Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/404

 your soul; and now you seek for time; but time is now no more. ” Time shall be no longer." (Apoc. x. 6.) Were you not already admonished by preachers to be prepared for death? were you not told that it would come upon you when you least expected it? "Be you ready," says Jesus Christ; ” for at what hour you think not the Son of Man will come." (Luke xii. 40.) You have despised my admonitions, and have voluntarily squandered the time which my goodness bestowed upon you in spite of your demerits; but now time is at an end. Listen to the words in which the priest that assists you shall tell you to depart from this world: Proficisere anima Christiana de hoc mundo. Go forth, Christian soul, from this world. And where shall you go? To eternity, to eternity. Death respects neither parents nor monarchs; when it comes, it does not wait even for a moment. ” Thou hast appointed his bounds, which cannot be passed." (Job xiv. 5.) 6. Oh! what terror shall the dying man feel at hearing the assisting priest tell him to depart from this world! what dismay shall he experience in saying with himself: "This morning I am living, and this evening I shall be dead! ” Today I am in this house; tomorrow I shall be in the grave: and where shall my soul be found? His terror shall be increased when he sees the death-candle lighted, and when he hears the confessor order the relatives to withdraw from his chamber, and to return to it no more. It shall be still more increased when the confessor gives him the crucifix, and tells him to embrace it, saying: "Embrace Jesus Christ, and think no more of this world." He takes the crucifix and kisses it; but, in kissing it, he trembles at the remembrance of the many injuries which he has offered to Jesus Christ. He would now wish to repent sincerely of all his injuries to his Saviour, but he sees that his repentance is forced by the necessity of his approaching death. "He," says St. Augustine, ” who is abandoned by sin before he abandons it, condemns it not freely, but through necessity." 7. The common delusion of worldlings is, that earthly things appear great, and that the things of Heaven, as being distant and uncertain, appear to be of