Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/103

 in their last combat with the devils, will come to his aid. The mother of God will come to assist those who have been devoted to her. Jesus Christ shall come to defend from the assaults of hell the souls for which he died on a cross: he will give them confidence and strength to resist every attack. Hence, filled with courage, they will say: "The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear?" (Isa. xxvi. I.) Truly has Origen said, that the Lord is more desirous of our salvation than the devil is of our perdition, because God’s love for us far surpasses the devil’s hatred of our souls. ”Major ilia cura est, ut nos ad veram pertrahat salutem, quam diabolo, ut nos ad æternam damnationem impellat." (Hom, xx.) 16. God is faithful, he will never permit us to be tempted above our strength: ”Fidelis Deus non patietur vos tentari supra id quod potestis." (1 Cor. x. 13.) It is true that some saints have suffered great fear at the hour of death; but they have been few. The Lord, as Belluacensis says, has permitted this fear to cleanse them at death from some defect. ”Justi quandoque dure moriendo purgantur in hoc mundo." But we know that, generally speaking, the saints have died with a joyful countenance. Father Joseph Scamacca, a man of a holy life, being asked if, in dying, he felt confidence in God, answered: Have I served Mahomet, that I should now doubt of the goodness of my God, or of his wish to save me? Ah! the Lord knows well how to console his servants in their last moments. Even in the midst of the agony of death, he infuses into their souls a certain sweetness and a certain foretaste of that happiness which he will soon bestow upon them. As they who die in sin begin to experience from the bed of death a certain foretaste of hell certain extraordinary terrors, remorses, and fits of despair; so, on the other hand, the saints, by the fervent acts of divine love which they then make, and by the confidence and the desire which they feel of soon seeing God, taste, before death, that peace which they shall afterwards fully enjoy in heaven. 17. Father Suarez died with so much peace, that in his last moments he said: ”I could not have imagined that death was so sweet." Being advised by his