O souls of the dead, join in my glorifying of the Heavenly Triad. What other occupation have you than either to shrink with fear far from God or to expand with joy in the nearness of God?
You have left behind the ashes of the body, your favorite care, and now you have only your nakedness to care for. Do you at least now perceive that it was not the body that gave scent to your soul, but the soul to the body?
How hard it is for the sinful soul when it remains alone with its full scent, undiluted through the body and unconcealed by the body! Truly, the wheel does not go into the mud by itself, unless the driver steers it there. Do you not perceive now that the wheel was muddied by the will of the driver? The wheel has received its wages, and the driver will receive his.
O sinful souls, yearn no more to return into the body, as if thereby to flee the evil scent that chokes you there. That same scent you would bring again with you, and multiply it in a new body.
O sinful souls, yearn no more to enter into the body, as if to escape the fire that burns you and the smoke that chokes you! Both fire and smoke you carry with you; and the body would be not your savior but your victim.
But direct all your attention to the eternal Virginity of God, which can drive the evil scent out of you; and to the Son of the Virgin, who would illumine you with the flame of Trinitarian wisdom; and to the All-Holy Spirit, who would give you strength and courage to raise yourselves up to the angelic circles.
O purified souls, whose scent is more entrancing than all the balms of earth, do not part from us earth-dwellers, who for yet an hour or two wander along your paths of suffering and over your ashes. All who are pure on earth will be pure in heaven also, and will be your companions, scented with the balm of Paradise and clothed in virginal whiteness.
Strengthen your love toward us and your prayer for us. For between you and us there is no other barrier than the feeble curtain of our body. For though you have gone ahead and we have lagged behind, the road is the same, and the city at the end of the road the same.
O righteous souls, we too pray to the Lord for you, that He may ease and hasten your journey to Him. Though feebler than you, we pray to God for you nonetheless. We pray out of the love with which our heart burns for you, as a younger and weaker brother stretches out his hands to help the elder and stronger.
For just as younger and elder brothers are one body in the eyes of the love that bore them, so are we and you one body in the eyes of the all-wise and all-powerful love of the Most High.
O countless flocks of souls of the departed, do not divide and do not be troubled, and look back no more at the cold island of earthly life, to which we few still cling for an hour or two, until we too join you in flight toward warmer and brighter regions.
For all of you, both righteous and sinful, we the half-dead, half-alive pray to Heavenly Mercy: that you be not troubled, that you fear not and look not back, but with full flight press ever forward and ever upward —
toward light and joy
toward peace and fullness.