We read in the books of the Maccabees [2 Mc 12:43] that sacrifice was offered for the dead. But even if it were found nowhere in the Old Testament writings, the authority of the Catholic Church, which is clear on this point, is of no small weight, where in the prayers of the priest poured forth to the Lord God at his altar, the commendation of the dead has its place.

And after the exhibition, Tryphaena again receives her. For her daughter Falconilla had died, and said to her in a dream: Mother, you shall have this stranger Thecla in my place, so that she may pray for me, and that I may be transferred to the place of the just.

I, the citizen of a chosen city, erected this in my lifetime that I may have in time to come a place in which to lay my body. My name is Abercius, the disciple of the holy Shepherd, who feeds the flocks of his sheep on the hills and plains, and who has great eyes that look into every place. . . . These things I, Abercius, commanded to be written when I was on earth; and truly I was seventy-two years old. Let him who understands this, and everyone who agrees with it, pray for Abercius.

[T]hat very night, this was shown to me in a vision: I [Perpetua] saw Dinocrates going out from a gloomy place, where there were several others, and he was very thirsty, with a filthy countenance and pallid color, and the wound on his face that he had when he died. Dinocrates, who had been my brother after the flesh, seven years of age, died miserably with disease. . . . For him I had made my prayer, and between him and me there was a large interval, so that neither of us could approach the other . . . and [I] knew that my brother was in suffering. But I trusted that my prayer would bring help to his suffering; and I prayed for him every day until we passed over into the prison of the camp, for we were to fight in the camp’s [wild beast] show. Then . . . I made my prayer for my brother day and night, groaning and weeping that he might be granted to me. Then, on the day on which we remained in fetters, this was shown to me: I saw that the place that I had formerly observed to be in gloom was now bright; and Dinocrates, with a clean body well clad, was finding refreshment. . . . [And] he went away from the water to play joyously, as children do, and I awoke. Then I understood that he had been removed from the place of punishment.

We offer sacrifices for the dead on their birthday anniversaries [the date of death, their birth into eternal life].

A woman, after the death of her husband . . . prays for his soul and asks that he may, while waiting, find rest; and that he may share in the first Resurrection. And each year, on the anniversary of his death, she offers the sacrifice.

Then we commemorate also those who have fallen asleep before us, first patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, that at their prayers and intercessions God will receive our petition. Then on behalf of the holy fathers and bishops who have fallen asleep before us, and in a word all who in past years have fallen asleep among us, believing that it will be a very great benefit to the souls for whom the supplication is put up, while that holy and most awful sacrifice is set forth.

he may afterward, in a very different manner, be very much interested in what is better, when, after his departure out of the body, he gains knowledge of the difference between virtue and vice and finds that he is not able to partake of divinity until he has been purged of the filthy contagion in his soul by the purifying fire.

Let us then give them aid and perform commemoration for them. For if the children of Job were purged by the sacrifice of their father, why do you doubt that when we too offer for the departed, some consolation arises to them, since God is wont to grant the petitions of those who ask for others?

Mourn for those who have died in wealth, and did not from their wealth think of any solace for their soul, those who had power to wash away their sins and would not. Let us all weep for these in private and in public, but with propriety, with gravity, not so as to make exhibitions of ourselves; let us weep for these, not one day, or two, but all our life. Such tears spring not from senseless passion, but from true affection. The other sort are of senseless passion. For this reason they are quickly quenched, but if they spring from the fear of God, they always abide with us. Let us weep for these; let us assist them according to our power; let us think of some assistance for them, small though it be, yet still let us assist them. In what way? By praying and entreating others to make prayers for them, by continually giving to the poor on their behalf.

There is an ecclesiastical discipline, as the faithful know, in which the names of the martyrs are read aloud in that place at the altar of God where prayer is not offered for them. Prayer, however, is offered for other dead who are remembered. It is wrong to pray for a martyr, to whose prayers we ought ourselves be commended.

[T]emporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment. But of those who suffer temporary punishments after death, all are not doomed to those everlasting pains that are to follow that judgment; for to some, as we have already said, what is not remitted in this world is remitted in the next, that is, they are not punished with the eternal punishment of the world to come.

During the time, moreover, that intervenes between a man’s death and the final resurrection, the soul dwells in a hidden retreat, where it enjoys rest or suffers affliction in proportion to the merit it earned by the life it led on earth. Nor can it be denied that the souls of the dead are benefited by the piety of their living friends, who offer the sacrifice of the Mediator, or give alms in the church on their behalf. But these services are of advantage only to those who during their lives have earned such merit that services of this kind can help them. For there is a manner of life that is neither so good as not to require these services after death, nor so bad that such services are of no avail after death.