extinguished the fire that purified her and she had been able to fly to Heaven. 

While he felt she was not special in any way, his relative's sacrifice reminded Louvet of how King David abstained from water, "This good sister reminds us of King David, who finding himself with his army in a place without water and oppressed with thirst, refused to drink the refreshing water which was brought to him from the cisterns of Bethlehem. Instead of raising it to his parched lips, he poured it out as a libation to the Lord and Holy Scripture cites this act of the holy King as one most agreeable to God."

Sometimes it is hard to recommend something that I find so hard it feels hypocritical to ask others to consider it. I can fast quite easily from food, but I find fasting from water and tea to be so hard that I feel I'm going insane when I deny myself water. An expression of mine is that, "There is nothing as delicious as water" and my friends and significant other often quote it back to me. But as they say in my native Ireland, t'would be a poor world were we all the same, so among you, dear readers, there are perhaps some of you who may find abstaining from water an easier penance. I find it impossible, but I'm edified that when a thirsty nun passed up one glass of water, one soul was released. Imagine that if you released a soul in Purgatory every time you denied yourself a glass of water. Even if you did this once a week, that would be 52 souls released from Purgatory per year. And surely there are souls who need just that single offering for their release. I like to think that when you and I are in Purgatory, souls from Heaven will fly at us with trays of goblets of water - the same water we denied ourselves - and use them to douse the fires that envelop us. 

You may like the prayer before fasting. 

This post was informed by Louvet's Le Purgatoire. The classic painting of a glass of water was executed by Chardin in 1760.