memory. It was the death of one of my former parishioners, a girl who had just left school. She had only been ill for three days when I found it necessary to administer the last sacraments.
When, three or four hours later, I saw that the relentless hand of death was about to cut off her young life, I knelt in prayer beside the bed with all those who were present, and I asked the dying sufferer: "You will pray for us in heaven, my child, will you not?" "Yes, yes," she exclaimed, clasping my hand with a gesture of entreaty, "but you must first pray for me, that I may get to heaven! " And after she had taken leave of every one she repeated, with her failing breath, "Do pray, go on praying! Pray, pray! "
2. And it is these very words of the dying girl which I repeat to you over and over again: "My dear young friend, do pray, go on praying! Pray, pray, because it is indispensably necessary to do so." Prayer is assuredly the ladder to heaven, without which it is not possible to be saved.
Scarcely anything else in Holy Scripture is recommended to us so frequently and with so much emphasis. Over and over again we meet with exhortations to prayer. " Ask and it shall be given you: seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you" (Matt. vii. 7). "Watch ye and pray" (Matt. xxvi. 41). St. Paul bids us: "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. v. 17).
