Death is certain and uncertain
“Let down your nets for a draught.”—Luke 5:4
In this day’s gospel we read that Jesus Christ, having one day gone up into one of the ships and having heard from St. Peter that he and his companions had labored all night and taken nothing, said to him: “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” They obeyed; and when they had cast their nets into the sea, they took such a multitude of fishes that the net was nearly broken.
Brethren, God has placed us in the midst of the sea of this present life, and has commanded us to cast our nets to catch fish—that is, to do good works by which we may gain merits for eternal life. Happy are we, if we attain this end and save our souls! But unhappy are we, if, instead of gaining merits for heaven, we sin and so earn hell and bring our souls to damnation! Our happiness or misery for eternity will be decided at the moment of our death, which is both certain and uncertain. The Lord makes known to us that death is certain, so that we may prepare for it; but he wills, on the other hand, that the time of its coming should be uncertain, so that we may be always prepared—two points of the greatest importance.
First Point.—It is certain that we shall die.
Second Point.—It is uncertain when we shall die.
First Point.—It is certain that we shall die.
1. “It is appointed unto men once to die” (Heb. 9:27). The sentence has been passed upon each of us: we must all die. St. Cyprian says that we are all born with the halter on our neck; and so, with every step we take, we draw nearer to the gallows. For each of us the gallows will be that last sickness which is to take away our life. Just as, brethren, your name was one day written in the book of baptism, so it shall one day be written in the book of the dead. Just as you now name your ancestors and say, “God rest the soul of my father, of my uncle, of my brother,” so others shall one day say the same of you, when you shall be in the other world; and as you have often heard the bell toll for others, so others shall one day hear it toll for you.
2. All things to come that regard men now living are uncertain, but death is certain. “All our other goods and evils,” says St. Augustine, “are uncertain; death alone is certain.” It is uncertain whether a given infant shall be rich or poor, whether he shall have good or ill health, whether he shall die young or old. But it is certain that he shall die, even though he be a nobleman, even though he be the son of a monarch. And when the hour comes, no one can resist the stroke of death.
The same St. Augustine adds: “Fires, waters, and the sword are resisted; kings are resisted: death comes; who resists it?” (Ps. 12). We may resist conflagrations, floods, the swords of enemies, and the power of princes; but who can resist death? A certain king of France, as Belluacensis relates, said at the end of his life: “Behold, with all my power I cannot make death wait for me a single hour.” No; when the term of life has arrived, death does not wait even a moment—“Thou hast appointed his bounds, which cannot be passed” (Job 14:5).
3. We must all die. This truth we not only believe, but see with our own eyes. In every age houses, public squares, and cities are filled with new people, and those who came before them are carried off to be shut up in the grave. And as, for those who lived on this earth before us, the days of life are over, so a time shall come when, of all of us who are now alive, not one shall be living. “Days shall be formed, and no one in them” (Ps. 139:10). “Who is the man that shall live, and shall not see death?” (Ps. 89:49). Should anyone flatter himself that he shall not die, he would not only be a disbeliever—for it is of faith that we shall all die—but he would be a madman.
We know that all men, even the powerful, even princes and emperors, have after a certain time died at last. And where are they now? “Tell me,” asks St. Bernard, “where are the lovers of the world?” And he answers: “Nothing has remained of them but ashes and worms.” Of so many of the great ones of the world, buried though they be in marble mausoleums, what has remained of them but a little dust and a few bare bones? We know that all our ancestors are no longer among the living; their pictures, their account books, the beds they used, the clothes they have left us all remind us of it. And can we then hope, or even doubt, that we ourselves shall perhaps not die? Of those who lived in this town a hundred years ago, how many are now alive? They are all in eternity—in an eternal day of delights, or in an eternal night of torments; and the one lot or the other must fall to us as well.
4. But, O God, we all know already that we shall die; yet the trouble is that we imagine death to be so far off that it seems as though it were never to come, and so we lose sight of it. But, sooner or later, whether we think of it or not, it is certain and of faith that we shall die, and that every day we draw nearer to death. “For we have not here a lasting city,” the Apostle warns us, “but we seek one that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). This is not our country: here we are pilgrims, only passing through. “While we are in the body we are absent from the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:6). Our country is Paradise, if we know how to gain it by the grace of God and by our own good works.
Our house is not the one in which we now live; in it we are only passing through. Our dwelling is in eternity: “Man shall go into the house of his eternity” (Eccles. 12:5). What folly it would be in a man who, passing through a foreign country, should try to acquire goods, houses, and lands there, spending all he has, and so reduce himself to live miserably afterward in that country where he must remain all his life! And is not he too a fool who thinks to make himself happy in this world, from which he must soon depart, and by his sins puts himself in danger of being miserable in the next, where he must live for eternity?
5. Tell me, my beloved brethren, if you saw a man condemned to death already walking to the place of execution, and he, instead of preparing for the death so near at hand, went along the way gazing at the houses, picking out which one most pleased him, thinking of feasts and comedies, uttering immodest words and speaking ill of his neighbor—would you not say that the wretched man had lost his mind, or that God had abandoned him? And are you not yourselves already walking toward death? Why then do you think only of gratifying your senses? Why do you not think of settling the accounts which one day—perhaps a day not far off—you shall have to render at the tribunal of Jesus Christ?
Souls who have faith, leave to the fools of this world the care of making their fortune on this earth; do you take care to make your fortune in the other life, which shall be eternal. This present life must end, and end very soon.
6. Go to the grave where your relatives and friends are buried, and look at those dead bodies: each of them says to you, “Yesterday for me; today for thee” (Ecclus. 38:23). What has happened to me must one day happen to you as well. You shall become dust and ashes, as I am; and then where shall your soul be found, if before death you have not well settled your accounts with God?
Ah, brethren, if you wish to live well and to keep your accounts ready for that great day on which your cause for eternal life or eternal death must be decided, take care during these days that remain to you to live with death before your eyes. “O death, thy sentence is welcome” (Ecclus. 41:3). Oh, how well does that man judge things and direct his actions who judges and directs them with death before his view! The remembrance of death destroys all attachment to the goods of this earth. “Let the end of life be considered,” says St. Lawrence Justinian, “and there will be nothing in this world to be loved” (Tree of Life, ch. 5). Yes; he easily despises all the riches, honors, and pleasures of this world who considers that he must soon leave it, and that he shall be thrown into a grave to be the food of worms.
7. Some banish from themselves the thought of death, as though by avoiding to think of death they could avoid dying. But no—death cannot be avoided; and those who banish the thought of it put themselves in great danger of dying an unhappy death. By keeping death before their eyes, the saints have despised all the goods of this earth. Thus St. Charles Borromeo kept a death’s-head on his table, that he might gaze upon it continually. Cardinal Baronius had the words Memento mori—“Remember death”—inscribed on his ring. The venerable Father Juvenal Anzia, Bishop of Saluzzo, kept before him a skull on which was written, “As I am, so you shall be.”
When the holy solitaries withdrew into the deserts or the caves, they carried with them the head of a dead man; and for what purpose? To prepare themselves for death. Thus a certain hermit, being asked at death why he was so cheerful, answered: “I have kept death always before my eyes; and therefore now that it has come, I feel no fear.” But, oh, how full of terror is death when it comes to one who has thought of it but little!
Second Point.—It is uncertain when we shall die.
8. “Nothing,” writes the Idiota, “is more certain than death, but nothing is more uncertain than the hour of death.” It is certain that we shall die. God has already determined the year, the month, the day, the hour, and the moment in which each of us shall leave this earth and enter into eternity; but this moment the Lord has willed not to make known to us. And justly so, says St. Augustine; for if God made known to each one the day fixed for his death, this would give many an occasion to go on sinning, secure in the knowledge that they would not die before that day. Si statuisset viam omnibus, faceret abundare peccata de securitate—“If he had established the way for all, he would make sins abound from security” (Ps. 144).
And therefore the holy doctor writes that God has hidden from us the day of our death, that we may live well on every day. Latet ultimus dies, ut observentur omnes dies—“The last day is hidden, so that all days may be observed” (Hom. 12 inter 50). Hence Jesus Christ exhorts us: “Be you also ready; for at what hour you think not the Son of Man will come” (Luke 12:40). He wills us to know that death will come upon us when we least expect it, so that we may always be prepared for it; as St. Gregory writes, “Of death we are uncertain, that we may be found always prepared for death.”
St. Paul likewise warns us that the day of the Lord—that is, the day on which the Lord shall judge us—shall come upon us in secret, as a thief comes in the night. “The day of the Lord shall so come as a thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:2). Since, then, says St. Bernard, in every place and at every time death may assail you and take away your life, you must, if you wish to die well and to be saved, await it in every place and at every time: Mors ubique te expectat, tu ubique eam expectabis—“Death everywhere awaits you; you everywhere should await it.” And St. Augustine writes: Latet ultimus dies, ut observentur omnes dies—“The last day is hidden, so that all days may be observed” (Hom. 12). The Lord hides from us the last day of our life, that on every day we may keep ready the accounts which we must render at death.
9. The ruin of many Christians who are lost comes from this: that many, even among those old men who feel death drawing near, flatter themselves that death is still far off, and that when it comes it will give them time to prepare for it. Dura mente, writes St. Gregory, abesse longe mors creditur etiam cum sentitur—“With hardened mind, death is believed to be far off even when it is felt” (Moralia, Bk. 8). Death, even when it is felt, is believed to be far off. My brethren, do you too think in this way? But how do you know whether death is for you far off or near? And how do you know that it will give you time to prepare for it?
How many do we know who have died suddenly—some while walking, some while sitting, some while sleeping in their beds! Did any one of them ever imagine that he should die in such a way? But such was their death; and if they were then in enmity with God, where have their unhappy souls gone? Wretched the soul that death overtakes unprepared! And I say that all who ordinarily keep their conscience entangled die unprepared, even though they should have seven or eight days to prepare for a good death; for, as I shall show in the forty-eighth sermon, in those days of confusion and terror it is hard indeed to settle one’s accounts well and make a true conversion to God.
But I repeat: it may be that death will assail you in such a way that it shall not even give you time to receive the sacraments. And who knows whether within the next hour you shall be among the living or the dead? It was this that made Job tremble: “For I knew not how long I shall continue, or whether after a while my Maker may take me away” (Job 32:22). Hence St. Basil warns us that when at night we lie down to rest, we should not trust that we shall see the next day. Cum in lectulum ad quiescendum membra tua posueris, noli confidere de lucis adventu—“When you place your limbs in bed to rest, do not trust in the coming of the light” (Inst. ad fil. spirit.).
10. Whenever, then, the devil tempts you to sin by telling you that afterward you can confess it and repair the harm, answer him: “And how do I know whether today is the last day of my life? And should death take me in this very moment, and leave me no more time to confess, what should become of me for all eternity?” Alas, how many poor sinners have been overtaken by death in the very act of feeding on some poisoned pleasure, and have been sent to hell!
“As fishes are taken by the hook, and as birds are caught with the snare, so men are taken in the evil time” (Eccles. 9:12). Fishes are taken with the hook precisely when they are eating the bait within which is hidden the hook, the instrument of their death. The evil time is precisely that in which sinners are actually offending God. While they sin, they give themselves peace and think themselves secure with the thought of afterward making a good confession and so averting their damnation; but death comes upon them suddenly and leaves them no time to repair it. “For when they shall say peace and security, then shall sudden destruction come upon them” (1 Thess. 5:3).
11. If a man is owed a sum of money by another, he is careful to secure himself at once by getting the debtor to put the debt in writing; for he says, “Who knows what may happen? Death may come, and I lose my money.” How does it happen, then, that so many do not use the same caution for their souls, which are of more worth than every worldly interest? Why do they not say the same: “Who knows what may happen? Death may come, and I lose my soul”?
If they lose that sum of money, they do not lose everything; and if they lose it one way, they may recover it another. But he who loses his soul at death loses everything, and has no hope of recovering it by any other way. If we could die twice, then, having lost our soul the first time, we might save it the second. But no: “It is appointed unto men once to die” (Heb. 9:27). Mark the word once: this event of death happens to each of us but once; he who errs the first time has erred forever. And therefore to be damned is called an error without remedy: Periisse semel aeternum est—“To perish once is to perish eternally.”
12. The venerable Father John Avila, a man of great holiness and apostle of Spain, who from childhood had led a holy life, as we read in his life—when the news of his death was brought to him, and he was told, “Father master, your death is near, little time remains to you of life,” what did this great servant of God answer? Trembling all over with fear, he replied: “Oh, that I had a little more time to prepare myself for death!” In the same way St. Agatho, abbot, dying after so many years of penance, trembled and said: “What shall become of me? Who can know the judgments of God?”
And you, my Christian, what will you say when the news of death is brought to you, and the priest who assists you says these words: “Go forth, Christian soul, from this world”? Will you perhaps say, “Softly; wait; let me prepare myself better”? No; depart at once; death does not wait. And therefore you must prepare yourself now. “With fear and trembling work out your salvation” (Phil. 2:12). St. Paul warns us that, if we wish to be saved, we must live in fear and trembling lest death find us in sin.
Be attentive, my brethren: it is a matter of eternity. “If a tree fall to the south or to the north, in what place soever it shall fall, there shall it be” (Eccles. 11:3). If, when the tree of your life is cut down, you fall toward the south—that is, toward eternal salvation—happy you! What joy will it then be for you to be able to say: “Now I am saved; I have secured everything; I can never lose God; I shall be happy forever.” But if you fall toward the north—that is, toward eternal damnation—what will you say? In despair you will say: “Alas, I have erred, and for my error there is no more remedy!” Up, then; this very morning, after this sermon, make a firm resolution to give yourself in earnest to God. This resolution will gain you a good death, and will make you happy for all eternity.
Points for Reflection
1. “The remembrance of death destroys all attachment to the goods of this earth” (§6)
2. “In every place and at every time death may assail you and take away your life; you must, if you wish to die well and to be saved, await it in every place and at every time” (§8)
3. “Up, then; this very morning, after this sermon, make a firm resolution to give yourself in earnest to God. This resolution will gain you a good death, and will make you happy for all eternity” (§12)