I can begin later on to amend my life and prepare for death, etc. Alas! that wretched later on! I am not old! I am still young! How many thousand souls have been hurled into hell by those excuses! Do you mean, then, that young people cannot die? But very few attain old age; most people die in their best years; and no one knows the hour when the Lord will come for him; so that young as well as old should be prepared at all times. You will amend later on, you say. What! exclaims St. Augustine, later on? “He who thinks in that way deceives himself, and treats his death as a joke.”[1] Consider the great risk of the last day, and what depends on it. Nothing less than eternal joys or eternal torments! It is no child’s play! Is heaven such a trifle that it can be allowed to depend on an uncertain “later on”? Is hell a trifle, that the escaping it can be left to a “later on” that you know nothing about? Do you know what is said of that servant in the Gospel who puts off everything to a future time, thinking to himself: “My lord is long a-coming, I can meanwhile enjoy myself and make merry,” etc.? But how shall he fare? “The lord of that servant shall come in a day that he hopeth not, and at an hour that he knoweth not, and shall separate him, and appoint his portion with the hypocrites; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”[2]
But every one should meditate daily on death. Therefore let each one, whether young or old, make this short meditation daily, like that old man; it need not be made before the looking-glass (although that might be good for some who spend the beautiful morning hours curling their hair, or even having it curled by a person of the opposite sex—a scandalous practice that it would be well for them to change for a short meditation); you might say to yourselves: how old am I now? Fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty or more years. Shall I live a year longer? I cannot tell; this very day or hour I may be summoned before the tribunal of the Almighty. If that happened to me this day or hour, should I be ready? Is there anything on my conscience that I should first repent of and confess? If such is the case, oh, go to confession at once! Perhaps in another day or hour it may be too late! A whole eternity depends on this, and I cannot and will not burn forever with the demons in hell. I am fully determined with God’s help to go to heaven and be
