Parisian Society, July 21st, 1864 – medium Mr. Vézy
We have several times mentioned the multiple types of trials and atonements but don’t you discover new ones every day? They are infinite like the humanity’s vices. How can we establish a nomenclature? Nonetheless you mentioned a fact and I will try to instruct you.
Not everything is trial in life. The life of the Spirit continues, as you have been told, from birth to infinity. To some, death is just a simple accident that has no influence upon the destiny of the dead. A falling roof tile, a stroke or a violent death, many times the only thing they do is to separate the Spirit from its material envelope; but the perispiritual envelope maintains, at least partially, the properties of the body that has just fallen. If I could open the eyes that you have but that you cannot use in a day of battle you would see many battles still taking place, many soldiers struggling against one another, defending and attacking trenches; you would even hear them screaming and shouting their slogans of battle amidst the silence and the dismal veil that covers the battlefields. Once the combat is over they go back home to the old mothers and fathers that wait for them. Such a state may last a long time to some; it is a continuity of life on Earth, a dual state between corporeal life and spiritual life. If they were simple and judicious, why would they feel the cold of the tomb? Why would they suddenly pass from life to death, from clarity to darkness? God is not unfair and allows such a pleasure to the poor of spirit, giving them the opportunity to realize their state through their own faculties, and therefore passing calmly from the material life to the life of the Spirit.
Rest assured all of you whose fathers, mothers, brothers and children died without a struggle. They may perhaps be allowed to still believe that their lips approach your foreheads. Dry your tears: your crying is painful to them and they are astonished when they see that; they embrace you and request your smile. Show that smile to the invisible ones and pray for having them replacing their condition of companions to that of guides; for having them unfolding their spiritual wings that will allow them to glide onto infinity and bring you their comforting emanations. Notice that I am not telling you that every dead person suddenly falls into such a state. No, but there isn’t a single one to whom matter does not have to fight the Spirit that is met again. There was a duel, the flesh was broken, the Spirit was obscured at the time of separation, and in erraticity the Spirit acknowledge true life.
I will now tell you a few words about those to whom that state is a trial. Ah how painful that is! They believe to be alive and well alive, believing to have a body capable of feeling and enjoying the pleasures of life, and when their hands want to touch those things they melt; when approaching their lips to a glass or a fruit those lips disappear; they see, they want to touch, but they cannot feel or touch. Paganism offers a beautiful image of that ordeal by showing the hungry and thirsty Tantulus that could never touch the pool of water that whispered in his ears and the fruits that always eluded him. The screams of those unfortunate Spirits are of curse and anathema! What have they done to deserve such suffering? Ask God. It is the law written by God. The one that kills with the sword will die by the sword; the one that dishonored a fellow human being will be dishonored as well. The eye for an eye was in the book of Moses and it is still written in the great book of atonement. Pray therefore incessantly for those in their final hour. Their eyes will be shut and they will sleep in space as they did on Earth and when they wake up they will no longer find a severe judge but a compassionate father assigning them with new tasks and new destinies.
St. Augustine
