be much more solicitous in regard to our departure from this life, for it will be our final journey into everlasting happiness or eternal misery. The importance of this journey induced our Lord frequently to inculcate the necessity of being always ready. "Be ye then also ready," He says, " for at what hour ye think not the Son of man will come." (Luke xii. 40.)
II. This preparation for death consists principally in this, that at its departure, whenever that may be, the soul finds itself free from all mortal sin, and as much • as possible free from all venial sin. Wherefore examine yourself and discover if there be anything on your conscience which might prevent entirely or retard your entrance into heaven were you to die this moment. Put yourself in that state, then, in which you would wish to be found at death, and labor to persevere in it; for death may call on you suddenly, and even if it do not, it is a common remark that few are mended by sickness. " The sinner," says St. Augustine, " has this punishment inflicted on him, that when he is at the point of death he is unmindful of himself; because whilst he was living he was forgetful of God." Do not, therefore, forget God during health.
III. What is most calculated to give comfort to a dying person? 1. To have suffered much for Christ, and to have undergone mortification and penance. 2. To have been devout to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, etc. — Apply yourself seriously to these things, for the time will come when you will wish to have done so. Happy was that holy man who could say on his deathbed, " I have never done my own will, neither have I ever taught any one what I did not first practise myself."
