what I am afraid of: that it will be with thee as it was with nearly all Catholics who are now lost forever, and who with the fishermen in to-day’s Gospel have had to say at the end of their lives: “We have labored all the night, and have taken nothing.” Our lives were a continual night; a continual falling from one sin into another. Now all is lost to us forever! But, some may say (and would to God that many sinners did not flatter them selves with this thought!), when I see that I am dangerously ill I can repent of and confess my sins, and by receiving the last sacraments gain heaven at the end of my life. Alas! this hope of heaven rests on conversion in the last illness. Now this is a most false, deceitful, and almost desperate hope, as I shall now prove by way of salutary warning to sinners. I repeat:
Plan of Discourse.
In vain do you hope to be converted and save your soul in your last illness. Why? God Himself denies you that hope. This I shall prove in the first part. Experience also denies it to you; as I shall prove in the second part. What I hope and trust is, that this subject may not concern any of those who are here present, and that all of them may derive from it only this fruit; namely, that they continue to serve God with pure consciences, or else if they fall, that they at once repent of their sin and do penance for it; this shall also be my conclusion.
Do Thou, O Lord! through the intercession of Thy Mother Mary and of our holy guardian angels, grant us Thy grace that this hope of mine maybe fulfilled, and that none of us may have to say at the end of this life: “We have labored all the night, and have taken nothing.”
The hope of a death-bed repentance should rest on some reasonable basis.
That you, O sinner! who spend your whole life in wickedness may have the hope of being converted at and before the end of your life, the Almighty God, from whom you have to receive this grace, must either have given you some promise to that effect, or else He must at least have given you some sign by which you can know that your hope is justified. For all prudent hope must have a reasonable foundation to enable us to trust that we shall obtain what we desire; and that foundation rests chiefly on the promise of the person from whom the favor is to come. I see a beggar standing before the door; poor fellow! I say to him, why are you making such a noise for a piece of dry bread? Go
