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.”[1] 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.”[2] 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
