Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/105

 you cannot conceive the consolation which arises at death from the remembrance of having served Mary. Ah! my father, if you knew what happiness I feel on account of having served this good mother! I cannot express it." What joy shall the lovers of Jesus Christ experience at his coming to them in the most holy viaticum! Happy the soul that can then address her Saviour in the words which St. Philip Neri used when the viaticum was brought to him: ”Behold my love! behold my love! give me my love!" But, to entertain these sentiments at death, we must have ardently loved Jesus Christ during life.

THE vines of the Lord are our souls, which he has given us to cultivate by good works, that we may be one day admitted into eternal glory. "How," says Salvian, ”does it happen that a Christian believes, and still does not fear the future?" Christians believe death, judgment, hell, and Paradise: but they live as if they believed them not as if these truths of faith were tables or the inventions of human genius. Many live as it they were never to die, or as if they had not to give God an account of their life as if there were neither hell nor a heaven. Perhaps they do not believe in them? They believe, but do not reflect on them; and thus they are lost. They take all possible care of worldly affairs, but attend not to the salvation of their souls. I shall show you, this day, that the salvation of your souls is the most important of all affairs. First Point. Because, if the soul is lost, all is lost; Second Point. Because, if the soul is lost once, it is lost for ever. First Point. If the soul is lost, all is lost.