The Nobleman Who Served The Devil

From the revelations of St. Bridget.

A nobleman, high in birth but low and sinful in his ways, had bound himself by a deliberate pact as a slave of the devil and had served him for sixty years, living as one can only imagine and never once approaching the sacraments. As he lay dying, the Lord in his mercy commanded St. Bridget to tell the man's confessor to go to him and urge him to confess.

The priest went, but the sick man said he had no need of a confessor, since he had often confessed before. The priest came a second time, and still the man stubbornly refused. The Lord again directed St. Bridget to send the confessor, and this third time the priest told him plainly of the revelation given to the saint, and that he had come back so many times because God, wishing to show him mercy, had sent him.

At this the dying man was moved and began to weep. "But how can I be pardoned," he cried, "when for sixty years I have served the devil, made myself his slave, and loaded my soul with countless sins?" "My son," said the priest, encouraging him, "do not doubt; if you repent of them, in God's name I promise you pardon."

Then, taking courage, he said, "Father, I believed myself lost and had given up all hope of being saved; but now I feel a sorrow for my sins that gives me confidence, and since God has not yet abandoned me, I wish to make my confession." That very day he confessed four times with great sorrow; the next day he received Communion; and on the sixth day he died, contrite and wholly resigned.

Afterward the Lord revealed to St. Bridget that this sinner was saved and was in purgatory, and that he had been saved through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary; for, sinful as his life had been, he had always kept a devotion to her sorrows, and whenever he remembered them he felt pity for her.

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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.