FOURTH SERMON
ON PREPARING CAREFULLY FOR DEATH.
Subject.
For a long time beforehand, no, all the time of our lives, we should prepare for the approach of death. This is required by the importance of the business that has to be transacted in death. Preached on the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text.
"I therefore beseech you . . . that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called."
Introduction.
In today's Epistle the holy Apostle St. Paul exhorts his Christians of Ephesus to persevere in the way of virtue, so that their lives may be consistent with the holiness of the Christian faith, to which they were called by God. The same exhortation serves for all of us today, for, in preference to many nations, we have received from the infinite goodness of God the great grace of vocation to the true Catholic Christian faith. Hitherto, my dear brethren, we have treated of the frequent thought of death, and we have seen in the last sermon that we must think of death, not in a mere cursory, careless manner, but with deep attention and practically, so that our meditations may urge us to lead a good life that we may die a happy death. That is the meaning of the words of the Apostle I have just quoted for you: " I therefore beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called;" that you may be thereby prepared for death. This preparation shall supply me with matter for today's sermon. How, and for how long a time, should we prepare? I answer:
Plan of Discourse.
For a long time beforehand, no, all the time of our lives, we should prepare for the approach of death. This is required by the importance of the business that has to be transacted in death. Such is the whole subject.
To the end that we may all live worthy of our vocation, and so order our actions that the Lord, when He comes to call us away, may find us ready. This most necessary grace, which we should all strive for, we hope and beg that the same Lord may give us through the Mother of the Lord and His holy angels.
It is self-evident and requires no proof that the more important a business, the more depends on it, the less experience we have of it, the more difficult it is in itself, the greater also will be the care we take, the longer the preparation we make, so that it may terminate favorably. You gentlemen, learned in the law. You have undertaken to conduct a case on which depends the gain or loss of some hundred thousand dollars. Your opponent is very powerful; he spares no trouble or expense, and seeks patrons for his cause wherever he can find them to ensure his own success and your injury. You are most warmly urged and exhorted to take an interest in the case, and to do your best to disprove the documents and writings that will be brought forward against you; tell me, is there any one of you, no, is there any law yer in the world who values his own honor and profit who would trust the whole matter to his own cleverness, ingenuity, and good memory, so far as to put off studying the case until the very last day, when the judge is ready to pronounce sentence, and would then hope to gain the case by hurriedly reading over the evidence and studying the proofs? No, indeed! our experience teaches far differently. For we know what an amount of thought, study, speculation, examination, running hither and thither, finding out facts and writing it costs in order to win a case. And how often are not meals interrupted, sleep shortened, and years of toil undertaken in order to gain a suit that is perhaps not worth the twentieth part of the costs? You, ladies and gentlemen, you have to marry your daughters to husbands suitable to their rank. The contract is agreed to, the date for the marriage fixed; do you think also of the bride's trousseau, of the clothes suitable for the occasion, of the entertainments and wedding festivities that have to be given? Truly you do! But when do you begin to prepare these things? You wait, do you not, until the day comes when the wedding party is going to church? Not by any means, you answer; we should be very foolish to wait as long as that. We make our preparations weeks and months beforehand. Why so ? Because otherwise we should be too late, and it is a matter in which our honor is concerned. So prudent are we in temporal things.
My dear brethren, is the affair of our eternal salvation then of less importance, so that we can put it off until the time when it is to be really concluded ? In the Gospel of St. Matthew Our Lord compares His coming at our death to that of the bridegroom who knocks in the middle of the night, when no one expects him: "And at midnight there was a cry made: Behold, the bride groom comes, go you forth to meet him." Christian soul! at your last breath you shalt hear the words: go forth to meet Him; arise; now is the time in which thou art to be espoused to the sovereign Ruler of the world, to reign with Him for all eternity. Where is the wedding-garment of sanctifying grace? Where are your ornaments, your jewels, your merits and virtues, that you mayest appear worthily before such a great lord? Woe to you if you have not collected all those things beforehand ! Woe to you if you shouldst have put off to the last moment the preparation for the great marriage-feast! I know you not, the Bridegroom will say, as He said to the foolish virgins who had not oil in their lamps. " They that were ready went in with him to the marriage." Mark the words: "they that were ready, " not they who then began for the first time to prepare. These latter were excluded: "the door was shut." Each one of us has a difficult, very important, and very complicated suit depending on the divine justice. It is a difficult suit, because many and very many, no, the most of men, and perhaps the most of adult Christians, will lose it. It is a very important suit, because on its gain or loss depends the gain or loss, not of a piece of land on this poor earth, not of a capital of a million ducats, but of an immortal soul, of an immense glory, of an infinite good; on its issue depends whether our lot for eternity shall be with the reprobate or the elect. It is a very complicated suit; the demons of hell, the dangerous occasions that are to be met with in the world, and the lusts of the flesh are our opponents, whose sole effort from the beginning of our lives is to destroy us. And if we enter into our own consciences, we must acknowledge that we have made matters much worse through our own fault, by our manifold sins. The day on which the final judgment shall be pronounced is the day on which the Lord shall come to take the soul away from the body by death, and it is known to no one but God Himself.
Ah, have we not every reason to prepare ourselves in time and with all earnestness, to examine our consciences, to repent of our sins, and to settle our accounts with God? In time, I say; for why should we wait any longer? What grounds can we have for a hope of salvation, if we defer our preparation for death till death itself is at hand? Shall we, perhaps, be able to put it off until we are ready? That kind of a thing might indeed be done in temporal affairs. If it is found that after due diligence and care all the things required for the marriage-feast are not ready, the ceremony is put off for a week or two, or even longer if necessary. If a lawsuit is decided against me the first time, I can appeal and have a new trial. But what can we put in the way of death to defer his coming? Nothing, my dear brethren, it is impossible to put him off; whether we are ready or not, we must go at the appointed time. " You have appointed his bounds which cannot be passed. " a Cry out then, as much as you please, to the Lord when He comes to your sick bed to take you; say to Him like that sinner of whom St. Gregory speaks: " Let me off till to-morrow! " Great God! You have millions of years in Your hands, time itself must obey You ah, give me one hour of life, till to-morrow, that I may prepare for the long journey into eternity; but all your crying will be of no avail; you will not obtain a single moment more. If you are not prepared when the time comes, so much the worse for you; death will not wait. "The days of man are short, and the number of his months is with You. " l " You have appointed his bounds which cannot be passed."
In temporal matters, if one makes a mistake the first time, he can be on his guard the second time and repair his former error. If you have lost a lawsuit and suffered injury thereby, you can make up for the loss by redoubled diligence. But if you have once made a mistake in death, there is no chance of coming back to amend it. If you have lost the suit of your eternal salvation, because you did not prepare in time, you have lost it without any possibility of regaining it. Even if one makes a mistake in matters concerning his eternal salvation during life, there is still time to recover what has been lost. If today I were to make a sacrilegious confession, either through want of proper preparation, or because I have not true sorrow for my sins, or because I have concealed a sin wilfully, that would be truly a great evil, great enough to expose me to the danger of damnation; but yet I must not despair; to-morrow or even today I can go to confession again, and free my soul from the evil. But if I am so unfortunate as to die an unhappy death, I cannot come back any more, but must remain forever in the state in which death has found me.
What follows from this, my dear brethren? That since our salvation or damnation depends on our death; since we cannot hope for anything greater than salvation, or dread and fear anything more than damnation; the most important, no, the only business we have to attend to during life, the one end to which should be directed all our thoughts and cares, should be to die a happy death; and hence we must at all times use our utmost diligence in preparing to die well, and be always ready for the hour when the Lord will come to take us. Seneca, although he was a heathen, maintained that the importance of dying well is so great that a man's whole occupation during life should consist in learning how to die. " During our whole lives we should learn how to die. This, dear Christians, is the reason why we are on this earth; for this God gives us every day of our lives that we may prepare worthily for His coming. This is the thought that should be always before our minds to stimulate us; that should be always in our memories crying out to us: prepare for death! Whenever St. Teresa heard the clock strike she used to say to herself: " Teresa! we are already another hour nearer to death." The holy Scripture calls the life of man a voyage: " My days have passed by as ships, " says the Prophet Job. In the same sense St. Gregory says: " Our life is like one who voyages in a ship." How does the sailor act that he may continue his voyage in safety? He seats himself in the after-part of the vessel, that he may constantly have both the vessel and the course he has to steer before his eyes, and be thus enabled to make a proper use of the rudder to guide his course. So, too, should we keep our whole future lives before our eyes, and so order them that we may arrive at the haven of a happy eternity. " During our whole lives we should learn how to die." Ah, Christians! why are we so careless, indifferent, and forgetful in this great affair on which all depends? Everything else in world interests us; in everything else we wish to act with prudence. To live, to live long, to live in good health, fortune and prosperity, to avoid suffering and misfortune; this thought drives the hand to labor, the feet to activity, the whole mind to reflection and meditation; for these things every one wishes to be prepared, and dreads coming too late. Death and what comes after it is almost the only thing that is forgotten. The last thought with most people is when, how, or where they shall die, or what means they should use to die well. The mere remembrance of death and eternity, suggested in a sermon, is looked on with chagrin and annoyance, and thrust out of the mind as a, melancholy thought, likely to disturb our peace and the enjoyment of those sensual pleasures that we do not wish to give up. As St. Gregory remarks, most men live in such a manner that they are hardly aware of death at all until he knocks at their doors, an d is about to strike the fatal blow. This was the case with the celebrated Alexander the Great, of whom we read in the First Book of the Machabees. " After these things he fell down on his bed and knew that he should die." l " After these things; " after the earth had trembled before him; after he had conquered the greater part of the world by his forces, "he fell down upon his bed " in a mortal illness, and knew what he had not thought of before, that he must die. But could he not have learned that when he saw so many battle-fields covered with dead bodies? "He fought many battles, and slew the kings of the earth. " That was the time for him to remember that he, too, had a mortal body, and that his turn would come. He might have learned it when he laid waste whole countries, and plundered kingdoms: "He went through even to the ends of the earth: and took the spoils of many nations: and the earth was quiet be fore him. " Then, I say, he might have seen how death would one day come to him, and strip him of everything, leaving him bare and naked. But the last thing he thought of was his own death. It was only when he felt the poison working in his body, when he lay on his death-bed, that he became aware that it was time for him to die. But he knew it too late, and was surprised by death in the height of his pride and intolerable tyranny, and thus hurried into eternity. Christians, how many there are amongst you who require a mortal illness, the very presence of death, to warn you effectively to prepare for eternity! After these things; after twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years squandered away without doing anything for salvation; after these things; after body and soul have been exhausted in the service of some earthly master, who cannot "help to gain heaven; after these things; after having devoted all one's cares, thoughts, and labor to the world; after these things; after having suffered so much discomfort, annoyance, and misery without a supernatural intention, without resignation to the will of God; without any profit for eternity; after these things; after having spent in vanity, idleness, and sin of all kinds the precious time given by God; after these things; after having bestowed hardly a thought on the last end; after these things; after the conscience has been hardly once purified by a true repentance; " after these things he fell down upon his bed, and knew that he should die;" after all this death comes and summons him into eternity. Then it is too late to know that we must die. Then it is in vain that we sigh for time to prepare, to amend our lives, to do something for our soul; then we must die as we have lived, unprepared.
Charles, surnamed the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, had no braver in his army than a certain man named William. This man had been accustomed to arms from his earliest youth, and was a thorough soldier; he was always the first to encounter danger; he was often grievously wounded; but that did not lessen his courage; he purchased his promotion, not with money, but with his blood. Having grown grey in arms, he was sent to court to rest on his laurels, and there he was invested with a charge and dignity suitable to his merits; nor did he show less fidelity and energy in the affairs of state than courage and bravery in war. At last he fell into a mortal illness. His death in the eyes of the world ought to have been a glorious one, for he was laden with honors, he had ennobled and enriched his family, performed many heroic actions, and gained an undying name. When he was told that the end of his life was at hand, and death at his door, he opened his eyes wide and seemed lost in thought. Finally he broke out into this sorrowful complaint: And must I leave my dignity, my charge, my duke? Where shall I now have to go? I must appear at a strange court, where I have never done any service. I must go amongst lords and princes whose favor I have never tried to win. And how can the Duke of Burgundy help me now? What can he do for me? For his sake I have endured toil and labor for seventy years, in addition to shedding my blood for him; but to the Lord of Hosts, before whom I must now appear, I have not given a month, a day, a moment, nor even a thought. Give me back the years I have spent so ill, that I may make a better use of them, and turn them to my profit. With this tardy and useless repentance in his heart and on his lips he died. In his last will he ordered this short but pithy epitaph to be written over his grave: "Here lies William, who devoted his services to the court and forgot himself, and went out of this world without having learned why he came into it. " And so it is with most people in the world.
But what stupid, deplorable indifference that is in a reasoning man who has got the gift of faith to be so careless in a business on which body and soul, and God and eternity, and everything depends! Seneca justly looked on him as a fool who feared death only when he heard the thunder rolling and saw the lightning flashing: " foolish man, and forgetful of your frailty, if you fear death only when it thunders! " If there were any exceptions to the general law of death; if one by forgetting death and rejecting all thought of it could avoid it and save himself from the common fate; then, indeed, we should be excused for seeking all sorts of means of escaping it, of not thinking of it, instead of preparing for its approach; like little children who, when they imagine they see a ghost, put their hands before their eyes, and think that they cannot be seen then and are safe from all danger. But we, my dear brethren, may cover our eyes as much as we please, we may think of it or not, death will come on at his own pace, nearer and nearer every day, hour, and moment; and he will hurry us off without any one being able to protect us from him. The sentence already pronounced is irrevocable: "It is appointed to men once to die," and no one is excepted. To all, rich and poor, young and old, healthy and sick, prince and peasant, are the words uttered: " Take order with your house, for you shalt die and not live." If we belonged to the number of those wicked and reckless infidels and atheists of whom Isaias says that they neither fear nor hope for anything after death, because they believe that the soul dies with the body, then we should be less inexcusable if like them we said: "And behold, joy and gladness, killing calves and slaying rams, eating flesh and drinking wine: Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die." Let us enjoy ourselves and let nothing interfere with our pleasures, for death will soon come, and then there will be an end of all. But the man who is persuaded that death is waiting for him; the Christian who is instructed and knows that there is another life after death which will never end; that on the last moment of his life depends his eternal happiness or misery; for such a one, I say, to forget death so easily and put off all preparation for it to the last moment, that is indeed a stupidity that we cannot sufficiently wonder at or deplore.
Let us, my dear brethren, for a moment put out of our minds shown by a the universality of the law of death, and try if our imaginations parable will not help us to grasp the truth we are considering. Suppose that no one had ever died, and that the name of death is unknown, so that we are all to live forever in this world. And a sad thing that would be for the poor and afflicted who would then have to remain in this vale of tears without the hope of a better life. But suppose for a moment that it is so. Imagine, further, that an angel comes and announces to us in a clear voice: one of you who are now in this church must leave the world and die after a short time, and then he will be brought before the judgment-seat of God, where he shall have to render an ex act account of all the thoughts, words, and actions of his whole life; if they are found to be good, he will enjoy himself with God for all eternity, otherwise he must burn forever in the fire of hell. How disturbed we should all be at hearing such a message! What thoughts, doubts, fear, and terror it would give rise to! " dear angel," we would say, " do not keep us all in suspense! Tell us who it is who must die, so that the rest of us may be free from anxiety! " " I will tell you," replies the angel, " see, there is the man;" and he points to him and says: "thou shalt die." Now we know who he is. But what the man's thoughts would be I leave to himself. Now, my dear brethren, if you saw that he who is thus condemned to death was quite indifferent to his fate, and occupied himself only with building houses, enlarging his gardens and fields, amassing money and having one new garment made after the other; if you heard him complaining and saying: Oh, what a great loss of property I have suffered! What would you think and say of him? There is no doubt that you would say to him: you fool, leave your houses, riches, and lands for us who are to live for ever in this world. You are certain that you must leave this life in a short time; why, then, should you trouble yourself about such things? You know that the world will come to an end for you Boon; you should, therefore, be indifferent to its riches; nor should you be concerned about the loss of things which you can not take with you beyond this life. Rather consider how you can best prepare to appear before God after death. But the man takes no notice of all this; and what is still worse, he indulges in all kinds of sinful pleasures, and places no restraint on his passions, as, alas! so many do nowadays. What would you think of this conduct of his? Ah, blind and stupid man! you know that you must give a strict account to an all-knowing God; you must appear before the pure spirits of heaven, and yet you wallow like a swine in the filth of impurity, although you are certain that you must pay for your wickedness in a short time in the fire of hell! Where is your common sense? Leave those joys and pleasures to us who are not in danger of ever losing them and of having to render an account to a strict Judge; prepare for death; order your life so that you may not lose eternal joys. Such is the advice you would give that man. But is it not the same that every one of us is bound to take and act up on? for we are all sure and certain that in a short time we shall die and appear before the divine Judge, who will send us to heaven or hell for all eternity.
Therefore, I will take this advice to myself, and never forget that it is I who must die, that another will come after me and succeed to my place. Ah, why then do I live so careless of my soul? Why do I think so little of the long eternity of happiness or misery that awaits me? But I will now begin to prepare for the approach of death, and to disregard everything that could prevent me from dying a happy death. Let each one of you, my dear brethren, often say to himself the words: " You shalt die and shalt not live; " it is I who must die, and that perhaps soon; I cannot send another in my place into eternity; I myself must journey thither, and leave behind all that I ever possessed or shall possess in the world. Why, then, should I be so concerned for temporal things, since I cannot take them with me? Why do I desire, seek, and love that which God has forbidden me to seek and to love? Why do I long for that which will keep me from heaven, embitter my death, and precipitate me into the flames of hell forever? Why do I not at once try to purify my conscience from the filth of sin, to serve my God more zealously, and to ensure my eternal salvation? Am I not mad and foolish to have ever grievously offended the Lord God and exposed my soul to the greatest danger? " You shalt die and shalt not live; " it is I who must die; should I not then begin at once to prepare for death as well as I know how? Truly it is so, and I will prepare myself.
But in what manner? I must now at once do that which I HOW to do shall have to do in my last illness if I wish to die well, but this which I shall then possibly not be able to do properly. To square our accounts with God, to bewail all the sins of our past lives with a contrite heart, and candidly confess them in the holy sacrament of penance, to form the earnest purpose of never again, for all eternity, committing a sin, to make what restitution I can for the injuries done my neighbor in his property or character, to avoid the proximate occasion of sin, and atone, by good example, for scandal given, to lay aside completely all feelings of disunion, hatred, and anger against my neighbor, and to pardon from the heart and be reconciled to all who have injured me, to make up for lost time by being more zealous in the service of God; ah, to do all that when death is already knocking at the door, when the body is writhing in pain, the heart filled with anguish and the mind bewildered, ah, truly that is not the time for such a weighty business! Therefore the beginning must be made at once, and that today, so that everything may be duly attended to. Now must do what I shall wish to have done on my death bed, but shall then be unable to do; that is, I shall live as I shall desire to have lived on my death-bed; I shall do and avoid what on my death-bed I shall wish to have done and avoided, and by a frequent reception of the holy sacraments, resignation to the will of God, patience under trials, and a good supernatural intention in all my daily duties, I shall prepare for the coming of the Lord. Let that be our conclusion. It must and shall be mine, with Your grace, Lord! that I maybe found ready in the hour when You shalt come for me, and that when You knockest and callest me away from this world I maybe, to my great consolation, able to answer You: Behold, Lord, I am ready! Amen.
Another Introduction to the same sermon for the first Sunday of Advent.
Text.
"Then they shall see the Son of man coming." (Luke 21:27)
Introduction.
In this season of Advent the Catholic Church warns all her children to prepare their hearts by special devotions for the coming of the incarnate Saviour. " Let your modesty be known to all men: the Lord is near," she says to us in the words of St. Paul; you should now give special signs of humility and piety, etc. For the same reason the daily office is lengthened during the whole month in all religious communities, and prayer, fasting, and mortification are redoubled, just as if the members of those communities wished to encourage one another to be ready like the five wise virgins with oil in their lamps, and to say to one another: "Behold, the bridegroom comes; go you forth to meet him." Nor does this happen without reason; for never did God show greater mercy and generosity to the world than when He emptied Himself for our salvation, and came down from heaven, took upon Himself human flesh, became man, and was born in a poor stable. My dear brethren, our faith tells us that there is another advent, which we should justly take the utmost interest in; that, namely, in which the Lord will come to visit each one of us in particular, not as a child accompanied by mercy alone, but as a stern and strict judge to administer justice. It is an advent of the Lord of which we cannot say as we can of the first, that it will be for us men and for our salvation: for it will be for the salvation of the just alone, but for the dam nation of the wicked. This advent, or coming of the Lord, will happen in the hour of death, that is in the particular judgment of each individual dying mortal. terrible advent! of which we may well say with fear and trembling in the words of the Prophet Malachy: "Who shall be able to think of the day of His coming? and who shall stand to see Him? " a Now, if a whole month is to be devoted to preparing for the coming of Our Lord as a child, a coming that takes place only in a spiritual manner, how long should we prepare for the other coming of Our Lord in the hour of death, as a strict judge, when His coming shall be real? Oh, truly, a long time beforehand! No, all the time of our lives, and that, too, with the utmost care and diligence. The preparation for death should be made a long time beforehand; this is required by the importance of the affair that has to be settled in the coming of Our Lord. It should be made with the greatest care; this is necessary because that coming will happen but once. And further, it should be made always, because we know not when the Lord will come. It should be made with the utmost diligence, because His coming will be unexpected. There we have the division of the matter which we undertake to consider in this season of Advent. today I begin with the first point, and say:
Plan of Discourse.
We should prepare a long time beforehand for the coming of the Lord in death; this is required by the importance of the affair that has to be settled in His coming. Such is the whole subject, to the end that we may, etc. Continues as above.