pains he has alleviated and taken away altogether by his prayers and works of devotion? “Never have I found,” says St. Jerome, “that he has died an unhappy death who readily performed works of charity and mercy.” What joy and comfort it will be for him to remember Mary, the Mother of salvation, to whom with child-like confidence he has entrusted his life and the end of his life; St. Joseph, the Patron of the dying, to whom he had a special devotion; his holy guardian angel and other patrons, who will then take their place at his side to accompany him into heaven?
Hence the death of the just is joyous, and pious servants of God longed for it. Oh, joyful and consoling the death of the just man who dies with a good conscience! “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,” cries out St. John in his Apocalypse. And why are they blessed? “For their works follow them,”[1] their virtuous works accompany them into eternity. During their lives they often went sorrowing and weeping to sow their seed with toil and labor: “Going they went and wept, casting their seeds,” says the Psalmist. “But coming they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves.”[2] This was the consolation that so cheered pious souls on their death-bed, when they brought to mind how they had served God. Hear what St. Paul says, although he was for a long time a persecutor. He writes to his disciple Timothy: “For I am even now ready to be sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at hand.” I feel my strength going, my hour is near and I shall soon reach the end; yet I await it without fear, and with joy and desire. “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course.” I have always sought to work for the glory of God; “I have kept the faith;” I have maintained the fidelity I promised to Christ, when I did penance for my former sins; therefore all I have now to do is to await the reward and recompense of my merits: “As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me in that day.”[3]
And they rejoiced at the hour of death on ac- With the same consolation St. Hilarion addressed his departing soul: “Go forth, my soul; thou hast served Christ for nearly seventy years, and dost thou now fear death?” When the holy
- ↑ Opera enim illorum sequuntur illos.—Apoc. xiv. 13.
- ↑ Euntes ibant et flebant, mittentes semina sua; venientes autem venient cum exultatione, portantes manipulos suos.—Ps. cxxv. 6, 7.
- ↑ Ego enim jam delibor, et tempus resolutionis meæ instat. Bonum certamen certavi, cursum consummavi, fidem servavi. In reliquo reposita est mihi corona justitiæ, quam reddet mihi Dominus in ilia die justus judex.—II. Tim. iv. 6, 7, 8.
