live here for eternity, insatiable desires that seek a heaven on this earth leave no room for you in the heart. The celebrated Italian preacher, Father Paul Segneri, of our Society, ascended the pulpit once on Ash Wednesday and commenced his sermon in the following words: “My dear brethren, to my great sorrow I must announce to you sad and unexpected tidings. Pay attention to what I am about to say; for it will certainly frighten you.” And then he kept silent for a moment. The people were amazed; they pricked up their ears, and stared open-mouthed at the preacher, partly through curiosity, partly through fear, to hear what was coming next. “Listen to me,” he said in a deep voice, quoting the words of St. Paul to the Hebrews: ‘It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this, the judgment.'[1] The sentence is pronounced; all of us who are here present, without exception, must die. This is the news I have for you.” Then he kept silent again. The people’s astonishment and fear were almost changed into laughter at this unexpected turn things had taken; they began to shake their heads and to murmur. “Is this the terrible news?” they said. “Is the man trying to make fools of us with his silly talk? Do we not know well enough, does not our daily experience convince us that we must die?” This sudden change in his audience was the very thing that the clever and zealous preacher wanted. “Pardon me,” he said, “pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, if my news has fallen short of your expectations; however, I have not deceived you, but you have deceived me. To judge from the lives that most of you lead I could not persuade myself that you had the least knowledge of death. I see you sunk altogether in earthly things, given up to transitory pleasures and joys, indulging in sins and vices of all kinds without fear or shame, and leading dissolute, idle, worldly lives. What else could I think but that you knew nothing of death, and looked forward to living always on this earth? Therefore I thought I had some news for you;” and he went on with his sermon. But my time is nearly up and I must close. I do so maintaining that the reproof that was necessary for the Italians in those days would also be required for the Germans in our day. For truly in our country there are many, I am afraid, who live as if they knew nothing of death. And forgetfulness of death is the cause of their wicked lives, for they either refuse altogether to cast a
- ↑ Statutum est hominibus semel mori, post hoc autem judicium.—Heb. ix. 27.
