his place;”[1] all his honors, goods, and wealth shall be violently taken from him. Oh, if you would now use only a little care to amass a treasure of good works, how much more likely would you not be to rejoice in your last hour! But even the good works you do now and then; whose shall they be? What will become of them if you die unrepentant, in the state of sin, with a bad conscience? For they will be of no good to you in eternity. “If the just man turn himself away from his justice, and do iniquity,” such is the threat of the Lord by the Prophet Ezechiel, “all his justices, which he had done, shall not be remembered: in the prevarication, by which he hath prevaricated, and in his sin, which he hath committed, in them he shall die.”[2] The only treasure you can take with you is sin, but it will be at the same time the source of your greatest unhappiness, as St. Augustine says: “The goods he has collected he shall lose; but he shall bring his sins with him;”[3] the gold for which you sinned you must leave behind, but the sin you shall take with you; you sinned for a farm, you shall lose the farm; you sinned for a woman, you shall lose the woman, but you shall take your sin with you;[4] and what is worse, you shall have neither time nor hope of getting rid of your burden, or of ever recovering what you have lost.
The just man at the end of his life finds everything he has gained in security. Good and just Christians! you too will one day hear the words: “This night,” this day, this hour, “do they require thy soul of thee;” thou must leave the world; “and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” To whom will belong all that you have amassed? Rejoice and be glad! Not an iota of them shall be taken from you; the whole treasure of good works and merits that you are now collecting shall, if you only persevere and die with a good conscience, all belong to you alone and shall be yours for eternity. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” Why? “For their works follow them.” I go from this world, you will then think to your great consolation, poor and naked, not taking with me the least earthly thing; but what is that to
- ↑ Apprehendet eum quasi aqua inopia. Toilet eum ventus urens, et auferet, et velut turbo rapiet eum de loco suo.—Job xxvii. 20, 21.
- ↑ Si autem averterit se justus a justitia sua, et fecerit iniquitatem; omnes justitiæ ejus, quas fecerat, non recordabuntur; in prævaricatione qua prævaricatus est, et in peccato suo quod peccavit, in ipsis morietur.—Ezech. xviii. 24.
- ↑ Quæ comparavit bona, hæc dimittit; sed secum peccata portat.
- ↑ Pecunia tua propter quam peccasti, dimittenda est; sed peccatum tuum tecum portas; propter villam peccasti; villam dimittes; propter mulierem peccasti; mulierem dimittes; sed peccatum tuum tecum portas.
