ready excepted malefactors condemned to death; but how many of them, as I know by experience, die sooner than they imagine? For when they are blindfolded at the place of execution, or have the rope about their necks, it is usual to commence what they think to be a long prayer, but before they are aware of it the drop is lowered or their heads are severed from their bodies.
Therfore we must be always prepared for death. It is, then, and remains true that the Lord will come when we know not and that we shall die at a time when we expect not. “At what hour you think not the Son of man will come." What follows now from all this, my dear brethren? That which I have already told you in my last sermon, and of which Christ Himself warns us: “Be you ready”[1]—that is, be ready now, this very moment. For we must be always on our guard; not for a moment should we remain in mortal sin and at enmity with God. Once for all we should make the same resolution as that young man of whom I told you; that is, since there is a custom amongst men of dying unexpectedly we must so live as to be ready for death even when we do not expect it and think that it is still far from us. And this, as the Venerable Bede says, speaking of the text I have quoted, is the reason why God has decreed that the hour of death should come upon us when we least look for it, “that since we cannot foresee it, we may be always ready for it.”[2] We should act like one whose enemy is always on the watch to surprise him and take his life; he is always on his guard; he never goes unarmed or alone, so that he may be always in a position to defend himself if attacked.
Unhappy sinners who neglect this! How I bewail, then, the state of that vast number of men who, unarmed and unprepared, spend whole years as carelessly as if they had nothing to fear from the enemy who is unceasingly plotting against their lives; and these unhappy people live in the state of sin because they do not think that the hour of death has come for them. Therefore they remain in the proximate occasion of sin; therefore they refuse to restore ill-gotten goods; therefore they put off doing penance; therefore they are tepid and cold in the divine service: all because they imagine that the hour of death is still far from them. If a man happens to die suddenly they run to see the dead body; all who hear of the incident wring their hands and cry out: Is it possible that the man is already dead? He was so well yesterday! Only a few
