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 "And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem, for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection.

" (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead. And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness had great grace laid up for them).

" It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins."

In the New Law we have the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, of which the divers sacrifices of the Mosaic Law were but feeble figures. The Son of God instituted it, not only as a worthy homage given by the creature to the Divine Majesty, but also as a propitiation for the living and the dead; that is to say, as an efficacious means of appeasing the Justice of God, provoked by our sins.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was celebrated for the departed, even from the time of the foundation of the Church. "We celebrate the anniversary of the triumph of the martyrs," writes Tertullian in the third century, "and, according to the tradition of our fathers, we offer the Holy