FIFTEENTH SERMON
ON THE JOYFUL DEATH OF THE JUST.
Subject.
It is a great consolation for the dying just man to think: first, I have accumulated good works and merits for heaven; secondly, the merits I have thus acquired are now in safety, and I am not in danger of losing them. Preached on the feast of St. Joseph.
Text
" Blessed is that servant whom, when his lord shall come, he shall find so doing." (Luke xii. 43)
Introduction.
" Blessed is that servant whom his lord shall find so doing." And what has the servant done? He was placed as steward over the household of his lord, as we learn from the preceding verse: "Who thinkest you is the faithful and wise steward, whom his lord setteth over his family?" Oh, blessed is that servant, when his lord shall come, after he has faithfully fulfilled his duties, to demand an account from him! My dear brethren, we need not here ask the question: " Who thinkest you is the faithful and wise steward? " for this day reminds us of him that we may honor him namely, St. Joseph. He it is whom the Lord has set over His family, and over the holiest and most amiable family that the world ever saw; for to his care were entrusted Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, and Mary, the immaculate Mother of that Son. It is not necessary to dilate on the fidelity and prudence with which Joseph fulfilled the duties of steward; with what fatherly care he looked after the Child and His Mother on the journey to Bethlehem; how he took the Child in his arms and cared for Him in the poor crib; how he brought Him by night into the pagan land of Egypt to save Him from the cruelty of Herod; with what sorrow he after wards sought for the Child in Jerusalem; and how he supported the Holy Family by his labor in Nazareth. " Blessed is that servant whom, when his lord shall come, he shall find so doing." Oh, truly happy is that servant at the end of his life, when the Lord shall come to call him ! And who could have had a more happy or joyful death than St. Joseph, who breathed forth his blessed soul in the hands of Jesus and Mary? There is no one amongst us, my dear brethren, who does not wish and desire that when the Lord comes to take him away by death he may have a holy and a happy death. Now we can and shall have such a death if we are only faithful servants and stewards during life, and perform many good works and acquire many merits. And it is this faithful service rendered to God, and the merits we have accumulated, that will make our death happy and joyful, as I shall now show.
Plan of Discourse.
It is a great comfort for the dying just man to think: I have laid up a store of good works and merits in heaven. Such shall be the first point. It is a great comfort for the dying just man to think: the merits I have acquired are now in safety, and I shall not be in danger of losing any of them; the second point. Let us live piously, that we may have that consolation; such shall be the conclusion.
holy St. Joseph! obtain for us from the Divine Child and your most chaste Spouse Mary the grace to do this, that we, too, may have a happy death. Help us herein you, too, holy guardian angels.
To represent to myself the joy which the dying just man feels The trader at the thought of the merits he has gained, I imagine that I see a merchant who has been away in a foreign land for a whole month, has finished his business, and after much trouble, discomfort, and annoyance, has at last reached his home in the evening. Having rested a while, he opens his books, examines the packages of goods he has brought with him, and compares his purchases with his sales. What joy for him to see the great profit he has made in a short time! With what eager pleasure he counts the money he has made! If his wife asks him: how did things go with you while you were away? See, he will answer, what a lot of money I have brought back. Ah, she replies, but I am afraid you must have plagued and worried yourself considerably. Oh, that matters not, is his answer; only look at what I have made. But eat something, at all events, or else the food will grow cold. Let it grow cold! The treasure he has before him is sweeter to him than food or drink, and makes him forget all the toil and labor he has gone through.
A very incomplete picture, my dear brethren, of that joy which the soul of the just man shall feel in its last moments, when its thoughts revert to the past. What else are we but merchants, who are sent into the world to work diligently to perform good works and accumulate merits for heaven? Our Lord uses almost the same comparison when giving a picture of our life in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, where He speaks of Himself in the person of a lord who gives money to his servants and says to them: " Trade till I come," then I shall require the capital back with interest. How confidently those two servants went to their lord when the time came for them to give in their account: " Lord, you didst deliver to me five talents, behold I have gained other five over and above." And the other came in an equal state of exultation: "Lord, you deliveredst two talents to me: behold, I have gained other two." But the worthless servant stood there covered with shame and confusion, because he had hidden his talent in the ground instead of using it.
If, then, there is any comfort or joy to be hoped for in death and the holy Scripture infallibly assures us that such is the case with the death of the just, which it calls precious: " Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints; " a blessed death: " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." " With him that feareth the Lord it shall go well in the latter end, and in the day of his death he shall be blessed" then great indeed must be the joy of the soul when it sees that the evening of life is approaching, when it beholds the treasure of merits and good works it has amassed. Origen, speaking of the words of the Psalmist, " He will bring forth your justice as the light," uses these words by way of consolation to the dying just man: " God shall bring forth into the light your justice, even that which you have done in secret, and He will show that you are just.":
You will see all the years, and in the years so many months, weeks, days, hours, and moments that you have spent in the service of God, in the state of sanctifying grace, from which grace works. even the most trivial and apparently worthless of your actions, provided they were done with a good intention, acquired such great worth and value that for each one of them you are justly entitled to an eternity of glory and happiness. You will count all the Masses, confessions, Communions you have offered to God, partly through obedience to the law, partly of your own free will; all the sermons you have heard through a desire to understand better and do with more zeal the will of God; the frequent visits you have paid the churches, disregarding heat and cold, rain and wind, in order to perform your devotions and adore your God; the usual morning and evening prayers, the rosaries and litanies, the examinations of conscience, which you had the holy habit of making every evening on your knees with all the members of your household; countless acts of virtue, of faith, hope, charity, Christian mercy, patience, and humility that you have made during your life; in a word, each and every good work shall come forward like a blaze of light, and say for your consolation: " we are your works." Do you know me? I am that grief and sorrow with which you repented of your sins on that occasion. I am that victory you gained over yourself when you conquered your feeling of false shame and disclosed the hidden wounds of your soul in confession. I am that act of self-denial and mortification by which you restrained your eyes from looking at curious or dangerous objects; closed your ears, not to hear unlawful, unchaste, or uncharitable discourse; kept your tongue in check lest you should injure your neighbor's good name; tamed your body by mortification and fasting so as to keep it in continence and temperance. I am that fortitude with which you opposed those temptations and allurements in this or that dangerous occasion, so as not to allow any man or any worldly custom to make you unfaithful to God. I am that meekness with which you heard so silently that sarcastic laugh, those biting remarks, those insulting words, pardoned your enemies and opponents, and gave up all idea of revenge for God's sake. I am that Christian patience with which you so constantly bore so many trials, crosses, misfortunes, sufferings, and so much pain and poverty. I am that resignation with which you always submitted so completely in all circumstances to the will of God. We are your works. Rejoice at us now, and bless the time in which we were accomplished!
These are the treasures that a good conscience shall show the dying man and lay before him as a provision for his journey. "As they that dig for a treasure: and they rejoice exceedingly when they have found the grave," and when the time of their departure approaches. Truly it is a joyful thing for a soul to bring such treasures to the Lord when the account is to be rendered, and like the faithful servant to be able to say: "Lord, Thou didst deliver to me five talents; " namely, a reasoning soul with its three powers, a sensitive body with its five senses, temporal goods to support my life, supernatural grace to keep me from evil and help me to do good. Behold I have not allowed those gifts to lie idle; so much have I gained with them! Some times, it is true, I might have used them better and more profit ably; oftentimes, I must confess, I have committed sins and faults; but eternal thanks to Thee! as far as I know I have repented of and washed them away by sincere sorrow; I hate and detest them with my whole heart, and because You have given me such a living proof of Your mercy I will praise and bless You all the more for all eternity. What shall I now say of that exceeding great consolation which the dying man shall experience when he remembers all the poor and needy he has so often helped out of his own pocket through Christian charity; the hungry people he has fed; the sick he has visited; the sorrowful he has comforted by help and counsel; the souls in purgatory whose pains he has alleviated and taken away altogether by his prayers and works of devotion ? " Never have I found," says St. Jerome, "that he has died an unhappy death who readily performed works of charity and mercy." What joy and comfort it will be for him to remember Mary, the Mother of salvation, to whom with child-like confidence he has entrusted his life and the end of his life; St. Joseph, the Patron of the dying, to whom he had a special devotion; his holy guardian angel and other patrons, who will then take their place at his side to accompany him into heaven?
Oh, joyful and consoling the death of the just man who dies with a good conscience! " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," cries out St. John in his Apocalypse. And why are they blessed? "For their works follow them, their virtuous works accompany them into eternity. During their lives they often went sorrowing and weeping to sow their seed with toil and labor: " Going they went and wept, casting their seeds, says the Psalmist. " But coming they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves." This was the consolation that so cheered pious souls on their death-bed, when they brought to mind how they had served God. Hear what St. Paul says, although he was for a long time a persecutor. He writes to his disciple Timothy: "For I am even now ready to be sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at hand." I feel my strength going, my hour is near and I shall soon reach the end; yet I await it without fear, and with joy and desire. "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course." I have always sought to work for the glory of God; "I have kept the faith; " I have maintained the fidelity I promised to Christ, when I did penance for my former sins; therefore all I have now to do is to await the reward and recompense of my merits: "As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me in that day."
With the same consolation St. Hilarion addressed his departing soul: " Go forth, my soul; you have served Christ for nearly seventy years, and do you now fear death? " When the holy death Bishop Martin saw his death- bed surrounded by demons who tried to frighten and tempt him, he comforted himself with the thought of the faithful service he had rendered to God. " Why art you here? bloodthirsty beast," he said with the utmost confidence; " you shalt not find anything in me that deserves damnation," and with these words he breathed forth his soul. A certain young man who was dying, wishing to comfort his mother, who was weeping at his bedside, said to her in these joyful words: " Bless God, mother, through whose grace I have preserved my innocence, so that I die cheerfully." Justus Lipsius, being asked what he thought would be a comfort to him on his death-bed, replied: "It will comfort me to think that I have been a sodalist of the great Virgin Mary, and that I have tried to be her true servant." The holy youth John Berchmans, of our Society, in his last moments used to embrace and kiss with the utmost tenderness the crucifix, rosary, and book of the rules, and he said with cheerful countenance to the bystanders: " These three things are most dear to me, and I willingly die with them."'s Another religious named Pambo said when dying: "I joyfully leave this life, because I do not remember having said a word of which I had to repent." " happy hours! " cried out a dying nun; "0 happy hours that I consecrated to my God!" St. Jerome writes of the happy death of St. Paula, at which he had the good fortune of being present. This pious lady was attacked by a grievous illness, or rather she found in that illness what she was long wishing for, namely, a means of leaving this world, and of being perfectly united with the God whom she loved so fervently. She knew from the increasing coldness of her limbs and her decreasing strength that death was very near, and as if she were on the point of leaving a foreign land to visit a well- beloved friend, she often repeated with her dying voice the words of the psalm: "I have loved, Lord, the beauty of Your house and the place where Your glory dwells." " How lovely are Your tabernacles, Lord of hosts: my soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord." Thus she kept on giving expression in those loving words to her consolation and holy desires; nor would she speak or answer anything but these or similar words. St. Jerome asked her why she refused to speak; was there perhaps something that troubled her? And she replied that she had not the least trouble, but rather the greatest repose and an almost heavenly consolation. At last she heard the beloved voice of her celestial Bridegroom calling to her: " Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come." " I believe," answered Paula, " to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living," and therewith she breathed forth her happy soul. There are countless similar examples in the Lives of the Saints. " happy conscience," exclaims St. Jerome, " which in the time of affliction remembers its good works! " And thrice happy those who die, not on a magnificent bed of state, and after having left great legacies behind them, but who die in the Lord with a good conscience and with a treasure of merits that they bring with them into heaven.
Ah, how unlike to this and how sad will be the wicked when On the they think of the past in their dying hour! If ever the worm of conscience gnaws and disquiets the heart of man, it will then whet its teeth to inflict a most intolerable torture on the already uneasy and troubled soul, and will keep before it constantly the sins it has committed and not repented of. While we are still in the vigor of life our numerous and unruly desires, as we have seen before, make us look on even grievous sins as mere bagatelles; the conscience becomes seared by the frequency and habit of sin, so that like a chained dog it can neither bite nor assert it self; the sins, too, creep away and hide themselves to such an ex tent that sometimes the sinner has a difficulty in finding them when he desires to confess them; they fly out of his memory so that he cannot easily recall them. St. Chrysologus assigns a reason for this; he who tries to remember his sins in order to con fess them seeks for them to kill them; the devotion of the penitent is a sharp knife that gives the death wound to vice, and therefore they hide so as not to be caught; but when the man goes on sinning to the end, and is about to leave this world, then all his sins creep out of their hiding-places, and seek for the sinner in order to kill him; then they show themselves to him in all their deformity, and call out in a terrible voice: we are your works! I am the injustice that you were guilty of on that occasion, in that usury, and have not yet made restitution for! I am that bitter hate, that revenge, that you have cherished against your neighbor. I am that impurity, that adultery, that shameful pleasure that you so often committed in act, thought, and desire! I am that sinful amusement that you so often indulged in bad company. I am the sins that you caused others to commit by your bad example. I am the hidden filth that you were ashamed to disclose in confession! We are your works! Ah, wretched conscience, will the sinner then say, leave me in peace! No; never will the sound of my voice be absent from your ears; I have already often enough exhorted you and given you salutary admonitions; but you have never hearkened to me; now it is my turn; you must die; but I shall never die. "Their worm dieth not." I will follow you even to hell, and there you will find in me an eternal enemy, who will torture you worse than the flames of that prison even! See, wicked man! the treasure you now heap up for yourself by your sins, and lay aside for your dying hour, as the Apostle says: " According to your hardness and impenitent heart, you treasurest up to yourself wrath against the day of wrath." But I will no longer interrupt my description of the consolation of the just. Place your conscience in good order at once; go back to that Heart whose yoke is sweet and whose burden is light, if you wish to share in the joy of the just at the end and to be able to say to yourself: I have collected treasures of repentance and good works for heaven, and what is the best of all, the treasures I have amassed I now possess in full security without any fear or danger of ever losing them. Such is briefly the
Second Part.
The greater a treasure the more intense the pain and sorrow causes by its loss. Ah cries many a one who has been attacked by robbers and plundered; ah, they have taken away the most valuable thing I had. If they had only left me that! And the greater a treasure is the more uneasiness does one experience who is always in danger of losing it; thus he who carries a large Bum of money on a road beset by thieves hardly dares to put one foot before the other for fear, and if a dry leaf but falls from a tree he cries out that he is undone; that the robbers are upon him; nor does he feel at ease until he has brought his treasure home safely and put it beyond the reach of accident. Then, and then only, can he enjoy it in peace.
O mortal, who are now so careless, living on in the state of sin with a bad conscience! how will it be with you one day? You are now toiling for treasure on earth; perhaps you have acquired it already; but where? Where the moths shall eat it away, or thieves steal it from you? How long will you retain possession of it? Let me ask you in the words of the Gospel to the rich man: " They require your soul of you: and whose shall those things be which you have provided? " You are now amassing gold and silver; whose will they be when you die? " They shall leave their riches to strangers, " is the answer of the Psalmist, " and their sepulchres shall be their houses forever. " You now try to make a great name for yourself before men: " They have called their lands by their names; " but when you die, " whose shall those things be which you have provided? " What will become of your treasure? " When he shall die, he shall take nothing away: nor shall his glory descend with him." No matter how great he is in the sight of men, he will be unknown in darkness after death: "He shall never see light." You now seek bodily comforts, and the pleasures and delights of sense; even if you have enjoyed them in superfluity, " whose shall those things be which you have provided?" What will become of all your joys when you die? "Under you shall the moth be strewed, and worms shall be your covering." You seek to curry favor with some rich man; of what use will that be to you on your death-bed? " The rich man when he shall sleep shall take away nothing with him: he shall open his eyes, and find nothing." All his treasures must remain behind: "Poverty like water shall take hold on him. . . A burning wind shall take him up and carry him away, and as a whirl-wind shall snatch him from his place;" all his honors, goods, and wealth shall be violently taken from him. Oh, if you would now use only a little care to amass a treasure of good works, how much more likely would you not be to rejoice in your last hour! But even the good works you do now and then; whose shall they be? What will become of them if you die unrepentant, in the state of sin, with a bad conscience? For they will be of no good to you in eternity. ( If the just man turn himself away from his justice, and do iniquity," such is the threat of the Lord by the Prophet Ezechiel, " all his justices, which he had done, shall not be remembered: in the prevarication, by which he has prevaricated, and in his sin, which he has committed, in them he shall die." The only treasure you can take with you is sin, but it will be at the same time the source of your greatest unhappiness, as St. Augustine says: " The goods he has collected he shall lose; but he shall bring his sins with him;" the gold for which you sinned you must leave behind, but the sin you shall take with you; you sinned for a farm, you shall lose the farm; you sinned for a woman, you shall lose the woman, but you shall take your sin with you; and what is worse, you shall have neither time nor hope of getting rid of your burden, or of ever recovering what you have lost.
Good and just Christians! you too will one day hear the words: This night," this day, this hour, " do they require your soul of thee;" "you must leave the world; " and whose shall those things which you have provided?" To whom will belong all that in you have amassed ? Rejoice and be glad! Not an iota of them shall be taken from you; the whole treasure of good works and merits that you are now collecting shall, if you only persevere and die with a good conscience, all belong to you alone and shall be yours for eternity. " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. " Why? "For their works follow them." I go from this world, you will then think to your great consolation, poor and naked, not taking with me the least earthly thing; but what is that to me? Was I not poor and naked when I came into the world? Yet I am not destitute; I am bringing something very good with me; namely, my profit, the merits I have gained during my life; my good conscience comes with me; I have a document in my hand which entitles me to an eternal inheritance. And, moreover, what I was never sure of before and what was always wanting to make my joy complete, I am now about to place my treasure in perfect safety, without fear or danger of ever losing it.
As long as I lived I was like the soldier on the battle-field, who has to defend himself against the assaults of his enemy, and knows not how he will come out of the affray. Now I see the enemies of my soul take to flight on all sides; now the day is mine, and I have only to receive the crown of victory. As long as I have lived and served my God I was like a well-laden ship, sailing on with a fair wind, but still in a dangerous sea, having often to contend with the tossing waves and howling storms; now I am about to enter the haven of security. A philosopher was once asked what was the safest kind of ship, a small or a large one, a ship of war or a merchant vessel, a racing ship or a ship of burden. " The safest of all," he answered, "is the one that lies uninjured in harbor. " His meaning was that no ship, no matter of what kind, could be safe on the high seas; for it is always in danger of striking a rock, or running on a sand -bank, or foundering in a gale. So it is with us, my dear brethren. While we are on this earth we embark like traders with our merchandise on a stormy and dangerous sea; there are temptations, assaults, thieves and robbers without number that seek nothing but to rob us of our innocence and holiness. " We have to fight with avarice, with lust, with anger, with ambition," says St. Cyprian. The devil with his satellites lies in wait for us like a cruel pirate, to lead us into sin, and drag us down with him into hell. No matter how holy and pious we may be, if we once consent to a mortal sin, all our treasure, all our holiness is gone; nor are we certain of escaping that danger until we land on the shore of eternity, that is, until the hour of our death. St. Ambrose, speaking of those words of St. Paul, "To me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain," says: "It is a gain to be beyond the danger of sinning any more." 8 This gain is the lot of the just man when he is at the point of death; for death changes all fear into security; and therefore such a dying man will think with exultation: my God! in how many dangers of sin have I not been! how often might I not have lost heaven! Eternal thanks to You that You have saved me by Your grace! No wall danger is happily over; my voyage is ended; I should indeed be a fool if I were now to turn back when in sight of the harbor and leave my God! No; I will rather run with a well-laden ship into the haven of eternity.
O happy and joyful death of the just man! I conclude in the words of St. Bernard: " The death of the just is happy on account of its peacefulness; but it is best of all on account of its security." This should and must encourage us, my dear brethren, to labor diligently to avoid all sin, to serve God zealously, to bear patiently all difficulties, annoyances, and troubles of life, and to heap up rich treasures of good works while we still have time. Let the wicked now ridicule and laugh at us, and vaunt u id boast, falsely imagining that the joys and happiness of life are theirs alone, while nothing but weeping, mourning, and melancholy falls to the lot of the servants of God; we can give them the same answer that the ants gave the grasshopper in the fable. A swarm of ants were running about in the field during the summer, busily engaged in collecting the scattered grains of corn and bringing them to their store. The grasshopper looked on for a time; " you poor fools, " he said at last, "why do you plague yourselves the whole day long? Look at me and see what a pleasant life I have; all I have to do is to whistle, sing, and hop from one blade of grass to the other. " " That is all very fine, " said one of the old ants; " hop and sing while you may; the spring and summer will not last always; the winter is coming on, and then we shall have in our stores of corn sufficient food to support us, while you, who have gathered nothing during the summer, must then die of hunger." Such, too, may be the thought of the pious Christian: laugh now you wicked, and indulge your passions! it will not be always summer with you; the autumn must come; the day must decline, life must end: " The night comes when no man can work. " Then you will begin to tremble with fear, and I shall laugh with joy; your conscience will reproach you with your sins; you will think with despair: alas! how much evil I have done! while mine will represent to me my good works, and -I shall be able to say with confidence: Oh, God be praised! how much good I have done! Your riches and pleasures shall abandon you; mine shall accompany me to heaven, where I shall enjoy them forever. Therefore I shall be steadfast in my resolution; I shall now labor to purify my conscience and keep it always free from sin, and serve God with cheerful heart during my life, that I may die with a cheerful, quiet heart. Amen. Another introduction to the same sermon for Ash Wednesday.
Text,
Lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven. (Matt. vi. 20.)
Introduction.
Human life consists in care, labor, trouble, and work. But how much care is useless? how much labor in vain? how much work utterly unprofitable, that brings in nothing or next to nothing? This is what Our Lord complains of in today's Gospel. Many, He says, fast and macerate their bodies; but why? To gain an empty name before men. Be not so foolish! "When you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad; for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men to fast. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward, " and they need not expect anything from Me. Many busy themselves amassing wealth and riches; but what kind of riches? Those that can be consumed by moths and stolen by thieves. Be not so foolish! "Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal; " employ your labor to more profit: "but lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth does consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." a Try to gain treasures that will be useful to you in eternal life, so that you may always rejoice in the possession of them. This, my dear brethren, is the true consolation of the just Christian in this life, to know that his conscience gives testimony that he is amassing rich treasures of good works and on his death -bed to think back, when his conscience will remind him that he can enjoy those treasures in heaven without the least fear of ever losing them. This thought not only takes away all fear from death but makes it sweet and joyful, as I shall now prove. Continues as above.