Page:AceticLibraryV2PreparationForDeath.djvu/68



It is a marvellous thing that God does nothing but threaten sinners with an unhappy death: " Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer." (Prov. i. 28.) " Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him?" (Job xxvii. 9.) " I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock." (Prov. i. 26.) God laughs when He will not show mercy. "To Me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time." (Deut. xxxii. 35.) In many other places God threatens the same, and yet sinners live in peace, and are as secure, as if God had certainly promised to give them pardon when dying, and after death, to give them Paradise. It is quite true that, in whatever hour the sinner is converted, God has promised to pardon him; but He has not said that the sinner shall be converted in death. On the contrary, He has often declared that he who lives in sin shall die in sin: "Ye .... shall die in your sins." (S. John viii. 21.) He has said in another place that he who seeks Him in death shall not find Him. " Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me." (S. John vii. 34.) Therefore, it is indeed necessary to seek God when He can be found. " Seek ye the Lord while He may be found." (Isa. lv. 6.) Yes, because there will be a time when He will no longer be found. Poor sinners poor blind ones who put off their conversion until the hour of their death, when there will be no more time to be converted! Oleaster well says, that " the wicked will never have learned to do well save when there is no time in which to do it." God wishes all men to be saved; but He will punish those who are obstinate in their sins.

If some miserable sinner living in sin should be seized with an apoplectic fit, and thus be deprived of his senses, what pity all those would feel who would see him die thus, without the Sacraments, and without any sign of repentance! and, on the contrary, what great joy would not every one experience, if this poor sinner should recover from his fit, seek for absolution, and become repentant? But is not he indeed mad who, having time to repent, continues in a state of sin, or else returns to sin,