When, a victim of his Charity, he lay extended upon his bed of death, he was asked if he willingly made the sacrifice of his life to God. "Oh!" he replied, full of joy, "if I had a million lives to offer to Him, He knows how readily I would give them to Him." Such an act, it is easy to understand, is very meritorious in the sight of God. Docs it not resemble that supreme act of charity accomplished by the martyrs who died for Jesus Christ, and which, like Baptism, effaces all sin and cancels all debts? Greater love than this, says our Lord, no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friend. [1]
To make this act in time of sickness, it is useful, not to say necessary, that the patient should understand his condition, and know that his end is approaching. It is therefore to do him great injury to withhold this knowledge from him through a false delicacy. " We must" says St. Alphonsus, "prudently impart to the sick person the knowledge of his danger."
If the patient endeavours to deceive himself with illusions, if, instead of resigning himself into the hands of God, he thinks only of his cure, even when he receives all the Sacraments, he does himself a deplorable wrong.
We read in the Life of Venerable Mother Frances of the Blessed Sacrament, a Religious of Pampeluna, [2] that a soul was condemned to a long Purgatory for not having had a true submission to the Divine will upon her deathbed. She was otherwise a very pious young person, but when the icy hand of death came to touch her in the flower of her youth, nature recoiled, and she had not the courage to resign herself into the ever-loving hands of her Heavenly Father — she would not die yet. She expired, nevertheless, and the Venerable Mother Frances, who received frequent visits from the souls of the departed, learned that this soul had
