again, for all eternity, committing a sin, to make what restitution I can for the injuries done my neighbor in his property or character, to avoid the proximate occasion of sin, and atone, by good example, for scandal given, to lay aside completely all feelings of disunion, hatred, and anger against my neighbor, and to pardon from the heart and be reconciled to all who have injured me, to make up for lost time by being more zealous in the service of God; ah, to do all that when death is already knocking at the door, when the body is writhing in pain, the heart filled with anguish and the mind bewildered, ah, truly that is not the time for such a weighty business! Therefore the beginning must be made at once, and that to-day, so that everything may be duly attended to. Now 1 must do what I shall wish to have done on my death-bed, but shall then be unable to do; that is, I shall live as I shall desire to have lived on my death-bed; I shall do and avoid what on my death-bed I shall wish to have done and avoided, and by a frequent reception of the holy sacraments, resignation to the will of God, patience under trials, and a good supernatural intention in all my daily duties, I shall prepare for the coming of the Lord. Let that be our conclusion. It must and shall be mine, with Thy grace, Lord! that I maybe found ready in the hour when Thou shalt come for me, and that when Thou knockest and callest me away from this world I maybe, to my great consolation, able to answer Thee: Behold, Lord, I am ready! Amen.
Another Introduction to the same sermon for the first Sunday of Advent.
Text.
Tunc videbunt filium hominis venientem.—Luke xxi. 27.
“Then they shall see the Son of man coming.”
Introduction.
In this season of Advent the Catholic Church warns all her children to prepare their hearts by special devotions for the coming of the incarnate Saviour. “Let your modesty be known to all men: the Lord is nigh,”[1] she says to us in the words of St. Paul; you should now give special signs of humility and piety, etc. For the same reason the daily office is lengthened during the whole month in all religious communities, and prayer, fasting, and mortification are redoubled, just as if the members of those communities wished to encourage one another to be
- ↑ Modestia vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus; Dominus prope est.—Philipp. iv. 5.
