I say usually, because divine love is sometimes so violent that it actually separates the soul from the body, and, by causing the death of those who love, it renders them infinitely happier than if it bestowed on them a thousand lives.
As the lot of the reprobate is to die in sin, that of the elect is to expire in the love and grace of God, which is effected in several ways.
Many of the Saints died, not only in the state of charity, but in the actual exercise of divine love. St Augustine expired in making an act of contrition, which cannot exist without love; St. Jerome, in exhorting his disciples to charity and the practice of all virtues; St. Ambrose, in conversing sweetly with his Saviour, whom he had received in the Holy Eucharist; St. Antony of Padua also expired in the act of discoursing with our Divine Lord, after having recited a hymn in honour of the ever-glorious Virgin; St. Thomas of Aquinas, with his hands clasped, his eyes raised to heaven, and pronouncing these words of the Canticles, which were the last he had expounded: " Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field." (Cant vii. n).
All the apostles, and the greater number of the martyrs, died in prayer. Venerable Bede, having learned the hour of his death by revelation, went to the choir at the usual hour to sing the evening office, it being the feast of the Ascension, and at the very moment he had finished singing vespers, he expired, following his Guide and Master into heaven, to celebrate His praises in that abode of rest and happiness, round which the shades of night can never gather, because it is illumined by the brightness of the eternal day, which neither dawns nor ends.
John Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, remarkable for his learning and virtue — of whom Sixtus of Sienna said, "that it is difficult to decide whether the
