Today’s saint, Agnes of Rome, is long overdue for a revival. Why? She was probably the most revered female martyr of the early Church — outstanding in a field that included Blandina and Perpetua, among others. St. Jerome was not a man easily impressed, but of today’s saint, his near-contemporary, he wrote: “Every people, whatever their tongue, praise the name of Saint Agnes.” Prudentius wrote a long poem and a hymn in her honor. Ambrose extolled her as the model virgin. Augustine praised her. Damasus memorialized her in verse. Her name means lamb, and in art she often appears holding a lamb.

At least one modern historian holds that her martyrdom was the tipping point in the long term of Diocletian’s persecution. It was with the brutal, legal murder of this young girl that the tide of opinion began to turn among Rome’s pagans. With this act they realized they had become something they didn’t want to be; and that moment’s repugnance may have been the beginning of their healing.

Agnes was twelve or thirteen when she was denounced as a Christian. A beautiful girl from a noble family, she had reached the age when she could be married. She turned away her suitors, however, explaining that she had consecrated her virginity to Jesus Christ. It was likely one of her jilted suitors who turned her in.

Agnes knew that her martyrdom was likely. She faced the judge fearlessly, even when he brought out the instruments of torture that could be applied to her. She was unmoved. Knowing how much the girl prized her virginity, the judge condemned her to work in a brothel. She was stripped of her clothing, but even the debauched Romans couldn’t bear to look upon her. One man who did was struck blind, only to be healed by Agnes’s prayer. Agnes let down her long, blond hair to cover herself. (Some accounts say that her hair miraculously grew to veil her body.)

Having failed at another punishment, the judge turned her over to the executioner. Ambrose wrote: “At such a tender age a young girl has scarcely enough courage to bear the angry looks of her father and a tiny puncture from a needle makes her cry as if it were a wound. And still this little girl had enough courage to face the sword. She was fearless in the bloody hands of the executioner. She prayed, she bowed her head. Behold in one victim the twofold martyrdom of chastity and faith.”

She died around 304 A.D., and immediately the world knew her story. The emperor Constantine’s daughter invoked St. Agnes to cure her of leprosy; and when she was cured, she had a basilica built at Agnes’s tomb. Another church in her honor stands in Rome’s lovely Piazza Navona. There, on our May pilgrimage to Rome, we’ll visit the saint’s relics, which are exposed for veneration. Please consider joining us.

I visited St. Agnes’s relics in 2002 with my daughter Mary Agnes, who has already outlived her little namesake. May she equal her, at least, in virtue.

I had the great pleasure of talking with Bruce and Kris at KVSS Radio about St. Agnes, and you can listen in via MP3. (Kris, by the way, will be with us in Rome, along with a sizable contingent from Nebraska. Very cool.)

“I am going the way of the Fathers … for I see myself being summoned by the Lord.”

I found those among the last words of the saint whose feast we celebrate today, Anthony of Egypt. They would, I think, make a good motto for this blog. (I have elsewhere taken the old guy as a sort of patron.)

The Church reveres Anthony as a model monk and hermit and a great master of the spiritual life. Anthony managed — in spite of his best efforts to live in remote seclusion — to achieve worldwide celebrity. Crowds of people sought him out, for counsel, for exorcism, for intercession and healing. Wherever he was — whether walled up in an abandoned mountain fortress or shut up in a fetid tomb — Anthony was himself a destination for pilgrims. He began his pursuit of the solitary life when he was around twenty years old, and he persevered until his death at 105 in the year 356. He emerged from his cells only when the Church required his service: once he traveled to Alexandria to fortify those who were about to die as martyrs; another time he arrived to deliver a public condemnation of the Arian heresy.

Shortly after Anthony’s death, St. Athanasius wrote a biography, The Life of Anthony, which soon became a runaway bestseller. Within a generation, the book had become one of the most quoted and most influential texts in the Christian world. Anthony’s acts affected the lives and preaching of such men as Jerome, Ephrem, Augustine, Rufinus, Gregory Nazianzen, Paulinus, Palladius, and Chrysostom. If you want to join their ranks, you can check out The Life online, and even read a detailed rundown of how the ancient world received the text. A more readable translation, though, is here, and it’s quite affordable. Anthony’s aphorisms appear also in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (a must-read).

This morning I’ll be discussing Anthony on KVSS Radio. You can listen online via live feed, or you can wait for Bruce and Kris to post an audio file. Eventually, Junior will move the file onto this site as well.

If you want to turn your listening pleasure into a multimedia experience, you can surf to the many artistic representations of Anthony’s temptations. The demons really gave it to the guy, and great artists have found the subject irresistible. The most famous rendering is by Hieronymus Bosch. My favorite, though, is this one.

The first piece I wrote for the religious press was a profile of St. Anthony. It appeared in a little magazine edited by a Mennonite gentleman and sold in his bookshop. It was 1985; and I was twenty-two years old. I dug it out of the archives this morning with the thought of posting it here, but I’m holding back. Maybe the two decades that have passed since then have made me timid. I hope not. But I don’t think I would write the piece the same way today. In illo tempore, I put the emphasis on facing temptations squarely and overcoming them with grace and grit-your-teeth effort. Now I’d qualify the statement and say that there are times to face temptation, but there are also times when it’s best to flee — to avoid the near occasion of sin, as we say in the Act of Contrition. We should know that our strength is God’s strength. But we should know, too, that our weakness is our own. I hope that’s closer to Anthony’s spirit. (I’m reassured by the knowledge that Anthony’s life underwent some drastic changes between ages twenty-two and forty-three.)

Men and women still take to the deserts of Egypt to live in Anthony’s caves and other habitats. Treat yourself to a firsthand account of this life in Father Mark Gruber’s Journey Back to Eden: My Life and Times Among the Desert Fathers. It’ll blow your mind.

The key to understanding Christian art is understanding the liturgy that’s at the heart of Christian life. That’s the thesis behind a new, three-volume work of art history by Father Timothy Verdon. An American, a Yale graduate, and a faculty member at Stanford, Father Verdon is a priest of the Diocese of Florence, Italy, where he heads up the office for catechesis through art. He attended the last synod of bishops at the invitation of Pope Benedict XVI. Sandro Magister discusses Father Verdon’s trilogy and why we need it.

In three large volumes, two millennia of Christian art are recounted for the first time in their original context: the liturgy …

Italy, where Rome and the papacy are located, is the most extraordinary treasure chest of Christian art that exists in the world. But it is as if the key to unlock its marvelous treasures had been lost.

And these three volumes are intended to offer precisely the key to rediscover, comprehend, and live Christian art in its authentic light.

A solely aesthetic analysis of Christian art is misleading. Christian art is not made for the museums, but for the liturgy. An altar screen can be understood only if it is viewed together with the Eucharist celebrated on that same altar.

For example, why is it that in so many ancient churches, the altar is flanked on the one side by the archangel Gabriel making his annunciation, and on the other side by Mary who is responding to this, with the divine dove up above in the center?

The reply is simple: every time the Mass is celebrated, what the figures show in images is carried out on the altar at the center. The Son of God is announced again, and becomes truly present among men “by the work of the Holy Spirit.”

Thanks to the celebration of the Eucharist, the three images take on life in a way that is unimaginable for those who look at them apart from the sacramental rite.

Magister doesn’t hint at Father Verdon’s insights about paleochristian art — in the catacombs and the oldest churches. But the first volume does deal with the patristic era, and even peeks into the medieval. Unfortunately, the trilogy is only available in Italian.

For the Bulgarians, today is Ignazhden, the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, and apparently it’s a big celebration in Sofia. The old Antiochene is to Bulgaria what St. Lucy is to Sweden and St. Nicholas is to other countries, the major December saint. So you’d better party like it’s, um, 99.

Rick of Ricoblog — an outstanding site for discussion of the Apostolic Fathers — informs us that Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints is now available on the Web. Butler was an eighteenth-century English Roman Catholic priest. The text on the Web, though, comes from the 1894 Benziger edition, which was heavily edited and modernized by John Gilmary Shea, who also added reflections for our edification.

Sample a saint or two from the patristic era…

June 28.—ST. IRENÆUS, Bishop, Martyr.

THIS Saint was born about the year 120. He was a Grecian, probably a native of Lesser Asia. His parents, who were Christians, placed him under the care of the great St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna. It was in so holy a school that he learned that sacred science which rendered him afterward a great ornament of the Church and the terror of her enemies. St. Polycarp cultivated his rising genius, and formed his mind to piety by precepts and example; and the zealous scholar was careful to reap all the advantages which were offered him by the happiness of such a master. Such was his veneration for his tutor’s sanctity that he observed every action and whatever be saw in that holy man, the better to copy his example and learn his spirit. He listened to his instructions with an insatiable ardor, and so deeply did he engrave them on his heart that the impressions remained most lively even to his old age. In order to confute the heresies of his age, this father made himself acquainted with the most absurd conceits of their philosophers, by which means he was qualified to trace up every error to its sources and set it in its full light. St. Polycarp sent St. Irenæus into Gaul, in company with some priest; he was himself ordained priest of the Church of Lyons by St. Pothinus. St. Pothinus having glorified God by his happy death, in the year 177, our Saint was chosen the second Bishop of Lyons. By his preaching, he in a short time converted almost that whole country to the Faith. He wrote several works against heresy, and at last, with many others, suffered martyrdom about the year 202, under the Emperor Severus, at Lyons.

Reflection.—Fathers and mothers, and heads of families, spiritual and temporal, should bear in mind that inferiors “will not be corrected by words” alone, but that example is likewise needful.

And another:

May 2.—ST. ATHANASIUS, Bishop.

ATHANASIUS was born in Egypt towards the end of the third century, and was from his youth pious, learned, and deeply versed in the sacred writings, as befitted one whom God had chosen to be the champion and defender of His Church against the Arian heresy. Though only a deacon he was chosen by his bishop to go with him to the Council of Nicæa, in 325, and attracted the attention of all by the learning and ability with which he defended the faith. A few months later, he became Patriarch of Alexandria, and for forty-six years he bore, often well-nigh alone, the whole brunt of the Arian assault. On the refusal of the Saint to restore Arius to Catholic communion, the emperor ordered the Patriarch of Constantinople to do so. The wretched heresiarch took an oath that he had always believed as the Church believes; and the patriarch, after vainly using every effort to move the emperor, had recourse to fasting and prayer, that God Would avert from the Church the frightful sacrilege. The day came for the solemn entrance of Arius into the great church of Sancta Sophia. The heresiarch and his party set out glad and in triumph. But before he reached the church, death smote him swiftly and awfully, and the dreaded sacrilege was averted. St. Athanasius stood unmoved against four Roman emperors; was banished five times; was the butt of every insult, calumny, and wrong the Arians could devise, and lived in constant peril of death. Though firm as adamant in defence of the Faith, he was meek and humble, pleasant and winning in converse, beloved by his flock, unwearied in labors, in prayer, in mortifications, and in zeal for souls. In the year 373 his stormy life closed in peace, rather that his people would have it so than that his enemies were weary of persecuting him. He left to the Church the whole and ancient Faith, defended and explained in writings rich in thought and learning, clear, keen, and stately in expression. He is honored as one of the greatest of the Doctors of the Church.

Reflection.—The Catholic Faith, says St. Augustine, is more precious far than all the riches and treasures of earth; more glorious and greater than all its honors, all its possessions. This it is which saves sinners, gives light to the blind, restores penitents, perfects the just, and is the crown of martyrs.

Among those who were imprisoned for the faith during Diocletian’s purge was the beloved bishop of Myra, a poor diocese in Asia Minor. His name was Nicholas.

Bishop Nicholas was a holy man, an articulate teacher, and a staunch defender of orthodoxy against Arianism. Having survived his imprisonment, he lived to see the triumph of the true faith at the Council of Nicaea, where he was an active participant. There, according to later histories, he denounced Arius forcefully. Indeed, some sources (though not entirely reliable) claim that St. Nicholas punched Arius in the nose and brought forth a “profusion of blood.”

At home, Nicholas was best known for his generosity. After his death, the stories of his kindness spread far and wide. On his feast day, December 6, Christians would try to imitate his generous giving. Over time, his name, St. Nicholas, would be slurred into “Santa Claus” and, in some countries at least, the feast of giving transferred (along with “Santa”) to Christmas.

He is the patron saint of children, and my house is full of them.

Christie’s is tomorrow auctioning a tenth-century image of Nicholas carved in a gem. Lovely. (Hat tip on the auction: PhDiva.)

This essay originally appeared in The Catholic Answer magazine, published by Our Sunday Visitor. OSV also publishes four of my books on the Fathers (see the covers at left). Some material in this post is adapted from the newly expanded edition of my book The Fathers of the Church.

My dad was a quiet man. On the rare occasions he spoke about his past, I would scribble notes. My siblings noticed; and, about a week after Dad died, one by one they asked whether I might share my notes with them.

The words of our natural fathers are precious to us. Our fathers are key to a mystery we spend a lifetime trying to solve: ourselves. Their past is our own, given to us in so many silent ways as they guide our childhood steps. The paths we walk are paths to which they led us. Their words and deeds are critical details in the story of our own lives.

If all that is true of our natural fathers, how much more true of our fathers in Christian faith — the Fathers of the Church?

Who Are the Fathers?

The Fathers of the Church are a select group of early Christian teachers, usually numbered around a hundred. The Church has long revered them and given them a privileged place of doctrinal authority. The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists the Fathers among its “principal sources,” immediately after the Bible and just before the liturgy (n. 11).

The age of the Fathers, sometimes called the Patristic Era, stretched from the middle of the first century until the middle of the eighth, at the death of St. John of Damascus. Some of the earliest Fathers lived during the lifetime of the Apostles, and the teaching of these men — called the Apostolic Fathers — has always received special veneration. The Apostolic Fathers are sometimes called the “first echo” of the Apostles.

But, even beyond the first echo, the Church considers the Patristic Era in general to be a time of extraordinary grace for the expression and development of Christian dogma.

The Catechism (n. 688) presents the Fathers as “always timely witnesses” to the Sacred Tradition that comes from Jesus Himself — the Gospel entrusted to the Church and handed on even before the gospels were written (see 2 Thess 2:14, 1 Tim 6:20 and 2 Tim 1:13). It is important for us to get this teaching right. The Fathers are witnesses to the Tradition, which predates them. They themselves are not the Tradition.

The Fathers provide us a crucial link. They bear witness to the authenticity of our liturgy, our priesthood, our canon of sacred Scriptures. They show us our Church’s unbroken continuity with the Church of the Apostles. We share the same Tradition, though we’ve grown and developed in our understanding and expression of that Tradition.

What Makes a Father?

The Church has always honored the doctrine of the Fathers. This was true even of the Fathers themselves. Like the rabbis of early Judaism, the early Christian teachers took care to demonstrate that their teaching was not their own, but rather stretched back to the beginning. We see this already in the generation after the Apostles. St. Clement of Rome (probably writing before 70 A.D.) shows that his pedigree comes from two Apostles, Peter and Paul. Papias of Hieropolis, writing a few decades later, also connects the dots from his own generation to Jesus’.

In the second century, we meet St. Irenaeus of Lyons (modern France), who learned the faith from Polycarp of Smyrna, who in turn learned from St. John the Apostle. St. Irenaeus shows how this succession has been institutionalized in the line of bishops in every Church. His list of the Popes is the earliest witness we have to the immediate successors of St. Peter.

As the generations passed, more teachers justified their doctrine by showing a catena (Latin for “chain”) of unbroken teaching stretching, from Father to Father, back to the Apostles. By the fifth century, this practice had become almost a requirement for theologians and teachers.

But, as disputes and heresies multiplied, it became necessary to designate which ancient teachings were authoritative and which were not. Thus, in the fifth century, we find, in a decree attributed to Pope Gelasius I, history’s first list of Church Fathers designated as such. In the same century, St. Vincent of Lerins sketched out the ground rules for the field known today as “patristics” or “patrology,” the study of the Church Fathers.

St. Vincent, who would himself eventually win recognition as a Father, ventured a definition. The Fathers, he wrote, are “those alone who, though in diverse times and places, yet persevering in the communion and faith of the one Catholic Church, have been approved teachers.”

He spelled out four criteria, which would stand ever after as the measure:

1. sound doctrine;
2. holy life;
3. Church approval; and
4. antiquity.

Those ancient Christians who don’t meet all these criteria are often described as “ecclesiastical writers” rather than Church Fathers.

Still, there is no official list of the Fathers, no process of canonization similar to a cause for sainthood. The ancient list attributed to Pope Gelasius is of uncertain origin; and, in any event, it was drawn up while the age of the Fathers was still in progress.

Theologians throughout history have ventured their own lists, varying in length and differing significantly from one another. For many centuries, Tertullian, a third-century African layman, was kept off many lists because he ventured into schism in his old age. Yet the Catechism of the Catholic Church cites him often and even names him among “the Fathers of the Church” (see n. 1446). Another controversial teacher, Origen of Alexandria (third century), taught some doctrines that were later (after his death) condemned by the Church. His defenders quote his oft-expressed wish never to teach anything contrary to the Catholic faith. Nevertheless, he has been kept off the lists through most of history. Yet, in the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, he has often been cited as an authority in official Church documents.

It’s important for us to keep in mind that the works of the Fathers, unlike the books of the Bible, are neither inspired nor inerrant; and, unlike the popes, the Fathers do not teach infallibly. In fact, they often disagree with one another, and some of them didn’t get along very well. St. Jerome argued against St. John Chrysostom; St. Jerome argued with St. Augustine; St. Jerome argued with almost everyone.

When, however, there is a “consensus of the Fathers” on a particular doctrine or interpretation of Scripture, then the position of the Fathers must be held as true.

Are Origen and Tertullian “Church Fathers” or “ecclesiastical writers”? Patristic scholars will likely be duking that one out for centuries to come.

How the Fathers Fathered

The history of the early Church is more than just a succession of creeds, councils, persecutions, and heresies. It is the story of a family, and of how the Fathers of that family strove to keep their household together, to preserve the family’s patrimony, to teach and discipline their children, and to protect the family from danger. Only when we understand them as fathers can we truly understand the Church Fathers.

In the New Testament, the Apostles clearly see themselves as fathers to the newborn Church. St. Paul reminded the Christians of Corinth that he was their “father in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor 4:15), and he addressed both Timothy and Titus as his true children (1 Tim 1:2; Ti 1:4). St. John also greeted his flock as “my little children” (1 Jn 2:1). St. Peter explicitly referred to Christians of his own generation as “the fathers” (2 Pt 3:4).

The custom of calling bishops “Father” continued with the passing of the Apostles’ generation. The word “pope” comes from Latin and Greek words meaning “father,” and in the early centuries was applied to diocesan bishops as well as the bishop of Rome. Eventually, common usage extended the application of the title “Father” to priests and monks, too, as is today the custom in English-speaking countries.

Any list of the Fathers of the Church, however, includes lay people as well — the philosopher Justin Martyr, for example, and his contemporary Hermas, who was a farmer. In what sense were they Fathers?

Quite simply, their teaching shows a real paternal care for the Church, a care they shared with their bishops. Nowhere is this expressed more vividly than when Tertullian vigorously confronts heretics as poachers on his family’s estate, trespassers who threatened his patrimony: “Who are you . . . Marcion, by what right do you chop my wood? By whose permission, Valentinus, are you diverting my streams? By what power, Apelles, are you removing my landmarks? This is my property. . . . I hold sure title-deeds from the original owners themselves, to whom the estate belonged. I am the heir of the Apostles.”

What About the Mothers?

Were there “Mothers of the Church”? Well, yes and no.

We possess very few writings by women from the ancient world. Christian women are probably slightly better represented than their pagan counterparts. The many collections of “Sayings of the Desert Fathers” actually include proverbs by women ascetics, who are called “Amma,” or “Mother.”

St. John Chrysostom (fifth century) carried on extensive correspondence with an abbess named Olympias, but her letters have not survived. His contemporary St. Jerome corresponded with many holy and scholarly women; but, again, we have mostly Jerome’s end of the conversation. Tertullian has preserved the words of the martyrs Perpetua and Felicity. In the late fourth century, St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote a profoundly moving biography of his sister St. Macrina.

Their contemporaries honored these women as maternal figures. The Church has always honored them as saints. There is no custom of calling them “Mothers of the Church,” but there is no reason why individual Christians might not revere them as such.

Fatherly Advice

Sooner or later, every thinking Christian discovers the duty to study the Church Fathers. It presents itself as a matter of religious literacy, if not a debt of ancestral honor.

They preached the faith in a way that won over the pagan world. During the first three centuries, the Church grew at a rate of forty percent per decade! We should at least learn from our Fathers.

What’s more, they gave their lives for us. Many of the Fathers died as witnesses to the faith. And their blood was the “seed” from which our Church grew and grew. We should at least honor their memory.

Honor your Fathers by reading them — and reading about them. I’ve posted reading lists here (the short form) and here (the long form). Among the links at left you’ll find online patristic resources.

Phil gives us a fresh translation of Sulpitius Severus’s account of St. Martin and the beggar.

On the Byzantine calendar, today is the feast of St. Michael the Archangel and the Angelic hosts. On my mom’s calendar, it’s her youngest child’s forty-third birthday. I was born just days after she turned forty-seven. So — as those whiz-kid math majors among you have already figured out — my mom just passed that milestone ninetieth birthday. (She points out, however, that zeroes don’t count for anything, so she’s only nine. But I digress.)

My family of origin is 100% Latin Rite, so I was not named for the archangel on his Feast in the East. I was named for my dad (God rest his soul). But I was very pleased when I learned of the coincidence of my birthday with the Byzantine memorial. I found out because of the coincidence of landing an apartment a couple of blocks away from St. Michael’s Byzantine Catholic Church in Canonsburg, Pa. It was that neighborly experience that got me looking Eastward for the first time, and all under the auspices of my heavenly patron.

So, I say, let the festivities begin, even here in the West.

St. Clement of Alexandria gives us good reason. Commenting on Jude 9, he said: “The one who fought with the devil as our guardian angel is here called Michael.” Clement’s countryman St. Anthony of Egypt had a vision that confirmed the continuing role of Michael as a warrior on behalf of humankind. And the sixth-century North African bishop Primasius chimed in that “Michael with his angels fights [present tense] against the devil, because by praying according to the will of God for the Church in this world and by granting her his aid, he is properly understood to be fighting for her. And so the apostle says, ‘Are not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation?” (Heb 1:14). Primasius went on to interpret Daniel 10 and 12 in favor of Michael’s continuing role in your life and mine.

I don’t know about you, but I’m very glad to know I have an archangel like Michael on my side.

And Venerable Bede tells us that Michael’s more than a guardian; he’s also a role model. “Here is what we have to learn from this incident: if the archangel Michael refrained from cursing the devil and dealt gently with him, how much more should we mere mortals avoid blaspheming, especially as we might offend the majesty of the Creator by an incautious word.”

OK, so try to be nice to all the candidates who won the election, especially the ones you voted against. If you won’t do it for me on my birthday, do it for St. Michael on his feast.

If you want to read more of the best angelology of the Fathers, I urge you to run off right now and buy Revelation: Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, volume XII. The whole series, in fact, is mighty fine, gathering patristic commentary on every verse of Scripture. You can even buy it on searchable CD-ROM.

Today is the Feast of All Souls, when Christians traditionally pray for the dead, that they may have eternal rest.

The early Church testifies to belief in purgatory, in both its literary and archeological remains. Many Christians commissioned gravestones with epitaphs begging prayers for their souls. The apocrypha sketch out the doctrine, and the Fathers expound it. The existence of purgatory is implicit in both the Old Testament and the New (including the Gospels). The early Church kept many graveside traditions that, in effect, made a habit of prayer for the dead. It was customary to mark the anniversary of a dead person’s passing (three days, one week, one year) with the celebration of the Mass. In the fourth century, St. Monica urged her priest-son Augustine to remember her soul in prayer when he said Mass. And, like a good boy, he did. “If we had no care for the dead,” Augustine said, “we would not be in the habit of praying for them.” Augustine held that there are “temporary punishments after death.” There is remedial pain as the soul undergoes its purification and preparation for heaven. St. Gregory the Great emphasized that this doctrine was not optional.

The earliest records in the paper trail are not to be missed, for they’re the most poetic. And you’ll find a sampling online here.

The best book on the subject is, without a doubt, Purgatory, by Michael Taylor, S.J. It presents the scriptural, patristic, and theological evidence in an accessible readable form. It’s a friendly treatment, good for handing to a skeptical friend.

“He also took up a collection, man by man, to the amount of two thousand drachmas of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing this he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. But if he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin” (2 Maccabees 12:43-45). “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins” (2 Maccabees 12:46, Vulgate).