to his fatherland? He who dies in the state of sanctifying grace goes to receive his reward, to be crowned with the laurel of victory; he is about to enter into that land to which alone he has been journeying; he loses a life, and receives a better one; he leaves a house to win a kingdom; he quits a transitory joy for eternal happiness. And we are afraid of this! Where is our common sense? I ask again. Our reason inspires us with a vehement desire for happiness; our experience teaches us that we cannot have true and lasting happiness in this world; our faith assures us that we can find it only in heaven. Here we live far more miserably than in a poor peasant’s cot, if we compare our present state with heaven. Heaven is our true country, for which we are created; our departed brothers and sisters await us there to share in their eternal joys, and they are saints of God. The God of all happiness is our Father, and from the throne of His glory He calls out to us and invites us to His eternal kingdom to share in His own everlasting happiness. Should we not be rejoiced at this, and sigh and long for it with earnest desires? Now reason as well as faith teaches us that we cannot arrive at this desirable consummation, that we cannot possess God in His kingdom of joys, unless after death. “Man shall not see Me and live,”[1] said God to Moses; no one can enjoy the beatific vision as long as he lives on earth. Why then do we not long for and desire death? Nay, why do we shudder at the thought of it, as if it were the worst and most cruel monster on the face of the earth? How inconsistent our wishes and opinions in this matter! We desire eternal happiness, and are at the same time afraid to tread the only path that can bring us to it. Our daily prayer is: “Thy kingdom come,” and yet we banish from our thoughts the only thing that can open to us the door of the kingdom. Either let us renounce our faith or else moderate our fears; either cease to long for heaven or to fear death which can fulfil our longing and bring us to heaven.
The entrance into eternity is not in itself terrible, but joyful for a good conscience. Yes, you say, if I only knew that death would be for me the entrance into heaven, I should be most willing to leave this earth, where I am not so very well off; I should joyfully welcome death; but who shall assure me of that? How many there are whom death sends from temporal misery into eternal suffering! And that is the very thing I fear most of all; that is what makes me tremble; for on my last moment depends a twofold eternity of
- ↑ Non enim videbit me homo, et vivet.—Exod. xxxiii. 30.
