All ends, and soon ends
“The grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven.”—Matthew 6:30
Behold, all the goods of this earth are like the grass of the field, which today springs up and, adorned with its flower, makes a fine show; but in the evening it withers, its flower falls, and the next day it is cast into the fire. This is what God commanded the prophet Isaiah to preach, when he said to him: “Cry.” And I said: “What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of the field” (Isa. 40:6). And so St. James compares the rich of this world to the flower of grass: at the end of their journey through life they rot, along with all their riches and pomp. “The rich…because as the flower of the grass shall he pass away. For the sun rose with a burning heat, and parched the grass, and the flower thereof fell off, and the beauty of the shape thereof perished: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways” (Jas. 1:10–11).
They fade away and are cast into the fire, like the rich glutton, who made a splendid appearance in this life, but afterward “was buried in hell” (Luke 16:22). Let us, then, dearly beloved Christians, attend to the salvation of our souls, and to the acquiring of riches for the eternity that never ends; for everything in this world ends, and ends very soon.
First Point.—Everything ends.
1. When one of the great of this world is at the height of enjoying the riches and honors he has acquired, death will come, and he shall be told: “Take order with thy house; for thou shalt die, and not live” (Isa. 38:1). Oh, what doleful tidings! The unhappy man must then say: Farewell, world! farewell, villas! farewell, country houses! farewell, relatives! farewell, friends! farewell, hunts! farewell, balls! farewell, comedies! farewell, banquets! farewell, honors! all is over for me. There is no remedy: whether he will or not, he must leave everything. “For when he shall die, he shall take nothing away; nor shall his glory descend with him” (Ps. 49:18). St. Bernard says that death works a terrible separation of the soul from the body, and from all the things of this earth. Opus mortis horrendum divortium—“The work of death is a horrible divorce” (Sermon 26 on the Canticles).
If to these great ones of the world, whom worldlings call the fortunate of the earth, the very name of death is so bitter that they are unwilling even to hear it mentioned—for their whole concern is to find peace in their earthly goods, as Ecclesiasticus says: “O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that hath peace in his possessions!” (Ecclus. 41:1)—how much more bitter shall death itself be when it actually comes? Wretched is the man who is attached to the goods of this world! Every severing brings pain; and so, when the heart must be parted by the stroke of death from those goods on which it had set all its love, it must feel a great pain. This is what made king Agag cry out, when the news of death was brought to him: “Doth bitter death separate me in this manner?” (1 Kings 15:32).
The great misfortune of these men is that, when they are already near to being summoned to the divine judgment, instead of attending to the settling of their souls’ accounts, they busy themselves with thinking of the things of earth. But this, says St. John Chrysostom, is the punishment that befalls sinners: because they forgot God during life, at death they forget themselves. Hac animadversione percutitur impius, ut moriens obliviscatur sui, qui vivens oblitus est Dei—“The impious man is struck with this punishment, that dying he forgets himself, who living forgot God.”
2. But however attached a man may be to the things of this world, he must take leave of them all at death. Naked he entered this world, and naked he shall depart from it. “Naked,” says Job, “I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither” (Job 1:21). In a word, those who have spent their whole life, and have lost their sleep, their health, and their soul, in accumulating money and revenues, shall carry nothing away with them at the hour of death: the unhappy men shall open their eyes, and find nothing of all they had acquired. And so, on that night of confusion, they shall be overwhelmed by a tempest of pains and sorrows. “The rich man, when he shall sleep, shall take away nothing with him. He shall open his eyes and find nothing…a tempest shall oppress him in the night” (Job 27:19–20).
St. Antoninus relates that Saladin, king of the Saracens, gave orders at his death that, as he was carried to burial, the winding sheet in which he was to be buried should be carried before him, and that someone should go crying out: “Of all his possessions, this only shall Saladin carry away with him.” He relates, further, that a certain philosopher, speaking of Alexander the Great after his death, said: Behold the man who made the earth tremble, as the Scripture says, “The earth was quiet before him” (1 Macc. 1:3)—now he is crushed beneath the earth; and the man for whom the dominion of the whole world was not enough, now four palms of ground suffice him. Qui terram heri conculcabat, hodie ab ea conculcatur; et cui heri non sufficiebat mundus hodie sufficiunt quatuor ulnae terrae—“He who yesterday trampled the earth, today is trampled by it; and for whom yesterday the world was not enough, today four ells of earth are enough.”
St. Augustine, or some other ancient writer, relates that, finding himself before the tomb of Caesar, he exclaimed: “Princes revered thee; cities worshiped thee; all feared thee;—where is thy magnificence gone?” (Sermon 28 to the Brothers). Hear what David says: “I have seen the wicked highly exalted and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon. And I passed by, and lo, he was not” (Ps. 37:35–36). Oh, how many such spectacles are seen happening daily in the world! Here is some sinner who was once lowly and poor, but afterward has become rich and acquired honors and dignities, so that everyone envies him; but once he is dead, everyone says: He made a fortune in this world; but now he is dead, and with death all is over for him.
3. “Why is earth and ashes proud?” (Ecclus. 10:9). Thus the Lord speaks to the man who is puffed up with the honors and riches of this earth: Wretched creature, he says, whence comes this pride? If you possess honors and goods, remember that you are dust. “For dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return” (Gen. 3:19). You must die, and after death what will these honors and possessions, for which you now swell with pride, profit you?
Go, says St. Ambrose, go to that cemetery where the rich and the poor are buried, and see whether you can discern among them who was rich and who was poor; all are naked, and nothing remains to them but a few stripped bones. Respice sepulchra, dic mihi, quis ibi dives, quis pauper sit—“Look at the tombs; tell me, who is rich there, who is poor?” (Hexameron, Bk. 6, ch. 8). Oh, how greatly would the remembrance of death profit every man who lives in the midst of the world! “He shall be brought to the grave, and shall watch in the heap of the dead” (Job 21:32). At the sight of those dead bodies he would remember death, and that he too shall one day be like them; and so he would be awakened from the deadly sleep in which perhaps he lives in a state of perdition.
But the misfortune is that worldlings are unwilling to think of death until it comes—until the very hour when they must depart from this earth to enter eternity; and therefore they live as attached to the world as if they were never to leave it. But no: our life is short, and shall soon end; so that everything must end, and must soon end.
Second Point.—All soon ends.
4. Men know well, and firmly believe, that they must die; but they imagine death to be so far off as if it were never to come. But no: Job warns us that the life of man is short. “Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries. Who cometh forth like a flower and is destroyed” (Job 14:1–2). At present the health of men is so weakened that the greater number, as experience shows, die before the age of sixty. And what else is our life, says St. James, but a vapor, which at a little wind, a fever, a drop of blood, a puncture, a catarrh of the chest, vanishes, and is no more? “For what is your life? It is a vapor which appeareth for a little while” (Jas. 4:15).
“We all die,” said the woman of Tekoa to David, “and like waters that return no more, we fall down into the earth” (2 Kings 14:14). And she speaks the truth; for as every river and every stream runs to the sea, and the waters that flow away return no more, so our days pass, and we draw near to death.
5. They pass, and they pass quickly. “My days,” said Job, “have been swifter than a post” (Job 9:25). Death comes to meet us, and runs more swiftly than a courier; so that at every step we take, every breath we draw, we draw nearer to death. St. Jerome, even while he was writing, was mindful that he was at that moment drawing closer to death; and so he said: Quod scribo de mea vita tollitur—“What I write is taken away from my life.” Let us, then, say with Job: The years pass, and with the years pass pleasures, honors, pomp, and all the things of this world, “and only the grave remaineth for me” (Job 17:1). In a word, all the glory of the labors we shall have undergone in this world, to acquire a good income, a great name for valor, for learning, for genius—what shall it come to? It shall come to our being thrown into a pit to rot. Then the wretched worldling shall say at the hour of death: So then, my fine house, my garden, those tasteful furnishings, those paintings, those rich garments, in a little while shall be mine no more? “And only the grave remaineth for me.”
6. But however distracted and entangled in worldly affairs and pleasures this man may be, St. Chrysostom says that, when the fear of death—which sets fire to all the things of the present life—begins to enter the soul, it compels him to think and to grow anxious about what shall become of him after death, in eternity. Cum pulsare animam incipit metus mortis (ignis instar praesentis vitae omnia succendens) philosophari eam cogit, et futura solicita mente versari—“When the fear of death begins to strike the soul (like fire consuming all the things of the present life) it compels it to reflect and anxiously ponder things to come” (Sermon on 2 Timothy). Ah, at the hour of death, as Isaiah says, “the eyes of the blind shall be opened” (Isa. 35:5). Then indeed shall the eyes be opened of those blind men who have spent their whole life acquiring earthly goods, and have given little heed to the interests of the soul.
In all of these is verified what the Lord warns us of—that death shall come upon them when they least expect it. “At what hour you think not the Son of Man will come” (Luke 12:40). And so to these wretched men death always comes unexpectedly; and since the lovers of the world are not usually warned of their approaching death until they are very near it, in those last days of life—nearer to death—they must settle the accounts of their soul for the fifty or sixty years they have lived on this earth. They will then long for another month, or another week, to settle those accounts better and to set their conscience at peace; but “they will seek for peace, and there shall be none” (Ezek. 7:25). For this time is denied them: the priest who assists them reads the divine command to depart at once from this world. Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo—“Depart, Christian soul, from this world.” Oh, what a perilous entrance into eternity worldlings make, dying amid so much darkness and confusion, because the accounts of their souls were never well settled!
7. “Weight and balance are the judgments of the Lord” (Prov. 16:11). At the tribunal of God, neither nobility, nor dignities, nor riches are weighed; only two things are weighed—the sins of man, and the graces God has bestowed on him. They who shall be found faithful in having corresponded with the lights and the calls they have received shall be rewarded; and they who shall be found wanting shall be condemned. We keep no account of God’s graces; but the Lord does keep account of them, and measures them; and when he sees them despised to a certain point, he leaves the sinner in his sin, and so lets him die. “For what things a man shall sow those also shall he reap” (Gal. 6:8).
From the labors undertaken to acquire posts, possessions, and applause in the world, we gather nothing at death: all is lost. Only from the works done for God, and from the tribulations suffered for God, do we gather fruit of eternal life.
8. And so St. Paul exhorts us—indeed, he entreats us—to attend to the business that is ours. “But we must entreat you, brethren…that you do your own business” (1 Thess. 4:10–11). Of what business, I ask, does the Apostle speak? Is it of making money, or of acquiring a great name in the world? No; he speaks of the business of the soul, of which Jesus Christ first spoke when he said: “Trade till I come” (Luke 19:13). The business for which the Lord has placed us, and keeps us, in this world is to save our souls, and by good works to acquire eternal life. This is the one end for which God has created us. “And the end eternal life” (Rom. 6:22). The business of the soul is the affair that is for us not only the most important, but the principal—indeed, the only one; for if the soul be saved, all is saved, whereas if the soul be lost, all is lost.
And so, as the Scripture says, we ought to struggle for the salvation of our soul, and to fight unto death for justice—that is, for the keeping of the divine law. “Strive for justice for thy soul, and even unto death fight for justice” (Ecclus. 4:33). And this is the trading our Savior recommends to us, saying Trade till I come: to keep always before our eyes the day on which he shall come to demand an account of our whole life.
9. All the things of this world—acquisitions, applause, grandeurs—must, as we have said, all end, and end very soon. “The fashion of this world passeth away” (1 Cor. 7:31). The scene of this world passes away: happy he who, in this scene, plays his part well and saves his soul, setting all the temporal interests of the body below the eternal interests of the soul; which is signified by those words: “He that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal” (John 12:25). It is folly in worldlings to say: Happy the man who has money! Happy he who is held in esteem! Happy he who takes his pleasures in this world! Folly: happy he who loves God and saves his soul. This one thing alone king David asked of God: eternal salvation. “One thing have I asked of the Lord, this will I seek after” (Ps. 27:4). And St. Paul said that he counted as dung all the goods of the world, to gain the grace of Jesus Christ, which contains eternal life. “I count all things as loss and I count them as dung, that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8).
10. But some father of a family will say: I do not labor so much for myself as for my children, that I may leave them in comfort. But I answer: If you were to squander the goods you possess and leave your children in poverty, you would do wrong, and would sin; but then, to leave your children comfortable, will you lose your own soul? If you go to hell, will your children come to drag you out of it? What folly! But hear what David says: “I have not seen the just man forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread” (Ps. 37:25). Attend, you, to the service of God; act according to justice; and the Lord will not let your children want for what they need; while you, for your part, shall save your soul, and shall acquire that eternal treasure of happiness that can never be taken from you—unlike the goods you possess on this earth, of which death, like a thief, shall strip you.
This is what the Lord exhorts us to in St. Matthew: “But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither the rust nor the moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal” (Matt. 6:20). To conclude, behold the beautiful admonition St. Gregory gives us for living well and acquiring eternal salvation. Sit nobis in intentione aeternitas, in usu temporalitas—“Let eternity be in our intention, temporality in our use.” Let the end of all our actions in this life be the acquiring of eternal goods; and let temporal goods serve us only to maintain life for the little time we have to remain on this earth. The saint goes on: Sicut nulla est proportio inter aeternitatem et nostrae vitae tempus, ita nulla debet esse proportio inter aeternitatis curas, et hujus vitae curas—“Just as there is no proportion between eternity and the time of our life, so there ought to be no proportion between the cares of eternity and the cares of this life.” As there is an infinite distance between eternity and the time of our life, so there ought to be, according to our mode of understanding, an infinite distance between the care we should take of the goods of eternity, which we shall enjoy forever, and the care we take of the goods of this life, of which death shall soon strip us.
Points for Reflection
1. “You must die, and after death what will these honors and possessions, for which you now swell with pride, profit you?” (§3)
2. “The business for which the Lord has placed us, and keeps us, in this world is to save our souls, and by good works to acquire eternal life. This is the one end for which God has created us” (§8)
3. “Let the end of all our actions in this life be the acquiring of eternal goods; and let temporal goods serve us only to maintain life for the little time we have to remain on this earth” (§10)