Hunolt Sermons/Volume 1/Sermon 3

The frequent consideration and remembrance of death is one of the best means of leading a holy life. Preached on the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

"Behold, a dead man was carried out. " (Luke 7:12)

"Behold, a dead man was carried out; " one who was in the bloom of youth, who was enjoying life in all the vigor of health and strength, and who was, moreover, the only son of his sorrowing mother, the only consolation left to her in her widowed state! " Behold, a dead man was carried out, the only son of his mother. " He it is whom they are bringing to the grave. Thus death has no respect for age, or sex, or health, or prayers, or entreaties; he hurries all off without mercy, without distinction, young and old, great and lowly, together. My dear brethren, which of us who are here now alive and well, shall be the first to be carried out dead? Shall it be I, or you, or some one else? We know not; but of a certainty every one s turn will come, sooner or later, whether we like it or not. And yet we think so little of it! Daily, almost, do we see a corpse carried to the grave, and we look at it as if it were nothing at all to us; no, if sometimes a thought of death tries to intrude itself, we endeavor to shake it off as unnecessary, tending to melancholy and sadness. But what do we gain by thus trying to hide ourselves from death? Shall we be able to avoid it by not thinking of it? No indeed! But on the contrary we should frequently and seriously meditate on it, for thereby we shall be wonderfully helped to lead a good Christian life, as I shall now prove.

The frequent consideration and remembrance of death is one of the best means of leading a holy life. Such is the whole subject of this exhortation. Judge of the living and the dead! who this day caused the men who were carrying the bier to stand still, that Thou might raise the dead to life, awaken now our dulled memories, that we may in future learn to lead better lives by the frequent remembrance of death. Holy Mother, and you, holy guardian angels, help us thereto !

The whole idea of a good, that is, pious Christian life may be summed up in the twofold precept; avoid evil, do good. But if there is anything to act as a counterpoise against all sin and evil if there is anything that can spur us on to good and virtuous actions, it is surely the frequent consideration of death, in which one is constantly reminding himself: I shall die; I shall one day be carried to the grave a corpse. In the very beginning of the world God impressed this fact on the mind of man as a necessary preservative against all crime. How happy was the state of Adam in paradise in his first innocence! There was a constant peace between the spirit and the flesh; there was no inclination to evil; all the appetites and desires were in the most harmonious subjection to reason, so that not one of them dared to move without the command of the will (how miserable the state of us poor descendants of Adam, who have always to fight against our selves, and are constantly assailed by a hundred passions, even against our will, and are thus inclined to evil!), and yet when God gave Adam the command not to eat the forbidden fruit, He at the same time put the thought of death into his mind, lest he should transgress the command. "In what day soever you shalt eat of it, you shalt die the death." (Gen 2:17) And well worthy of note is it, that as long as this thought remained before the minds of our first parents they experienced no inclination for the forbidden fruit; and during that time, too, the treacherous serpent could do nothing with them; for when he ventured to represent to Eve how sweet and pleasant the fruit was, she answered at once that God had forbidden it to be touched and that under a severe penalty: " God has commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die." (Gen 3:3) Eve ! would that you hadst remained firm in your resolution! Then should you indeed have done well and save yourself and us, too, from destruction! But when the crafty serpent had persuaded her to forget the warning, and to believe his lies: "No, you shall not die the death;" be not afraid of death; the Lord does not mean it so; then, with out any hesitation, the unhappy resolution was formed of transgressing the divine command: "She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave it to her husband, who did eat; " and thus the sin was accomplished. An evident proof of the evils that follow the neglect and forgetfulness of the thought of death. And we poor, wretched mortals, who are naturally so inclined to evil, how much more are we not in need of something to re strain us from evil, and to keep us on the right path! Yet we are not unprovided with that restraint if we only take the warning to heart. Wherever we go divine Providence has surrounded us with exhortations to this effect. Nearly everything we perceive by the senses is a picture and messenger of death, that calls out to us; memento mori ! remember, man! that you must die. Hardly a day in the year on which we go out into the street that we do not see either a corpse being carried to the grave, or a priest going with the Blessed Sacrament to a dying person, or some one clad in mourning, or an altar in the church on which Mass is offered for souls departed, or else a grave-stone in the church-yard under which some one lies buried; or some friend comes up to us and says: such a one is dead; such an other has received the last sacraments; and so on. Nothing grows or is born on earth, in the air, or in the water, but some- thing has died or decayed in its place. If the wind blows it re minds us of the words of holy Job: " Remember that my life is but wind, and my eyes shall not return to see good things." (Job 7:7) If a fog rises in the morning, see, exclaims St. James the Apostle, that is how your life begins and ends: " What is your life? It is a vapor which appears for a little while, and afterwards shall vanish away." (James 4:15) If the sun casts a shadow on the earth; so do the days of my life pass away, as the Prophet David says: " My days have declined like a shadow, and I am withered like grass." (Ps 101:12) If I happen to see a cobweb in the room, I can think with the same David: " Our years shall be considered as a spider; " (Ps 89:9) to day the spider runs about in its web spinning out its own entrails; to-morrow the maid comes with the broom and sweeps the whole thing away. You who are now in the bloom of youth and crown yourselves with flowers, hear what those same flowers say to you: "Man born of a woman, living for a short time, . . . who comes forth like a flower, and is destroyed; " (Job 14:1) today the flower blooms, to-morrow it decays. If you stand before the looking-glass to contemplate your beauty, even that announces death to you, for it reminds you of the words of the Psalmist: " Surely man passes as an image. " (Ps 38:7) All the years, months, weeks, days, hours, and moments that we have lived say to each one of us: you are now so much nearer to the hour of your death. Fire, water, sword, bullet, poison, sicknesses of countless kinds, no, our very pleasures cry out to us and warn as that they are the instruments that help us to death. In a word, all creatures, if we could make a quintessence of them, would cry out to us: memento mori remember you must die. Now, my dear brethren, why has divine Providence sent us so many messengers and warnings of death, in and outside of our selves, and surrounded us with them in all places, if not that the remembrance of death may urge us to lead good lives, restrain us from evil, and teach us to prepare in time for eternity?

Oh, if we only kept this thought before our minds, who would then dare abandon himself to a wicked life! I am altogether of the opinion that, as there is no power, no authority, no riches in the world that can protect us against the approach of death, so also there is no vice, no evil inclination, no bad habit, no matter how inveterate, that cannot be tamed, subdued, and eradicated altogether by the frequent consideration of death. The three springs from which all our vices flow are, as St. John says, " the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life; " (1 John 2:16) the desire of sensual pleasures, of worldly wealth, and of honor and esteem. Now, if I often thought to myself: I must die; in a few years, perhaps today or to-morrow, I shall be carried to the grave to be buried; what shall then become of my dignities, honors, the esteem of men, the favor of the great, the respectful submission of my servants and attendants? They shall disappear completely and forever. So, too, with whatever knowledge, science, skill I may have had, although I may have been as wise as an angel; death hurries all away; the bell that tolls for my funeral will wipe out all memory of me, as the Psalmist says: " Their memory has perished with a noise." (Ps 9:7) Not a vestige shall I leave behind me, nor any memento except, perhaps, an epitaph which shall describe how I was once and am now no more. My dwelling shall be with and amongst the meanest paupers; my companions, my bed and my covering shall be worms and rottenness. If I thought of all this and frequently recalled it, how quickly I should free myself from pride and vanity! For it is not vanity, but rather arrant folly to give way to pride at the thought of death, as St. Gregory says: " No thought of the human mind, be it ever so proud, that does not immediately vanish at the thought of death."

If there was ever a man in the way of being puffed up with earthly honors and dignities it was certainly St. Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia and a near relation of the Roman emperor Charles V. The lands and people he ruled over, the ministers and attendants who had almost to worship him, the high offices he held, the great favor he enjoyed at the imperial court, all these things might indeed have given him a great esteem of himself; but death once read him a single lesson and spoke to him so powerfully, that he banished all pride out of his mind and became a miracle of humility and lowliness. Hear what occurred to him. When the dead body of the lately deceased empress Isabella, who, during her life, had been looked on as a great beauty, was brought from Granada, in Spain, the coffin was opened in order to make sure that it contained the body of the empress. When the cover was raised the body appeared so frightfully deformed and emitted such a horrible odor of corruption that the pages and servants who were present ran terrified out of the church. Borgia alone remained, and filled with astonishment, thus apostrophized the dead body: " Ah, Isabella, is it thou? A short time ago you were well known to me; now I no longer recognize you! Where is the beauty that people came from distant lands to see? Where the majesty that compelled every knee to bend? Where the winning countenance that formed the joy of the whole court? And is that the great empress I have served so long, from whom I have received so many favors? from whom I hoped for even still more? Has, then, death no respect for the body of such a great lady? If not, then away with the false, deceitful world! I will in future serve a greater emperor and lord, the almighty God alone, and that I may no longer be deceived by the vanities of the world, I will hide myself in some poor hut amongst the servants of the Lord." And he carried his resolution into effect.

If I often thought to myself: I must die; in a few years, perhaps today or to-morrow, I shall be carried to the grave and buried; death, as Our Lord assures me, will creep on stealthily like a thief: "I will come to you as a thief, and you shalt not know at what hour I will come to you." (Rev 3:3) Then everything will be taken from me and I shall be completely stripped; nothing will be left to me of all the money I have, of all my possessions and revenues; I shall not be able to take a farthing with me on the journey; of all my silver plate, of all my clothes and linen, of the whole earth, nothing, not as much as a straw, will remain to me, save and except the hole in which I shall be buried; the rich man " when he shall die he shall take nothing away; nor shall his glory descend with him." (Ps 48:18) Then will be seen to whom my goods belonged, and that they were merely lent to me for a time, and not given to me as their owner. Sometimes a dog follows two people who are going the same way; to whom does the dog belong? That you cannot say, for he follows both; but wait a little, till they come to a cross road and separate, then the dog will follow his master and leave the other. As long as a man is in life and has to do with the world, one might imagine that he really possesses worldly goods; but wait till he comes to the cross roads that lead to eternity, then you will see who is the real owner of his goods; for they at once leave the man who has been using them, allowing him to go forth bare and naked, and follow and remain with the world. Ah, when we think of this, is it possible that we should be so infatuated with temporal things as to seek or possess anything wrongfully or unjustly, sacrificing thereby a long eternity, the treasures of heaven, my soul and my God?

A rich young man named Guerricus, who, while still a student, lived in a very sumptuous fashion, came one day into the church during the recitation of the office, and heard one of the clergy sing with a loud, clear voice the lesson taken from the fifth chapter of Genesis: "And all the time that Adam lived came to nine hundred and thirty years, and he died. And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died. And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years, and he died. And all the days of Cain were nine hundred and ten years, and he died. And all the days of Malaleel were eight hundred and ninety-five years, and he died. And all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years, and he died." (Gen 5:5) The young man, astonished at this, thought to himself: all these people have lived so many years in the world, and yet they all came to the same end: "and he died." What then, is the good of living for seven, eight, or nine hundred years, if death must come in the long run? And if a life of nine hundred years is but a transitory thing after all, what am I to think of a life of sixty, seventy, or eighty years, which is the longest I can expect? Come, Guerricus! now is your time. Away with your wealth to the poor, and bid good-bye to the world; if death is so certain and unavoidable, I will go where I can prepare for it! Such was the resolution this young man made on hearing but a single warning of death.

If in the same way often repeated to myself: I must die; in a few years, perhaps today or tomorrow, it will be said of me too, "and he died." And what then? "Under thee shall the moth be strewed, and the worms shall be thy covering." (Isa 14:11) That body that is now so delicate and so carefully looked after, so well clothed, so anxiously protected against cold and heat, so well supplied with appetizing food; even that very body that so often burns with an unholy fire will at last become the food of worms, will emit in its decay an intolerable stench, and will finally crumble away into a handful of dust which one breath might blow away. And should I give this food of worms, which bears about in itself the elements of its own corruption, should I give it all indulgence in sensual pleasures, thus placing my soul in danger of burning forever in hell ? Or should such a body, because it is now clad with a certain kind of beauty, so infatuate and befool me, that for its sake I should be ready to sacrifice God and heaven? Am I not blind and mad to allow myself to be captivated by love for such a mass of corruption, whose deformity and stench will in a short time fill me with horror? Ah, it is evident I have not thought enough of these things before! No, says a holy hermit with reason, "there is no better way of taming the living flesh than by thinking what it will be when dead. Truly, whenever I am tempted to impure love by another's beauty, all I need do to conquer the temptation is to fly for refuge to death, and represent to myself what that beauty will be like in a short time. Oh, would that I could now open a grave before your eyes, a grave in which a dead body has lain for a month; that I could invite you to look at it in the words of the sisters of the dead Lazarus to Christ: " Come and see!" (John 11:34) Come, unchaste young man, and see what that is, or shortly will be, which you have so foolishly loved and still love: Come and see ! Come, vain and proud woman, see what you will soon become; see how the blackened and mortifying flesh is dropping from your bones; see how the lips and nose are eaten away and leave only gaping holes; see the worms creeping out of the eyes and the whole body a horrible mass of corruption! You cannot bear the insupportable stench; you turn your eyes away from the hideous sight; you run off terror-stricken; you cannot bear to think of such a horrible thing; no, you look at me with disgust because I dare to draw such a loathsome picture for you! Yet it is a true one; for, alas! what is man when he turns into foul carrion? And therefore I must again think to myself: truly, it is not worth while to allow myself to be so captivated by love for such a mass of corruption as for its sake to offend God even by a wilful desire and condemn my soul to hell forever.

Bromiardus writes of a young man who was inflamed by an impure passion for a virtuous and chaste married lady. To his wicked solicitations the lady answered: " If you love me you must give me a proof of your love and do what I shall ask of you." The young man promised to fulfil her behests no matter how difficult they might be. "Well, then," said she," my wish is that you should find out as soon as possible where there is any one in the town in danger of death, and remain by his bedside until the last moment." The young man kept his word, and assisted at the death-beds of many people. When he again returned to the lady, he said to her: " Now you will surely do what I wish, for my sole desire now is that you should live pure and chaste, as I myself am firmly resolved to lead a pure and chaste life; for I have learned that lesson in the book of the dead to whom you sent me, and I have taken it deeply to heart." Oh, if we all went to that school of the dying once in the day, there is not a doubt that we should soon be freed from impure passion!

Finally, if I often thought thus to myself: I must die. When? I know not. It may be today. I must die. Where? I know not. It may be in this very church; I may drop down dead in the pulpit, as happened already to a preacher of our Society in this cathedral. I must die. How? I know not; death may surprise me in the state of sin. And where shall my soul go then? Be fore the judgment-seat of God, to give an account of all my actions, and to be sent either to the eternal joys of heaven or to the eternal torments of hell. If I frequently renewed this thought, could I sleep quietly one night in the state of sin? Could I of fend God grievously for the sake of any earthly good, or honor, or pleasure? No, that could never be! "In all your works remember your last end, and you shalt never sin." (Ecc 7:40) "Nothing," says St. Augustine with truth, " is so powerful to keep us from sin as the frequent consideration of death. "

A certain princess, as Father Cataneus writes, had a page fifteen years old, for whom she conceived an extraordinary affection. This page was one morning found dead in his bed. Hearing an unusual tumult in the house, the princess went to see what was the matter; but the sight of the page s dead body filled her with such sadness, pity, and apprehension, that she knew not what to do, and went at once to her confessor for advice and consolation. The priest, seeing that her heart was touched and completely changed, told her to go to the church, kneel before the altar and there beg of God to reveal to her what He wished to effect in her by such a sudden death. She followed the advice, and daring her meditation received an inward inspiration, as if some one was speaking into her ear, saying: wilt you not at last begin to prepare better for death ? How long wilt you still wait before laying aside your vanity, tepidity in My service, inordinate love of creatures and the vices to which thou art grown accustomed? On what do you rely? On your youth? But the dead page was much younger than you. On your health and strength? He was much stronger than you. Do you expect to have time to prepare for death during a long illness? You have seen that one may be surprised by death without any illness; if a sudden death had hurried you off, as it did your page, where shouldst you be now with your conscience weighed down with sins and faults? Where shouldst you be with your own sins? Where with the many sins you have caused others to commit by your extravagance in dress, or to which you have given occasion by your caresses? The princess, terrified at this, fell down at the priest s feet, and with tears in her eyes cried out: Ah, father, have patience with me; I am determined not to leave this church before I have done two things: the first is to make a good general confession of my whole life, and the second to make a better rule and daily order for my life in future. She carried her resolution into effect, and lived ever after such a pious and holy life, that when, after some years, she was at the point of death and saw those who were standing round her bedside weeping, she commenced to laugh, and said to them: " Why are you so troubled on my account? You must know that death is nothing new to me; I have been thinking of it every day, and for many years I have awaited it with composure." Ah, my dear brethren, would that we, too, thought and acted in the same manner; we should soon find a great change for the better in our lives. " Nothing is so powerful to keep us from sin as the frequent consideration of death. "

And again, there is no more powerful incentive to practise virtue than the frequent thought and consideration of death. I will explain this to you briefly. The motive and the end are with philosophers one and the same thing. For instance; the end for which war is waged is to gain a victory over the enemy; the same victory is the motive or reason which fills the soldier with courage and urges him to venture boldly into the field and to fight bravely. The end that the sick man has in view is the recovery of his health; the same health is the motive that impels him to take the most bitter medicines readily, no matter how disagreeable they are to him naturally. The end of a business is gain; the same gain is the motive that impels the merchant to undertake the most dangerous journeys by land and sea, and to spare himself no trouble or inconvenience. So, too, death is the end of all things; but the same death can and must be the motive that impels us to do good works during life, that our death may be a happy one. Such is the sense in which King David speaks to God: "I spoke with my tongue: Lord, make me know my end, and what is the number of my days, that I may know what is wanting to me." Never allow me, Lord, to be unmindful of my last end; keep my memory always occupied with the number of days that still remain to me, that I may know what is wanting to me, and prepare properly for death. You knowest, Lord, how faulty are my works; I will try to amend them by the daily consideration of death. There are many days that passed by without fruit, although I might have gained much merit in them; I will try to make good that loss by the constant recollection of my last end.

Such are the thoughts that the consideration of death must suggest to any Christian who desires to die well and to make sure of his salvation. I must die, he says to himself; I know not when; it may be today or tomorrow. As long as I am in this life, so long does the period of combat last for me; if I do not gain the victory before death I shall never gain it for all eternity. Now is the time for me to do business, as far as my soul is concerned; what I do not gain before death I must do without for all eternity. Therefore I must and will now heap up merit by the practise of good works, so that I may have something to live on forever in heaven. Death will, in a moment, take from me the money and other things that I have amassed with so much trouble; be it so! I care little for such goods. But it cannot take from me the alms I have given and the other works of Christian charity I have performed. These shall be safely stored up for me in heaven by Our Lord Himself. Therefore I will now bestow a good part of my temporal wealth in charity, thus sending it on before me into eternity. Death will strip me of all my clothing. No matter; it cannot take from me the beautiful robe of sanctifying grace, the mortification of my senses, patience in crosses and adversities, constant contentment with and resignation to the will of God, and the other virtues with which my soul shall be adorned. Therefore as long as I live I shall do my best to acquire those virtues. Death will deprive me of all the favor and esteem I may enjoy amongst men; in a short while no one will remember me; let it be so; that is but a small matter. But it cannot take from me my humility, my forgiveness of injuries, my love for my enemies. There fore I will bear meekly and humbly for God s sake whatever men may do to spite me. Death will at once deprive me of all pleasures and comforts and of the love and society of men. Let it do so! I shall not require those things at the end of my life. But it cannot take from me my prayers, my morning and evening devotions, my frequent confessions and holy Communions, my constant intimacy with God, the sermons I have heard so often, the reading of spiritual books, the upright supernatural intention in all my actions. These things shall remain with me; these shall follow me into eternity, as the Word of God itself assures me: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From hence forth now, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors: for their works follow them." (Rev 14:13) Therefore I will be constant in the practice of those good works during the short and uncertain time of this life. Death will give my body over to the worms, to be changed in a short time into dust and ashes; be it so; it is nothing to me! But all the more earnestly will I now mortify that flesh with toil and labor, with temperance and fasting, with voluntary penances and austerities, and so wear it away in the zealous service of my God. For of what use is this body of mine to me in this world, since it must rot away like a dead ox or dog, it it cannot render some service to my immortal soul? Therefore in future all my care shall be for my soul.

Such were the thoughts with which St. Bernard used to encourage himself. " Bernard," he would say to himself daily, "the axe is already laid at the root of the tree; death will probably soon strike the last blow. What art you doing, Bernard? There is no time to be lost. Where is your prayer, your fasting, your penance and mortification? It will be too late bye-and-bye to look after those things. Now is the time to be up and doing! " Pope Innocent IX. once took the general of our Society, Father Claude Aquaviva, to his private chamber, and after having shown him a number of costly things that were safely kept under lock and key in different coffers, said to him: " What do you think, Father, that I have in this coffer? " " I do not know answered the other; "your Holiness doubtless has some precious treasure or relic of some saint." But when the chest was opened there was nothing in it but the picture of the Pope him self, kneeling before a coffin. "You know, Father," said the Pope, "that according to the duties of my office I have often to decide most weighty matters; you know also that I have to look out for the eternal welfare of my soul; now, that I may do everything according to the requirements of justice, and at the same time not endanger my soul, nor become tepid in the service of God, I look at this picture and say to myself these words: Do now what you would wish to have done when you shall be shut up in this coffin."

My dear brethren, if we wish to lead good and holy lives the best thing for us to do is to meditate frequently on death. Behold, a dead man was carried out. It is not convenient for us to kneel down beside a coffin every day; but we can daily fol low the advice of Thomas a Kern pis, and think, for instance, when we get up in the morning: this evening I may be lying dead. When going to rest: perhaps I shall be found dead in my bed to-morrow morning. If a neighbor, friend, or acquaintance dies, I can think: one day or other my turn will come too. If I hear the funeral bell tolling: this bell will one day ring for me also. When going out of the house: one day I shall be carried out of this house dead. When passing by a churchyard: that place will be my home one of these days; how would I wish to have lived when that time comes? Must I not, then, prepare for that supreme hour? Let those be our thoughts, that our resolution. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." Blessed are those who are already dead and acquainted with death before their time comes. Amen.