or think: what is it to me? Even if I do lose my life by fire, I shall not be the only one; I shall have many companions in misfortune. If I am drowned, all the others who are in the ship with me shall share in my fate. If the soldiers plunder me, many others shall be brought to ruin with me. Why, I ask, do not people try to console themselves in that manner under the circumstances? Because the consolation is then utterly inadequate. It is only when there is question of the eternal ruin of the immortal soul, of the eternal loss of the joys of heaven, of an eternal fire with the demons in hell, that men can laugh, and joke, and comfort themselves with the thought of the companions who are to share in their damnation, and who must suffer the same loss, the same ruin, the same eternal pains. Then they can say: I am not the only one. Truly, O wicked man! you are not the only one who shall burn forever in hell; you have entered on the broad way to your destruction, of which Our Lord speaks in the Gospel of St. Matthew: “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat.”[1] Truly, sinner, you shall not be alone in hell; for many, very many, nay, the majority of men shall be there with you; if you were there alone there might still be some consolation for you; but as it is, the society of so many shall be, as we have seen already, a new and an intolerable hell for you, and it shall be all the more painful as the number of your companions is greater. According to the teaching of St. Thomas, the multitude of the damned increases the pain of each one of them.[2]
Exhortation often to think on this. You should reflect on this, O sinner! who are now in the proximate occasion of sin, so that the fear of being condemned to that unhappy company may urge yon to give up that sinful intimacy. You should reflect on this, O seducer of souls! who by unchaste songs and conversation, or impure books, or diabolical teaching, or vain and scandalous dress, or by giving bad example, are in any way the means of leading the innocent astray, and are thus actually adding to the number of the reprobate to your own greater future torment. Reflect on this, you who now are so fond of dancing, debauchery, drunkenness, and gambling. If the only mischief done on those occasions were the loss of the
