A story for every day...

The venerable virgin Angela Tolomei, sister of Blessed John Baptist Tolomei, having fallen dangerously ill, begged the Lord to prolong her life still further, so that she could complete her purification of her faults and thus avoid the terrible torments of Purgatory. Her brother asked for the same grace for her, but God did not grant her wishes and supplications, and she expired. While her body was being carried to the ground, Blessed John the Baptist, by an inspiration from above, commanded his sister, in the name of Jesus Christ, to leave the shadows of death and to appear alive again. O wonder! At once the body moves, the head rises, the deceased is resurrected! She knew for what purpose Heaven had permitted such a miracle for her. So she had no other concern than to do penance. The cilices, the disciplines, the prolonged vigils, the rigorous fasts no longer seemed to her anything compared to what she had seen. When she was reproached for being too cruel to herself: “Ah!” she replied, “what is all this compared to the torments reserved in the other life for the infidelities that one allows oneself so easily here below? May I do a hundred times more!” And she continued her prolonged prayers and penances. Finally, like gold purified by fire, she was again called by the sovereign Judge to the place of celestial rest, where she flew away, it must be believed, without passing through a new expiation.