How is it, then, that certain great saints, after having given themselves wholly to God, and after a life of mortification and detachment from all earthly things, at the hour of death have felt great terror at the thought of appearing before Christ, their Judge? I reply that those great saints who have suffered these fears at the moment of death have been very few, and that it was the will of God that they should thus purge away the remains of their sins before entering on eternal blessedness; but that, ordinarily speaking, all the saints have died in remarkable peace, and with earnest desires to depart to the presence of God. And for the rest, this is the very difference between sinners and saints at the hour of death, that sinners from fear pass on to despair, and saints from fear pass on to confidence, and thus die in peace.
Therefore, every one who has a hope that he is in the grace of God ought to desire death, repeating the prayer which Jesus Christ has taught us: " Thy kingdom come;" and he ought to embrace death with joy when it comes, that he may thus be freed from sin, and leave this world, where no one lives without imperfections, and go to behold God, face to face, and love Him with all his powers in the kingdom of love.
2. Protestation for a Happy Death.
MY God, being certain that I shall die, and not knowing when it will be, I intend now to prepare myself for death; and I therefore declare that I believe all that the holy Church believes, and especially the mystery of the most holy Trinity, the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ, paradise and hell; because Thou Who art truth itself hast revealed all these truths.
I deserve a thousand hells: but I hope in Thy
