count of their good works. Shown by examples. Bishop Martin saw his death- bed surrounded by demons who tried to frighten and tempt him, he comforted himself with the thought of the faithful service he had rendered to God. “Why art thou here? bloodthirsty beast,” he said with the utmost confidence; “thou shalt not find anything in me that deserves damnation,” and with these words he breathed forth his soul. A certain young man who was dying, wishing to comfort his mother, who was weeping at his bedside, said to her in these joyful words: “Bless God, O mother, through whose grace I have preserved my innocence, so that I die cheerfully.”[1] Justus Lipsius, being asked what he thought would be a comfort to him on his death-bed, replied: “It will comfort me to think that I have been a sodalist of the great Virgin Mary, and that I have tried to be her true servant.” The holy youth John Berchmans, of our Society, in his last moments used to embrace and kiss with the utmost tenderness the crucifix, rosary, and book of the rules, and he said with cheerful countenance to the bystanders: “These three things are most dear to me, and I willingly die with them.”[2] Another religious named Pambo said when dying: “I joyfully leave this life, because I do not remember having said a word of which I had to repent.”[3] “O happy hours!” cried out a dying nun; “O happy hours that I consecrated to my God!”[4]St. Jerome writes of the happy death of St. Paula, at which he had the good fortune of being present. This pious lady was attacked by a grievous illness, or rather she found in that illness what she was long wishing for, namely, a means of leaving this world, and of being perfectly united with the God whom she loved so fervently. She knew from the increasing coldness of her limbs and her decreasing strength that death was very near, and as if she were on the point of leaving a foreign land to visit a well-beloved friend, she often repeated with her dying voice the words of the psalm: “I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Thy house and the place where Thy glory dwelleth.”[5] “How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts: my soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord.”[6] Thus she kept on giving expression in those loving words to her consolation and holy desires; nor
- ↑ Deum lauda, O mater, cujus beneficio innocentiam conservavi; et hinc lætus morior.
- ↑ Hæc tria mihi sunt charissima; cum his libenter morior.
- ↑ Lætus ex hac vita abeo, quia nullum mihi verbum excidisse scio, cujus me pœniteat.
- ↑ Felices horæ quas Deo meo consecravi!
- ↑ Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuæ, et locum habitationis gloriæ tuæ.—Ps. xxv. 8.
- ↑ Quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine virtutem! Concupiscit, et deficit anima mea in atria Domini.—Ibid. lxxxiii. 2, 3.
