of my life, but since I am exposed to so many dangers of losing Him, I look on death as a gain, because it will place me in safety where I can never lose Him again.
From which the soul is now saved and placed in eternal security. How great then must not be the consolation and joy of the soul that, freed from all dangers, finds itself in safety, when it remembers its former condition? That very remembrance will make the elect soul eternally happy; it will recall all the temptations with which it was assailed during life, and that it resisted by the grace of God; all the occasions of sin in which it was and from which it escaped; all the dangers in which it should have fallen if it had not been protected by God’s special grace and the help of its holy guardian angel; all its past, even mortal sins, for which it did penance and which were thus blotted out. O my God! it will say; how easily I might have been lost forever! In that house, that company, that garden, in those allurements, that occasion, that violent temptation, how near I was to losing Thy grace! If death had come to me when I was in the state of sin I should now be in the fire of hell. How many thousand others have fallen, and shamefully fallen in the same temptations, occasions, and in far less dangers, and they are now with the demons in hell? Ah, how easily that might have been my fate too! Infinite thanks to Thee, God of mercy! the danger is now over; I have happily escaped it; with the happy few of the elect I have won the game. Eternal fire of hell, I fear thee no longer! Unhappy eternity, thou art no more a source of dread to me; I am in heaven! Now I am no longer in uncertainty as to whether I shall fall or not; there is no weakness in me now that can succumb to difficulties; no evil inclination that can dare to allure me to offend the God of my love; now I am sure that I shall never lose Him. There, in the abyss of hell, are burning many millions, and I am in heaven, and shall be there forever! Oh, what an incomprehensible joy this recollection brings with it! Imagine, my dear brethren, that we are already with the blessed in heaven in the place of safety; what a consolation it must be for us to look back on those things as the elect do?
In the recollection of the graces received from God.
This joy will be increased by another recollection calculated to comfort and console; for during all eternity the soul shall be mindful of all the benefits, general and particular, spiritual and corporal, that it received from the hands of God during life; and it will recall the wonderful secret ways and means by which Divine Providence led it to its last end. God, it will say, has