Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/97

 lived in a house whose roof and walls were tottering and threatening destruction, would you not fly from, it as soon as possible? In this life everything menaces ruin to the poor soul the world, the devils, the flesh, the passions, all draw her to sin and to eternal death. It was this that made St. Paul exclaim: ”Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. vii. 24.) Who shall deliver me from this body of mine, which lives continually in a dying state, on account of the assaults of my enemies? Hence he esteemed death as a great gain, because it brought to him the possession of Jesus Christ, his true life. Happy then are they who die in the Lord: because they escape from pains and toils, and go to rest. ”Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth now, saith the spirit, that they may rest from their labours." (Apoc. xiv. 13.) It is related in the lives of the ancient fathers, that one of them who was very old, when dying, smiled, while the others wept. Being asked why he smiled, he said: “Why do you weep at seeing me go to rest? Ex labore ad requiem vado, et vos ploratis ?" At the hour of death, St. Catherine of Sienna said to her sisters in religion: Rejoice with me: for I leave this land of suffering, and am going to the kingdom of peace. The death of the saints is called a sleep that is, the repose which God gives to his servants as the reward of their toil”When he shall give sleep to his beloved, behold the inheritance of the Lord." (Ps. cxxvi. 2.) Hence the soul that loves God neither weeps nor is troubled at the approach of death, but, embracing the crucifix, and burning with love, she says: ”In peace in the self same I will sleep and I will rest." (Ps. iv. 9.) 4. That "Proficiscere de hoc mundo," (" Depart, Christian soul, from this world,") which is so appalling to sinners at the hour of death, does not alarm the saints. ”But the souls of the just are in the hands of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them." (Wis. iii. 1.) The saint is not afflicted, like worldlings, at the thought of being obliged to leave the goods of this earth, because he has kept the soul detached from them. During life, he always regarded God as the Lord of his heart and as the sole riches which he