Sister Catherine and the Old Woman

From the life of Sister Catherine, an Augustinian nun.

In the town where Sister Catherine, an Augustinian nun, lived, there was a woman named Mary who had been a sinner since her youth and kept to her ways into old age. The townspeople drove her out, and she died alone in a cave, without the sacraments, and was buried in a field like an animal. Sister Catherine usually prayed for the dead, but she didn't pray for this woman, since everyone assumed she was already damned.

Four years later the woman's soul appeared to her from purgatory and gently asked why she alone had been left without prayers. Catherine, amazed, asked how she could possibly have been saved. The woman said that as death drew near, finding herself friendless and heavy with sin, she had turned to Our Lady, the refuge of the abandoned, and the Blessed Mother had won for her the grace of a final act of sorrow for her sins.

She was saved, her time in purgatory was shortened, and only a few Masses were needed to release her. Catherine had the Masses said, and the soul returned once more, shining, on its way to paradise.

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Source:

Simplified retellings of the "example" stories that St. Alphonsus Liguori placed at the end of each section of The Glories of Mary. These are paraphrased in plain modern prose, faithful to the substance of the 1888 English translation. Liguori himself, in his author's "Protest," noted that the miracles and apparitions in the book are offered on human authority only, not as articles of faith.