CHAPTER XXIII.
HIS LAST MOMENTS AND HOLY DEATH.
IT is one of the maxims of our Faith that at the hour of death we reap the fruit of our good works during life: Quae seminaverit homo, haec et metet. However, it sometimes happens that good, pious people experience fear and dread at the approach of death. This is in accordance with the adorable decrees of God, who wishes to purify those souls from the small stains they may have contracted, so that they may increase their merit in heaven.
It was not thus with Dominic Savio. It is my conviction that God deigned to give him the hundredfold, which He bestows upon the souls of the just, as a preliminary to the glory of Paradise. And indeed the innocence which he preserved to the last moment of his life, his generous Faith, his habit of constant prayer, his mortifications, and the sufferings which had, as it were, beset his life, certainly merited that consolation for him at the hour of death.
Hence it was that he perceived his end approaching with the tranquillity of an innocent soul; it would seem that he did not feel even the
