Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/99

 lost. ”Charity casteth out fear." (1 John iv. 18.) If, at the hour of death, you are unwilling to pardon an enemy, or to restore what is not your own, or if you wish to keep up an improper friendship, then tremble for your eternal salvation; for you have great reason to be afraid of death; but if you seek to avoid sin, and to preserve in your heart a testimony that you love God, be assured that he is with you: and if the Lord is with you, what do you fear? And if you wish to be assured that you have within you the divine love, embrace death with peace, and offer it from your heart to God. He that offers to God his death, makes an act of love the most perfect that is possible for him to perform; because, by cheerfully embracing death to please God, at the time and in the manner which God ordains, he becomes like the martyrs, the entire merit of whose martyrdom consisted in suffering and dying to please God. Second Point. Death frees us from actual sins.

8. It is impossible to live in this world without committing at least some slight faults. ”A just man shall fall seven times: ” (Prov. xxiv. 16.) He who ceases to live, ceases to offend God. Hence St. Ambrose called death the burial of vices: by death they are buried, and never appear again. ”Quid est mors nisi sepultura vitorum?" (De Bono Mort. cap. iv.) The venerable Vincent Caraffa consoled himself at the hour of death by saying: now that I cease to live, I cease for ever to offend my God. He who dies in the grace of God, goes into that happy state in which he shall love God for ever, and shall never more offend him. ”Mortuus," says the same holy doctor, ”nescit peccare. Quid tanto pere vita mistam desideramus, in qua quanto diutius quis fuerit, tanto majori oneratur sarcina peccatorum." How can we desire this life, in which the longer we live, the greater shall be the load of our sins? 9. Hence the Lord praises the dead more than any man living: ”I praised the dead rather than the living." (Eccl. iv. 2.) Because no man on this earth, however holy he may be, is exempt from sins. A spiritual soul gave directions that the person who should bring to her