TWO BUSINESSMEN IN PURGATORY

 

Many holy souls from Purgatory came to visit St Margaret of Cortona and ask her help. Margaret was a great beauty and also a great penitent; she gave herself to penance for the sins of her youth. For 10 years, from the time she was 16 until she was 26, she had been the mistress of nobleman. 

In 1273, after her lover's death, she was inspired to lead a life of prayer and mortification. Once two dead businessmen appeared to her. They announced they had died suddenly - they had been assassinated on the road by bandits. They lamented to Margaret that they'd not opportunity or time to see a priest, "We could not go to confession or receive absolution." They were, however, able to say they were sorry for their sins, "By the mercy of our Divine Savior and His Holy Mother, we had the time to make an act of perfect contrition, and we have been saved."

The businessmen complained bitterly, "our torments in Purgatory are terrible" and they admitted that in the pursuit of wealth, they had committed "many acts of injustice." They made known to Margaret that until certain money was paid back to people, they would be in dire pain in Purgatory. They would not know any relief until people they had ripped off were compensated in full.  Margaret was instructed to go and find their relatives and ask them to pay money on their behalf. When they had given Margaret the information as to their living family members, they vanished. 

Margaret saw to it that their family were informed as to their plight in Purgatory and why they suffered. The businessmen would have had her sympathy, she had a special charism for those who died suddenly, her lover, the nobleman had been murdered and his body found in some woods. Margaret also was a Third Order Franciscan and had wholly and willingly embraced a poverty stricken lifestyle so when she went to the businessmen's family and asked them to make payments, she was less likely to be under suspicion as one who was running a scheme to fleece some funds from the bereaved. 

The businessmen were in Purgatory because they had defrauded people. Their words to Margaret are doubly instructive, firstly, they could not be given any reprieve from their purifying until such time as money they had bilked had been given back. Many of us are not in their position of having cheated people. But all of us need to know that they were saved from Hell because they offered a perfect Act of Contrition.  I believe death can come at any time and we need to be ready to offer an Act of Contrition at any moment. We may pray now - while we have time - that it is a "perfect" one which means we are sorrowful most of all that our sins have offended God.  It sounds like the businessmen offered their Act of Contrition as a knife was thrust into their soft-bellies. None of us want such a death, but like them, we may only have seconds to offer the following:

Act of Contrition

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee,
and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all, because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love.

I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin. Amen.

                                                                                    * * *

This post was informed by Father F. X. Schouppe's Purgatory  which is available at The Spirit Daily bookstore. 

The classic painting of Purgatory was executed by Ludovico Carracci and the painting of St Margaret of Cortona was by Jacopo Alessandro Calvi.