Straits and anguish of dying Christians who have been negligent during life about the duties of religion
“Render, therefore, to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”—Matthew 22:21.
One day the Pharisees, with the malicious intention of trapping Jesus Christ in his speech so that they might afterward accuse him, sent their disciples to ask whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar. The Redeemer answered by asking them, as he looked at the coin with which the tribute was paid, “Whose image and inscription is this?” When they told him it was Caesar’s, he said, “Render then to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
By these last words Jesus Christ means to teach us that we must give to men what is due to them, but that he wants all the love of our heart for himself; for he created us to this end, and afterward laid upon us the precept, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart.” Miserable the man who at the hour of death shall see that he has loved creatures, has loved his own pleasures, and has not loved God.
“When distress cometh upon them, they will seek peace, and there will be none” (Ezek. 7:25). He will then try to find peace, but he shall not be able to find it; for many shall be the troubles that assail him. And what shall they be? Behold what the unhappy man shall say. First: O God, I could have made myself a saint, but I have not done it. Second: Oh, that I now had time to repair the evil I have done! But now my time is at an end. Third: Oh, that at least, in the little time that remains, I could repair the past! But this time is not fit for repairing.
First Point.—O God, I could have, but have not, become a saint.
1. The saints, because during their whole life they thought of nothing but pleasing God and making themselves saints, go with great confidence to meet death, which delivers them from the miseries and dangers of this present life and unites them perfectly with God. But the man who has thought of nothing but pleasing himself, living without restraint, without commending himself to God, and without reflecting on the account he must one day render to him—how shall he be able to meet death with confidence?
Poor sinners! They drive away the thought of death whenever it presents itself to them, and they think only of living merrily, as if they were never to die. But no—for each of them the end must one day come. “The end is come; the end is come” (Ezek. 7:2). And when this end comes, every one must gather what he has sown during life. “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap” (Gal. 6:8). If he has sown works of holiness, he shall reap rewards and eternal life; but if he has sown evil works, he shall reap chastisements and eternal death.
2. The first thing that shall present itself to the dying man, when the news of death is announced to him, shall be the scene of his past life. He shall then see things in a light very different from that in which he viewed them during life. The acts of revenge that seemed lawful, the scandals he made little of, the license of speaking on lewd matters or against his neighbor’s good name, the pleasures that passed for innocent, the injustices he wanted to think permissible—all these shall then appear as what they really were: grievous sins and offenses against God, each one of which deserved hell.
Alas, those blind men, who during life want to be blind by shutting their eyes to the light, shall at death see, in spite of themselves, all the evil they have done. “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened” (Isa. 35:5). By the light of the death candle, “the wicked shall see and shall be angry” (Ps. 111:10). He shall see all the disorders of the life he led: sacraments abused, confessions made without true sorrow or purpose of amendment, contracts made against the remorse of his conscience, harm done to the property and reputation of others, indecent jests, rancors held on to, vindictive thoughts. He shall see the example he received from other young people who feared God, whom he despised and held up to ridicule, calling them sanctimonious, wry-necks, and hypocrites, and giving the name of hypocrisy to their practices of virtue and piety. He shall see the many lights and calls he received from God, the many warnings of spiritual fathers, the many resolutions and promises he made but afterward neglected.
3. He shall see in particular the evil maxims he held during life. “A man must make himself respected and keep up his honor.” But by trampling on the honor due to God? “We must take our pleasure when it comes.” But by taking pleasure in despising God? “What use to the world is a man who is a beggar and has no money?” But will you have money and lose your soul?
To this such men answer, “No matter. What is to be done? We must live in the world, or how are we to make our appearance among our equals?” So speak the worldly during life; but at death they change their language. They shall then see how true is that maxim of Jesus Christ: “What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matt. 16:26). Poor me! the dying man shall say. I have had so much time to set my conscience in order, and behold, now I have come to death and find myself so entangled! What would it have cost me to break off that friendship, to go to confession every week, to flee that occasion of sin? Very little; and even had it been bound to cost me great trouble, I ought to have done it all to save my soul, which is everything to me.
But alas, the sentiments of such Christians, careless about their conscience, are like those of the damned, who in hell grieve over their sins as the cause of their ruin, but grieve in vain.
4. Then no consolation shall come from all the amusements they took, the pomps they displayed, the rivalries they won, the revenges they had over their rivals. All these things shall become, at the hour of death, so many swords that pierce the heart. “Evil shall catch the unjust man unto destruction” (Ps. 139:12). At present the lovers of the world give themselves to banqueting, dancing, gaming, laughter, and merriment; but at the time of death this laughter and merriment, as St. James writes, shall be turned into mourning and melancholy. “Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into sorrow” (Jas. 4:9). And this is often seen to happen.
That high-spirited young man who kept the company entertained with his cutting remarks and his shameless jests falls gravely ill. His friends come to visit him and find him wholly afflicted and downcast; he jests no more, laughs no more, speaks no more, and if he does say a word, it is all words of terror and despair. They say to him, “What kind of talk is this? Why this great gloom? Cheer up—it will be nothing.” Cheer up! It costs nothing to say, “Cheer up.” But how can that poor sick man be cheerful when he sees his conscience burdened with many sins, and sees that he must soon appear before Jesus Christ to give an account of everything, and has much reason to fear the sentence of his eternal death? He shall say then, “Oh, what a fool I have been! Oh, that I had loved God, for then I should not now find myself in these straits! Oh, that I had time to repair the disorders of my conscience!” Let us pass to the second point.
Second Point.—Oh, that I had time to repair the evil I have done! But now my time is at an end.
5. “Oh, that I had time to repair the past!” he will say. But when will the unhappy man say this? When the oil in the lamp is already spent, and he stands at the very point of entering eternity. One of the greatest anguishes felt at death is to see the bad use one has made of the time in which, instead of acquiring merits for paradise, one has heaped up merits for hell.
“Oh, that I had time!” Do you go looking for time? You have wasted so many nights in gaming, so many years in indulging the senses, without ever thinking of your soul; and now you go looking for time? But now there is no more time. “Time shall be no longer” (Rev. 10:6). Were you not already warned by preachers to be ready for death, since it would come upon you when you least expected it? “Be you ready,” says God, “for at what hour you think not the Son of Man will come” (Luke 12:40). You despised my warnings, and you chose to waste the time that my goodness granted you against your deserts; and now your time is finished. Hear how the priest who assists you already bids you depart from this world: Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo—“Go forth, Christian soul, from this world.” And where are you to go? To eternity, to eternity. Death respects neither parents nor monarchs; once it has come, it does not wait even a moment. “Thou hast appointed his bounds, which cannot be passed” (Job 14:5).
6. Oh, what terror the dying man shall feel on hearing such words, and on saying within himself, “This morning I am living, and this evening I shall be dead! Today I am in this house, and tomorrow I shall be in a grave! And where shall my soul be found?” His terror shall grow when he sees the candle made ready for death, and when he hears the confessor order his relatives to leave the room and to come into it no more. It shall grow still more when the confessor puts the crucifix into his hands and says, “Embrace Jesus Christ, and think no more of the world.” He takes the crucifix and kisses it; but as he kisses it, he trembles at the thought of the many injuries he has done to him, for which he would now wish to have a true repentance. Yet he sees that his is a repentance forced by the necessity of approaching death. St. Augustine says, “He who is abandoned by sin before he abandons it condemns it not freely, but as it were of necessity.”
7. The common delusion of worldly men is that during life the things of earth seem great to them, and the things of heaven small, as being distant and uncertain. Their tribulations seem unbearable to them, and grievous sins matters of little weight. These miserable men are like people shut up in a room full of smoke, which keeps them from making out what is before them. But at the hour of death this darkness shall vanish, and the soul begins to see things as they are. Then all that is temporal appears as it is—vanity, falsehood, and deception; and the eternal shows itself in its true greatness. Judgment, hell, and eternity, of which so little account is made during life—oh, how great they shall appear at the time of death! And as they begin to disclose themselves as they are, so the fears of the dying man shall grow. In morte, says St. Gregory, tanto timor fit acrior, quanto retributio vicinior; et quanto vicinius judicium tangitur, tanto vehementius formidatur—“In death, fear becomes more acute the closer the retribution; and the nearer the judgment approaches, the more vehemently it is feared” (Moralia, Bk. 24). The nearer the sentence of the Judge approaches, the more keenly is the fear of condemnation felt.
So the sick man shall say with a sigh, “Oh, how disconsolate I die! Poor me! Oh, that I had known that a death so wretched awaited me!” You did not know it, but you ought to have foreseen it, since you already knew that a bad life cannot be followed by a good death. But since I must soon die, oh, that I could at least, in this little time, set my conscience at rest! Let us pass to the third point.
Third Point.—Oh, that I could, in the little time that remains, repair the past! But alas, this time is not fit for repairing past evils.
8. The time that careless Christians have at the hour of death is not fit for repairing the disorders of conscience, and this for two reasons. First, because this time will be very short; for during those days in which the illness begins and grows worse, the sick man thinks of nothing but physicians, remedies, and making his will. All the more so because at that time his relatives, his friends, and even the physicians do nothing but deceive him, giving him hope that he will not die of this illness; so that, flattered by such hopes, he will for a long while not bring himself to believe that death is near. When, then, will he begin to believe it? Only when he is at the very point of death.
And this is the second reason why that time is not fit for repairing the evils of the soul. Then, as the body is sick, so the mind is sick as well. The labored breathing in the chest, the spasms in the head, the faintings, the delirium so assail the sick man that they make him unable to fix his mind on conceiving a true detestation of the sins he has committed, or to apply to the disorders of his past life such remedies as would set his conscience at rest. The mere news of his death will so stun the sick man that it will leave him half alive.
9. If a man suffers from a severe headache that keeps him from sleeping for two or three nights, he would not trust himself even to dictate a letter of compliment. Now go and set in order at death a conscience entangled with the sins of thirty or forty years, when the sick man feels little, understands little, and sees nothing but a confusion of things that all terrify him! Then is verified what the gospel says: “The night cometh when no man worketh” (John 9:4). Then he shall hear it said within him, “Now thou canst be steward no longer” (Luke 16:2). Now there is no more time to bargain; what is done is done. “When distress cometh upon them, they will seek peace, and there shall be none. Trouble shall come upon trouble” (Ezek. 7:25, 26).
10. It is sometimes said of someone that he led a bad life but afterward made a good death, with signs of repentance and with tears. But St. Augustine says, Morientes non delicti poenitentia, sed mortis urgentis admonitio compellit—“The dying are compelled not by repentance for sin, but by the warning of pressing death” (Sermon 36). The weeping of such men comes from the fear of approaching death, not from sorrow for their sins. He was not afraid of sinning, says the holy doctor, but of burning: Non metuit peccare, sed ardere—“He was not afraid to sin, but to burn” (Ep. 114).
Until now this man has loved those evil objects; and will he now hate them? Perhaps he will then love them more, for the objects of our love, when we fear to lose them, become dearer to us. That master, famous even as the teacher of St. Bruno, died with signs of penance, but afterward, lying on the bier, declared that he was damned. If even holy men, at the time of death, complain that, because of the swimming of the head, they can think but little of God or fix the mind to make good acts, how then shall that careless man, who was not used to making them in life, make them at death? “But no,” someone will say; “by the way he spoke, he seemed to have a true sorrow for his bad life.” But here is the point: was it true sorrow? At that hour the devil makes him think that the wish to have sorrow is true sorrow; but he deceives him. He will say, “I repent; I am sorry from the bottom of my heart,” and the rest; but such words shall come from a heart of stone. “From the midst of the rocks they shall give forth their voices” (Ps. 103:12). “But he went to confession several times and received all the sacraments.” But, I ask, was he saved? God knows how those confessions and those sacraments went. “But he died altogether resigned.” Resigned? The criminal who goes to be executed also seems to go resigned; but why? Because he cannot escape from the officers who bring him bound to the place of execution.
11. O moment on which eternity depends! This moment made the saints tremble at the hour of death, so that they cried out, “O God, in a few hours, where shall I be?” “Sometimes,” says St. Gregory, “the soul even of the just man is disturbed by the terror of vengeance” (Moralia, Bk. 24). What, then, shall it be for one who has made little account of God, when he sees the scaffold already being raised on which he must be executed? “His eyes shall see his own destruction, and he shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty” (Job 21:20). He shall see with his own eyes the death of his soul hanging over him, and shall begin from that moment to feel the anger of God. The viaticum he must receive, the extreme unction that will be given him, the crucifix put into his hands, the recommendation of the soul recited by the assisting priest, the lighted blessed candle—all these things shall form the scaffold of divine justice. The poor sick man perceives that he is already in a cold sweat, that he can no longer move or speak, that his breath is already failing him; in a word, he sees that the moment of death is now near. He sees his soul defiled with sins, the Judge waiting for him, hell burning under his feet; and in this confusion of darkness and terror he shall enter into eternity.
12. O utinam saperent et intelligerent ac novissima providerent—“O that they would be wise, and would understand, and would provide for their last end” (Deut. 32:29). Behold, my hearers, how the Holy Ghost warns us to foresee from now these terrible straits that we shall have at the hour of death, and therefore to set in order from now the accounts we must render to God; for then it will be impossible to set them in order so that the soul may be saved.
My crucified Jesus, I will not wait for death to embrace you; I embrace you now. I love you above all things, and because I love you I repent with my whole heart of having offended and despised you, who are infinite goodness; and I purpose and hope, with your grace, to love you always and never to offend you again. Help me, through the merits of your passion.
Points for Reflection
1. “What would it have cost me to break off that friendship, to go to confession every week, to flee that occasion of sin? Very little; and even had it been bound to cost me great trouble, I ought to have done it all to save my soul, which is everything to me” (§3)
2. “Then all that is temporal appears as it is—vanity, falsehood, and deception; and the eternal shows itself in its true greatness” (§7)
3. “O that they would be wise, and would understand, and would provide for their last end” (§12)