die well? But what else could a Christian do? Do you imagine he must throw away the crucifix with disgust; refuse to express sorrow for his sins, to receive absolution or holy Communion? No Catholic would act in that way unless he were mad and out of his senses. But do you believe that he does all those pious actions with sincerity and from a supernatural motive? “Nay,” asks St. Basil, “do you think the dying man knows at all what he does and says?”
Shown by similes. It is easy to get an echo even from the hardest rocks and shown by mountains. Call out the name Jesus between the rocks, and they will answer Jesus; not because they understand what they say, but because the echo gives back your voice. So it is generally with such dying people. When a man lives a bad life, and puts off conversion till the last moment, what else is his heart but a rock hardened against the grace of God, as the Prophet Jeremias says: “They have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than the rock.”[1] Now a man of this kind is lying on his sick bed; you go to him and say: Jesus! He answers: Jesus! You say: Mary, Mother of mercy! He repeats: Mary, Mother of mercy! Are you not sorry that you have offended God? Yes; I am sorry. If you should be restored to health, will you not serve Him faithfully? Yes; I will! You wish to go to heaven? Yes. O my God, I believe in Thee! O my God, I believe in Thee! I hope in Thee! I hope in Thee! I love Thee! I love Thee! There is nothing more that troubles your conscience? No; nothing more. A person looking on at this might be inclined to say: Thanks be to God! he is well prepared! Simple-minded man! it was, after all, but an echo from the hard rock you heard, and the sick man’s sighs and tears were caused merely by bodily pain.
By daily experience. Ask all those who have received the last sacraments in a dangerous illness and have recovered again how they felt on the occasion. Many will tell you that they felt quite stupid; the moat will acknowledge that they hardly knew whether they were receiving the sacraments or not. If those people had died they would have been considered as having been well prepared. Well prepared indeed! As far as I myself am concerned, I have been once in danger of drowning, another time of breaking my neck by a fall, and a third time I was grievously ill, and fell into a fainting fit. I thought I was about to die; but I never
- ↑ Renuerunt accipere disciplinam; induraverunt facies suas supra petram.—Jer. v. 3.
