The Four Last Things
The Pious Union of St Joseph for the Salvation of the Dying
by Fr Hugolinus Storff, O.F.M.
The Pious Union of St. Joseph was founded many years ago for the purpose of effectually helping the Dying to obtain through the intercession of St. Joseph, the Patron of the Dying, the grace of a Happy Death.
This Pious Union already existed some years when Pope St. Pius X, by an Apostolic Letter, dated February 12, 1914, raised a similar Association, erected in the newly built church of St. Joseph in Rome, to the dignity of an Arch-Confraternity with the faculty of aggregating similar Societies, so that they may also enjoy all the Indulgences and Privileges granted to the Arch- Confraternity.
In this Apostolic Letter Pope Pius X speaks of the purpose of the Society in Honor of St. Joseph for the Dying in these beautiful words: “Desirous to show more manifestly how much we consider the purpose of this Society worthy of every praise, We wish that Our name be inscribed first of all among the members of the same and at the same time We exhort all the beloved Brethren of the Priesthood not to neglect daily to remember in the Divine Sacrifice those who are hard pressed by the struggle of death, and, furthermore, We advise all the faithful, especially the religious men and women, that they accustom themselves to pour forth special prayers to God and to St. Joseph for the Dying; for, if it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead who, though delivered to the cleansing flames, have reached the port of Salvation, it seems to be no less commendable solicitude to implore help from heaven for those miserable ones that are placed in the last conflict upon which depends their eternity.”
The Pious Union of St. Joseph is a manual for living out these ideals fully and faithfully with prayer and devotion, covering all parts of a Christian’s day.
Paperback, 204 pages
by St Anselm of Canterbury
“And yet the visible sun, as splendid as it is, is a mere created object, and is therefore certainly less radiant than the divine splendor, and less beautiful than the glory of the God Who fashioned it. It consequently follows that the bodies of the saints—suffused with this glory of God—will surpass the beauty and radiance of the sun itself.” —Saint Anselm
The great Doctor of the Church and Benedictine monk Saint Anselm has assembled one of the greatest books ever written on heaven. Relying on his profound insights from prayer and his deep love for Sacred Scripture, Anselm systematically describes various aspects of the happiness of heaven: the beauty of the bodies of the blessed, the velocity of the glorified bodies of the saints in heaven, the strength of the blessed, the pleasures of heaven, and much more. At the same time, Saint Anselm does not shy away from the reality of hell and its unending torments. Nothing spurs the soul to repentance like the thought of being eternally separated from God.
To obtain our celestial homeland, Saint Anselm instructs the reader to meditate daily on the day of judgment and the blessings of heaven. Saint Anselm, who later became the archbishop of Canterbury, exhorts the faithful to daily conversion and heartfelt prayers. It is a book that will make you long for heaven with all your heart and slowly detach you from this world, where “the pleasures, joys, and honors of this mortal life are but brief and ephemeral.”
Hardcover,
This book contains every prayer, meditation, novena, and Mass for the Holy souls that you could imagine. It is a treasure for those who love the Holy Souls and wish to pray TO and FOR our dearly departed. It was the official Manual of the Purgatorian Society promoted under the auspices of the Redemptorists.
This edition was published during the second world war in 1941 and was extremely popular among Catholic Americans during the war years. This is a much nicer and handier version of the paperback edition that Loreto has been selling for years.
Hardcover, size 3.25" x 4.75, 279 pages
Original Printing 1878.
From the Preface:
Two or three years ago it fell into my lot to preach during the Octave with which the Society of the Helpers of the Holy Souls is accustomed to celebrate the annual Commemoration of the Faithful Departed. It occurred to me that some of the miracles of our Lord might be usefully applied in illustration of the doctrine of Purgatory, and this the substance of some few of the chapters of this book was put together. The Holy Souls are sufferers to a degree and in a manner which are but faintly pictured in the bodily maladies which our Lord so lovingly relieved, and they are sufferers whose case He has left very much to the charity of the children of the Militant Church. His Sacred Heart looked further than the outward disease or privation for which He used His healing or restoring power, and, if it is most natural to consider all bodily evils as shadows and images by which spiritual infirmities are represented, it is not an exaggerated extension of the same principle of accommodation to consider the sufferings of Purgatory, all of which are caused by sin or negligence, as included under it. And no phase of department of Christian devotion can ever lose by being connected in any way with considerations on the acts and sayings of our Lord.
401 pages.