Hunolt Sermons/Volume 9/Sermon 11

by Franz Hunolt

ELEVENTH SERMON.

ON THE VAIN HOPE OF A DEATH-BED REPENTANCE.

Subject.

The sinner who puts off repentance until the hour of death can have no hope of being then converted; because that hope is denied him: 1. by God Himself, 2. by experience.—Preached on the fourth Sunday after Pentecost.

Text.

Per totam noctem laborantes, nihil cepimus.—Luke v. 5.

“We have labored all the night, and have taken nothing.”

Introduction.

By the night we understand in a spiritual sense the state of sin, in which he lives who either does not repent of his vices or who, although he goes often to confession, does not earnestly propose to amend his life. While in that state all his works, although they may be good and holy in themselves, cannot gain for him the slightest merit for heaven, as I have shown in another sermon. O Christian! who continuest to labor in that dismal night, I beg of thee, return by true repentance and amendment to the clear light! Do not wait any longer, for it is a deceitful and treacherous hope that builds on the future, as I have also shown. Dost thou still refuse to hearken to my warning? Then learn what I am afraid of: that it will be with thee as it was with nearly all Catholics who are now lost forever, and who with the fishermen in to-day’s Gospel have had to say at the end of their lives: “We have labored all the night, and have taken nothing.” Our lives were a continual night; a continual falling from one sin into another. Now all is lost to us forever! But, some may say (and would to God that many sinners did not flatter them selves with this thought!), when I see that I am dangerously ill I can repent of and confess my sins, and by receiving the last sacraments gain heaven at the end of my life. Alas! this hope of heaven rests on conversion in the last illness. Now this is a most false, deceitful, and almost desperate hope, as I shall now prove by way of salutary warning to sinners. I repeat:

Plan of Discourse.

In vain do you hope to be converted and save your soul in your last illness. Why? God Himself denies you that hope. This I shall prove in the first part. Experience also denies it to you; as I shall prove in the second part. What I hope and trust is, that this subject may not concern any of those who are here present, and that all of them may derive from it only this fruit; namely, that they continue to serve God with pure consciences, or else if they fall, that they at once repent of their sin and do penance for it; this shall also be my conclusion.

Do Thou, O Lord! through the intercession of Thy Mother Mary and of our holy guardian angels, grant us Thy grace that this hope of mine maybe fulfilled, and that none of us may have to say at the end of this life: “We have labored all the night, and have taken nothing.”

The hope of a death-bed repentance should rest on some reasonable basis. That you, O sinner! who spend your whole life in wickedness may have the hope of being converted at and before the end of your life, the Almighty God, from whom you have to receive this grace, must either have given you some promise to that effect, or else He must at least have given you some sign by which you can know that your hope is justified. For all prudent hope must have a reasonable foundation to enable us to trust that we shall obtain what we desire; and that foundation rests chiefly on the promise of the person from whom the favor is to come. I see a beggar standing before the door; poor fellow! I say to him, why are you making such a noise for a piece of dry bread? Go to that rich man over there; he can give you at once a hundred pieces of gold, and with that you may buy as much bread and meat as you like. Oh, it is easy to talk of a hundred pieces of gold, is his answer; it is not so easy to get them! But try at all events; you must not lose hope so soon. What! do you think me a fool because I am a poor man? A hundred pieces of gold! I have not even the idea, much less the hope of getting so much. And why not? Because I have never heard that the gentleman, whose house you have shown me, has ever given so much to one like me, or that he has the intention of doing so; so there is no use in hoping. And the beggar is quite right.

No sinner can have such a hope, for he knows not whether he will die after an illness or with the use of reason. O mortal! you have put off repentance till your last illness, Now tell me, where have you found any promise on the part of God, nay, any sign of His will to the effect that He will then give you the grace without which repentance is impossible? Mark well that I am not now asking you how you know that you will be sick. You may be surprised by a sudden death in the field, in the street, in sleep, in the state of sin, in a short time, nay, this very day. That manner of death is not by any means an unusual one. Nor shall we consider the many accidents that are so liable to happen, especially in our days, such as a sudden attack of apoplexy, that is now so common that even the youngest and strongest have reason to dread it. There are many diseases that attack men so suddenly and with such violence and smarting, acute pains, that all strength of soul and body is taken from them at once, and it becomes impossible for them to collect their thoughts sufficiently to make a good confession, or even to repent of past sins with a true supernatural sorrow, and from a supernatural motive; much less can they give any outward sign of this inward and generally imperfect contrition. And it is greatly to be feared that in the case of most sinners, who are apt to study their bodily comforts, and to deny themselves no pleasures or sensual delights, the least pain will be intolerable to them. If you are attacked by a milder form of illness, it still may happen that you die before the priest comes, to whom you intend to confess your sins. And if the priest is at your bedside, perhaps your weakness or the heat of the fever may make you delirious, and deprive you of reason, without which you cannot repent; and in that case no absolution you may receive will help you to cast off the burden of your sins. Supposing your reason remains undisturbed, it may be that, besides the pains of your sickness, the fear of death will exercise such an influence over you that you cannot fix your mind on anything, much less on that important, exact, and long account that you will have to render to God of the life you have spent in sin. How hard and terrible death seems to him who has always kept his thoughts fixed on earthly things! For then he is told that he must completely lose and forever abandon all the riches and possessions he sought so eagerly, kept so carefully, and loved so dearly. What trouble and exasperation are felt by one who is altogether sunk in earthly things at the loss of an important law-suit! Or at seeing his crops, that were standing in the field, ripe for the sickle, suddenly destroyed and, as it were, torn from his hands by a storm! But all this is nothing compared to the sad news that he must at once and forever leave all that he holds dear—children, wife, house, lands, wealth, and life. Experience teaches that in such circumstances the mind is apt to be greatly disturbed and completely deranged. Who can then believe or hope that in such a case a sinner will be able to examine his hardened conscience, troubled and disturbed as he is, to collect his thoughts, to turn at once to God, to confess his countless sins, and to repent of them with his whole heart? Our Lord Himself, when He saw death coming, “began to fear and to be heavy.”^[1] Condemned criminals, when they are told that their time is come, although they may be quite strong and healthy, lose their mind and courage to such an extent that they are incapable of forming even a sensible thought, and the priest who is attending on them must sometimes go away and leave them to themselves for a few hours, as I know well by experience. Now, what can be expected from a sick man who is tormented with the fear of death? If the lips of confessors were not closed, what might they not tell us of death-bed confessions and penitents! But suppose that you will have no difficulty in this way; perhaps you will think the danger not so great, and will therefore defer repentance still longer? For the word of God assures us that death will come when we least expect: “At what hour you think not the Son of man will come,”^[2] as I have already shown to be the case from experience. Perhaps you will act as unfortunately many Christians do nowadays, who are ashamed to receive the last sacraments in time from some foolish, unchristian notion that then they will hare to die, although Our Lord has instituted those sacraments partly for the healing of bodily illness. According to the testimony of the holy fathers, the tardiness of those people in receiving the last sacraments de prives them of their efficacy, because they are received too late.

Even if he has that manner of death, he knows not if God will give him the powerful grace of repentance. See, all these points I do not wish to delay on any longer today although thev are so well established by experience that I might easily use them in proof of my subject. And that you may have still less to urge in your favor, I will take it for certain and granted that you shall not die a sudden death; that you shall have the use of reason to the last; that neither your illness nor the fear of death shall disturb your mental balance; that you shall have some knowledge of the approach of death, nay, that you shall foresee your last hour; that you shall have time enough to make your confession; that you shall have at your service an experienced confessor, who with crucifix in hand shall remain with you advising you till the last moment. I hardly think you or any one else shall have all these things together; but for the moment I suppose that such shall be your good luck. All I wish to ask you now is this: when has God promised you, or given you any sign of His will to this effect, that even in those circumstances He will give you the great grace of conversion and true repentance? Answer me that if you can, for I have never read anything about it.

For God has not promised it to anyone. What, you reply, are you then so unacquainted with holy Scripture? Are there not hundreds of passages in it to show forth the goodness, mildness, and mercy of God, and His readiness to forgive? Has not God said that at what hour soever the sinner is converted He will accept his repentance? Do we not find in the Book of Ezechiel that oft-repeated and consoling assurance: “The wickedness of the wicked shall not hurt him, in what day soever he shall turn from his wickedness,”^[3] no matter whether that day is the last or the first? Come back to Me, He cries out to all sinners; “Return to Me and I will receive thee,”^[4] and I will no longer remember thy former sins. See, there is the foundation on which you build the house of your eternity, and as if you were quite certain of it, you continue to sin and to defer repentance till the last moment. I acknowledge that apparently the promise is a favorable one for you. But only in appearance; for let us examine the matter closely. The words, “I will pardon the sinner on what day soever he will be converted,” are the same as saying, “I will give the sinner the grace to be truly converted.” The second point is, the day on which this favor will be granted. Thus we have two things to consider that are quite different from each other. The first God has promised to all men; for He is indeed ready to receive the sinner, and to forget his sins, were they a thousand million in number, even on his death-bed, nay, in the very last moment, as long as the soul is in the body, provided the sinner is then truly converted. So wonderfully great is the divine mercy, which, as long as a man lives, never shuts the door against him, so that no one need despair. But the other point, namely, the granting the sinner grace to do true penance, and that at any hour or moment when it may please the sinner to ask for it—that God has never promised to any one, much less to one who has misused His mercy to the last moment.

He has rather said the contrary. Not only has God given yon no sign of His will to this effect, but He has rather signified that His design and intention are quite contrary to what you suppose. Consider those terrible words in the Old Testament (it is wonderful how often we hear them, and what little impression they make on us): “Turn ye at my reproof,” says the Lord; be converted and at once! Delay no longer! Otherwise, “Behold I will utter My spirit to you, and will show you My words. Because I called, and you refused. I stretched out My hand, and there was none that regarded.”^[5] I have often spoken to you by the voice of My servants, who warned you against evil; I have called to you by the example of so many good Christians, which should have encouraged you to do good; I have urged you by the inward voice of your own conscience, which was troubled by remorse on account of your wickedness; “and you refused.” I have caused you to be exhorted in sermons to restore ill-gotten goods, but you have kept them; to renounce that impure intimacy and dangerous occasion, but you remained in it; to pardon your enemy from your heart, but you have wilfully nourished the old hatred and ill-will towards him; to amend your sinful life once for all, to make a good confession, to avoid the sins to which you have grown accustomed, and to begin to lead a Christian life; but you refused. “You have despised all My counsel, and have neglected my reprehensions.” And what will be the result of this conduct? “I also will laugh at your destruction, and will mock.” When? “When sudden calamity shall fall on you, and destruction, as a tempest, shall be at hand; when tribulation and distress shall come upon you.” “Then I will laugh at and mock you!” “Then shall they call upon Me, and I will not hear: they shall rise in the morning, and shall not find Me.” Overwhelmed by the anguish of death, they will cry out to Me: O my God! have mercy on me! but I will not hear them. They shall ask Me for grace and pardon; I will not hear; I will let them go to destruction, and will laugh at and mock them in their misery. “Because they have hated instruction, and received not the fear of the Lord, nor consented to My counsel.”^[6] In the same sense Our Lord says in the gospel of St. John: “I go, and you shall seek Me, and you shall die in your sin.”^[7] Mark those words; He does not say: you will persist in your obstinacy till the last moment; you will not ask Me for mercy; you will not have time for repentance. No; “you shall seek Me;” you shall be willing to be received into My friendship; but I say to you: “You shall die in your sin;” you shall not find Me; as you lived, and not otherwise, so you shall die in your sin.

Therefore the sinner’s hope of a death-bed repentance is a vain one. Now, O sinners, use your reason! If it is probable that God will give you the grace of true repentance in your last illness, and that one who has deferred repentance to the hour of death has reasonable ground for hoping that his death will be a happy one, why has God said quite the contrary in the Old as well as in the New Testament? Why has He never uttered the least syllable hinting that He is ready to give you such a grace? Why does He rather threaten in the opposite sense? “I will laugh; I will mock; I will not hear; you shall die in your sin,” although you call upon Me; you shall not find Me, although you seek Me. Are you not yet afraid? Then hear it again: “You shall seek Me, and you shall die in your sin.” Do you still believe there is no danger? no need to live piously if you wish to die happily? Have you still hopes of a happy death, when He who alone can give you that grace assures you expressly that you shall die in your sin? What deplorable blindness! You are not sure that you shall have time enough to repent on your death-bed, and you are sure that, although you may have time enough, you have not the grace of God in your power, the grace which you require to do true penance. You are not sure that your will shall then be ready to hate and detest what it now so foolishly loves; and you are certain that the divine will shall be quite contrary to yours; yet you hope, and confiding in your hope, you continue in sin!

Nay, a presumptuous one. O holy Apostle St. Paul! not without reason hast thou wondered at the Patriarch Abraham, who, although commanded by God to slay his only son, still hoped to become the father of a numerous people by that same son! " Who against hope believed in hope, that he might be made the father of many nations.”^[8] But great as was the confidence of that holy man, thou must acknowledge that sinners have a still greater; for they hope not only against hope, but in God against God and His infallible word. Abraham believed that God would work a miracle rather than break His promise; they believe that God will rather break His word than not perform a miracle for them in giving them a most extraordinary, wonderful grace of repentance at the last moment. But hope as you wish! If you are not disappointed, all the better for you! At all events God denies you this hope, “because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation,”^[9] because you have allowed the time of grace to pass by. Experience itself denies you this hope, as I shall show in the

Second Part.

If there were any reasonable hope of a death-bed repentance, there must be many instances of persons thus converted. If we had no threat from the infallible word of God Himself that He will abandon the sinner at the end of a wicked life; if we did not know how God acts now and then with such a dying sinner, for His decrees are inscrutable, and He can give His grace when and to whom He pleases, and He does sometimes give it to those who least deserve it; yet if He had either promised the last grace to the dying sinner after an ill-spent life, or was wont to give that grace, then after such a long lapse of time, during which there have been so many dying sinners, there must be some examples of the kind; for God is not accustomed to hide His works of goodness and mercy, but rather to make them public to His own honor and praise. So that for you to have reasonable grounds to entertain the hope of receiving the same grace you must be able to refer to a number of cases in which it has been granted and is still granted. Because if one or another has had the luck to find a treasure, that is no reason for you to give up your business in the hope of becoming rich all at once, unless, indeed, you are a fool.

For no reasonable hope can rest on a few cases of the kind. Joseph was brought out of a prison and placed on the throne of Egypt; which of us will therefore go to Egypt among the Turks and allow himself to be chained and fettered in the hope of being promoted to some high dignity? Jonas was swallowed by a whale and thrown out again on the seashore fresh and vigorous; will any one of you throw himself into the sea in the hope of being saved from drowning in a similar manner? I certainly should not attempt it. Phalaræus, as Pliny relates, was suffering from a cancer in the head; maddened by the pain, he rushed into the middle of a fierce battle to end at once his miserable life; but an arrow happened to strike the wound and opened it, so that the poisonous matter escaped and freed him from his suffering. If one of you had a similar disease, would he run into the midst of a street broil, and rush upon the spears and swords, in the hope of being cured? I hardly think so; such conduct would be foolish. For that which occurs rarely cannot be taken as a general rule, and he who founds a hope on it is guilty of presumption.

The Scriptures give but one such example: the good thief. Now, O sinner! give me, if you can, an example of real conversion where repentance was deferred till the hour of death! How many such can you bring forward? St. Bernard has inquired most diligently into this matter, and yet he has found but one well-authenticated case, and that is the good thief on Calvary, the only instance of the kind in the history of the world. “There is one,” says St. Augustine; “do not despair; it is the only one, do not trust too presumptuously.”^[10] There was one such case, but of such a nature that it ought to make you tremble. For, in what circumstances did the good thief obtain forgiveness? At the moment when his Creator was hanging by his side on the cross, and about to give up His life for the salvation of the world. Was it any wonder that Christ should then give some public testimony of the efficacy of His death, or show some extraordinary proof of mercy on the occasion of the consummation of His Passion and Death? And yet (O my God! who should not fear?) it was only one to whom that mercy was shown; the other thief, who was also at the side of the dying Saviour, was hurried off to hell by the demons. “There is one, do not despair; it is the only one, do not trust too presumptuously.”

An example that should weaken, not strengthen, the sinner’s hope. St. Ambrose and Eusebius of Emyssa do not allow you even this one example in support of your hope. You say that the thief repented at the end of his life, exclaims Eusebius; but it was not in the last, but the first hour that he repented;^[11] the first in which he had been enlightened by the grace of God. You allege that he deferred his conversion; while I, on the other hand, says St. Ambrose, rather wonder at the suddenness of it; “the Lord pardoned him quickly because he was soon converted.”^[12] The thief had never heard any of Our Lord’s exhortations to penance, nor seen any of His miracles; all the Jews had been witnesses of those wonders, and yet they were so hardened as to nail the Author of them to a cross; the thief, on the other hand, enlightened by a single ray of divine grace, acknowledges and at once adores the Crucified as his God, and in the sorrow of his heart begs forgiveness of his sins. And now, O sinner! do you still rely on this example in support of your hope? You who for so many years have had opportunities of seeing the true light and hearing the voice of God, and who have still remained deaf to His calls, and still continue in sin? Do you not see that the readiness of the good thief to correspond with grace condemns your persistent malice? And where do you expect to find an instance in support of your hope, if even this so well-known one condemns it and serves only for your greater damnation?

While there are countless instances in Scripture of sinners who failed to repent. If time permitted I could brins; forward a hundred examples from Scripture and Ecclesiastical History of people whose experience on their death-beds has been quite the contrary, and who were condemned to hell without mercy; such as an Abimelech, a Sennacherib, a Saul, and a whole host of kings who died, as they lived, in their wickedness. What St. Paul writes of Esau seems most mournful; ho had been living a bad life, and still hoped to inherit the blessing: “Afterwards when he desired to inherit the benediction, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, although with tears he had sought it.”^[13] Something of the same kind happened to the wicked Antiochus, as you may read in the Second Book of the Machabees. This unhappy king had his eyes opened at last, when he fell into a disgusting and grievous illness. “Ah,” he sighed, as he was being eaten alive by worms, “it is just to be subject to God.”^[14] I acknowledge my crimes, O God! and beg for a respite of my life, that I may amend and make my repentance known to the world. I have sworn to extinguish the Jewish people; now I promise to make them as free as the Athenians. I intended to destroy Jerusalem; now I will make it greater than any city of the East. I have plundered Thy holy temple; I am sorry for having done so; if I recover I will endow it with the most costly treasures, and double the number of the sacred vases, and provide for the expenses of the sacrifices out of my own revenues. What greater signs of true repentance could one wish to have? But that is not all. I promise, moreover, said the dying king, to become a Jew, and to travel throughout the world, not as a conqueror, as I have hitherto done, to oppress the people, but as a missionary and an apostle, to make known to them the power and glory of God: “Yea, also, that he would become a Jew himself, and would go through every place of the earth and declare the power of God.”^[15] What would you say, my dear brethren, if you saw a man dying in such dispositions? Would you not look on him as a saint and wish to be in his place? But hear what the Scripture says of this penitent; words that I should not dare to utter if they were not from the mouth of God Himself; words which as long as the world lasts will remain as a warning to sinners who trust their salvation to a death-bed repentance: “Then this wicked man prayed to the Lord, of whom he was not like to obtain mercy.”^[16] And why not, O God of mercy? “Because,” answers Cardinal Hugo, “he did not ask for mercy in due time, nor with a sincere heart.”^[17] Not at the proper time, because he put it off till the last moment; nor with a sincere heart, because it was not the love of God, nor the supernatural fear of punishment, but simply the dread of death that inspired him with repentance.

Nowadays the repentance of the dying is generally no true repentance. I could say the same to you, O sinner! if you appeal to the experience of the dying in our own days, as is generally done. We see here and there, you maintain, so many Christians who, although they have led wicked and reckless lives, yet die a happy death as good, pious Christians. But are you sure of that? Oh, yes! they repent of and confess their sins; they receive the holy Viaticum and Extreme Unction; they sigh and pray with those who are standing round; they often kiss the crucifix and press it to their bosoms, and depart with the exhortations and blessings of the priest still ringing in their ears. And do you call that a holy, Christian death? Ah, says St. Gregory with quiet sarcasm, how little it costs to make saints! “We make saints in a day of those who contribute nothing to the process but a good will!”^[18] All we want is a day, an hour, nay, almost a few moments, and with one act of the will we become holy. From my heart I wish you all eternal salvation; but I should not like to share the lot of those who are supposed to have thus died holy and Christian deaths. If nothing more were necessary to make a man die happy, then even the most wicked sinners, if they did not despair, who died on a bed of sickness, are saved. For what Catholic is there who does not give some signs of repentance and receive the last sacraments, if possible, when he feels the approach of death? If nothing more were required fora happy death, then all those who say “Lord! Lord!” should go to heaven; yet we have the express word of God to the contrary; and no one who has despised God during his life would be abandoned by God at the end, although that is again contrary to the word of God: “I will laugh in your destruction;” and all who in their lives turn a deaf ear to the voice of God should find Him in that moment if they seek Him, and should not die in the state of sin; but that, too, is against the word of God: “You shall seek Me, and you shall die in your sin.” Otherwise why has Christ described the way to heaven as difficult, narrow, and hard to find? Why does He warn us so impressively? “Strive to enter by the narrow gate: for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able.”^[19] And could I not think to myself: what is the use of going to so much trouble? I will live as I please, and indulge my senses as I see others doing; when I feel that death is at hand I can confess my sins, and go to heaven. Ah, my dear brethren, do not trust to such a confession, holy Communion, or Extreme Unction, if they are not preceded by a Christian life, for otherwise these sacraments are not received at the proper time or with a sincere heart.

Shown from circumstances. And how can a conversion in such circumstances be sincere and real? Let us consider those circumstances, as they generally occur. Imagine, O sinner! that we are both standing by the bedside of a dying man. The priest has been sent for and enters the room; he sprinkles the sick man with holy water, and tries to console him and encourage him; he gives him his priestly blessing that he may make a good confession, repeating the words prescribed by the Church: “May the Lord be in thy heart and on thy lips, that thou mayest duly confess thy sins.” Methinks I hear him accusing himself of crimes that he drank in like water in his past life, and thought nothing of, and of which he had hitherto made not the least scruple, although now they fill him with anguish, such as omissions of duty, neglect in fulfilling the obligations of his state, in bringing up his children, in looking after his servants and domestics; certain conversations, looks, amusements, jokes; injustice in dealings with others, in buying and selling, delay in paying his debts, while he spent his money in gambling and drinking, in costly dress, and other unnecessary things; certain feelings of bitterness, hatred, and anger against his neighbor; carelessly and ill-made confessions in his youth; profanation of the holy mysteries of our religion, and such like. But, asks the priest, have you not always maintained that those things were only scruples, and mere unfounded doubts and anxieties? True, when I committed those sins I looked on them as of little account; as long as I was in good health they seemed small matters to me; but now I am near death and in the light of the death-candle I see them far more clearly and as they are in themselves. But have you never made a general confession? No. Not even when you entered the state of life in which you now are? No. I notice that you accuse yourself doubtfully of some sins, and that with trembling voice you add a certain circumstance to a sin; have you never before acknowledged those? Never. And why? Through shame. And you have allowed yourself to be influenced for so many years by that guilty shame? Yes. Then I see the priest, undecided and thoughtful, going aside a little from the sick man. What a state that man’s conscience is in, he thinks; he has made contracts that must be annulled because they are unjust; he has to restore a considerable sum of money because he made it by usury and fraud; he must give back his neighbor’s good name that he took away by calumny; this or that scandal must be removed, that proximate occasion abandoned. I find him ill prepared to undertake the journey into eternity; he hardly realizes his state; his repentance is doubtful and weak; and I see that in his present plight he cannot do any better. What could be more distressing to a zealous priest than such a case? Yet the state of his penitent, who stands in such need of repentance, is far worse. He must absolutely have more time; but he cannot get it; there is no respite for him; all is over with him now; “time shall be no more;” his foot is already on the threshold of eternity. The zealous priest uses every effort to excite in him a sincere sorrow for sin; he places before him all the motives that should urge him to bewail his past wickedness; but the sick man cannot appreciate them, nor think of them earnestly: he has never been used to that during his life, and now he hardly knows how to begin. He must say like David, when he put on the armor to attack the giant: “I am not used to it.”^[20] Cardinal Bellarmine says that he once visited a rich gentleman who was very ill and in imminent danger of death. When the Cardinal saw the man’s state, he tried to induce him to make an act of perfect contrition. “What is contrition?” asked the sick man. Amazed at the question, the Cardinal began to explain to him the nature, excellence, and necessity of sorrow for sin, and to exhort him most earnestly to see at once to the peace and safety of his soul; he recited for him the words of the act of contrition, and begged of him if he were too weak to repeat them orally, to say them at least in his heart, devoutly raising his mind to God. But all in vain; all the sick man said was: “I do not understand you; I know not what you want of me.”^[21] With these words on his lips the unhappy man gave up the ghost, leaving no doubt that he was lost forever. Let us go back to our first sick man. The good priest calls out to him in heart-rending tones: Repent! Ah repent of your sins! But how is he to do so? With eyes that have been used hitherto only for sin, and to seek out occasions of sin? Detest and abominate that unlawful intimacy! But how? With a mind that he could never make up to leave that intimacy, because he was too much attached to it? With a heart that considered it as his greatest pleasure and a paradise on earth? Call upon the saints in heaven, your patrons! But on whom? On those whom he dishonored instead of honoring in church, and whose feast-days he utterly neglected? And shall he call on them with a tongue that has vomited so many blasphemies, so many obscene jests, so many oaths and curses, so many calumnies and detractions? Meanwhile the priest sees that the soul is on the point of departing; what is he to do? He gives the dying man absolution under condition, that is, if he is capable of receiving it. The soul departs amid the prayers of all present. A beautiful death! Is it not? Alas! I trust that mine will not be like that! No, no! that man could not have repented with a sincere heart, or have been truly converted.

Confirmed from the holy Fathers. Ask the holy Fathers, those enlightened interpreters of Scripture, what they think of such a repentance. Ask St. Isidore; he calls it suspicious. Ask St. Bernard; he calls it rash and presumptuous.^[22] Ask SS. Cyprian, Ambrose, Gregory, Chrysostom, Thomas of Aquin; they laugh at such a repentance as utterly ridiculous, and, generally speaking, useless. “I dare not say,” writes St. Augustine, “that one or the other individual who has repented on his death-bed is lost forever; but I cannot have much hope that he is in heaven. It is true that the confessions of such dying people are received by the Church; but I do not think they are much to be depended on. I do not trust in them,” continues the Saint; “I do not wish to deceive you; but I do not trust in them.”^[23] “I can exhort such a man to repent; I can hear his confession and give him absolution; but I cannot say that the absolution will have any effect.”^[24] I trust little in such confessions. Eusebius, one of the disciples of St. Jerome, writes that when the Saint was dying he was asked to give his disciples a last lesson, and he said these words, sighing deeply at the same time: “Of a hundred thousand men who have always led bad lives hardly one deserves pardon from God.”^[25]

Conclusion and resolution to be at once converted. On what, then, do you ground your hope, O sinner! you who defer repentance to the last moment? Do you think that an exception will be made in your favor contrary to the general decrees of the Almighty God and to what experience teaches us of the death of sinners? Or do you imagine that you will be the one in a hundred thousand to whom God will give the special grace of conversion at the end? Will you trust your eternity to such a desperate chance? Ah, “Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day; for His wrath shall come on a sudden, and in the time of vengeance He will destroy thee.”^[26] Do not wait till the end; do penance at once, and that sincerely; at once amend your life, if you seriously intend escaping hell, and going to heaven! And when will you do penance? Next Easter or Christmas? Oh, no! That would be delaying too long! Next Sunday? Too long also. To-morrow? No, even that delay is dangerous. “If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day,” says the Gospel, “the things that are to thy peace.”^[27] Therefore on this very day, on which God calls you and offers you His grace and friendship, do not close your ears. Now, while you are in good health, free yourself from the unhappy state of sin; for you know not what day will be your last, nor when the time of grace will be past for you. Ah, my God! I tremble when I think of the years I have spent in sin! How have I dared to pass even one night with a bad conscience? How could I be so presumptuous as to spend whole months with out doing penance? Infinite thanks be to Thee, O God of mercy! that Thou hast borne with me so patiently, and given me so much time to repent. In future my greatest care shall be to avoid sin, and now in the time of Thy grace and visitation I will work out my salvation; now in the days of light I will seek Thee, O Lord! so that I may find Thee in the hour of my death, that I may not then have to say the lamentable words: “I have labored the whole night, and have taken nothing” but rather think to my consolation: I have worked during my life to obtain forgiveness of my sins and the grace and friendship of God, and now I find the reward promised by God, which I hope to enjoy forever in the abode of rest and joy. Amen.

1. Cœpit pavere et tædere.—Mark xiv. 33.
2. Qua hora non putatis, Filius hominis veniet.—Luke xii. 40.
3. Impietas impii non nocebit ei, in quacumque die conversus fuerit ab impietate sua.—Ezech. xxxiii. 12.
4. Revertere ad me, et ego suscipiam te.—Jer. iii. 1.
5. Convertimini ad correptionem meam. En proferam vobis spiritum meum, et ostendam vobis verba mea. Quia vocavi, et renuistis; extendi manum meam, et non fuit qui aspiceret.—Prov. i. 23, 24.
6. Despexistis omne consilium meum, et increpationes meas neglexistis: ego quoque in interitu vestro ridebo, et subsannabo. Cum irruerit repentina calamitas, et interitus quasi tempestas ingruerit; quando venerit super vos tribulatio et angustia; tune invocabunt me, et non exaudiam; mane consurgent, et non invenient me. Eo quod exosam habuerint disciplinam, et timorem Domini non susceperint nee acquieverint consilio meo.—Prov. i. 25-30.
7. Vado, et quæretis me, et in peccato vestro moriemini.—John viii. 21.
8. Qui contra spem in spem credidit, ut fieret pater multarum gentium.—Rom. iv. 18.
9. Eo quod non cognoveris tempus visitationis tuæ.—Luke xix. 44.
10. Unus est, ne desperes; solus est, ne confidas.
11. Non fuit extrema illa hora, sed prima.—Euseb. Emiss. Hom. de. Bon. Lat.
12. Cito ignoscit Dominus, quia cito ille convertitur.—St. Ambr. in Luke, c. xxiii.
13. Postea cupiena hæreditare benedictionem, reprobatus est; non enim invenit poenitentiæ locum, quanquam cum lachrymis inquisisset eam.—Heb. xii. 17.
14. Justum est subditum esse Deo.—II. Mach. ix. 12.
15. Super hæc, et Judæum se futurum, et omnem locum terræ perambulaturum et prædieatururn Dei potestatem.—Ibid. 17.
16. Orabat autem hic scelestus Dominum, a quo non esset misericordiam consecuturus.—Ibid. 13.
17. Quia nec tempore debito, nec corde vero veniam requisivit.
18. Unius diei sanctos efficimus, qui nihil præter velle afferunt.
19. Contendite intrare per angustam portam: quia multi, dico vobis, quærent intrare, et non poterunt?—Luke xiii. 24.
20. Non usum habeo.—I. Kings xvii. 39.
21. Non intelligo quid velis; non capio quid a me requiras.—Bellarm. de Arte Bene Moriendi.
22. Temeraria et presumptuosa.
23. Non præsumo; non vos fallo; non præsumo.
24. Pœnitentiam dare possum; securitatem dare non possum.
25. Vix de centum millibus hominum, quorum mala semper fuit vita, meretur a Deo indulgentiam unus.
26. Non tardes converti ad Dominum, et ne differas de die in diem; subito enim veniet ira illius, et in tempore vindictæ disperdet te.—Ecclus. v. 8, 9.
27. Si cognovisses et tu, et quidem in hac die tua, quæ ad pacem tibi.—Luke xix. 42.