III. In a word, all the good things of this life must end at our burial and be left, while we are mouldering in our graves. The shadow of death will cover and obscure all the grandeur and splendour of this world. He only, then, can be called happy, who serves God in this world, and by loving and serving him acquires eternal happiness. O Jesus, I am truly sorry for having hitherto made so little account of thy love. Now I love thee above all things, and I desire nothing else but to love thee. From henceforth thou only shalt be the sole object of my love, thou only shalt be my all; and this is the only inheritance I ask of thee: to love thee always, both in this life and in the next. For the merits of thy bitter passion, give me perseverance in all virtues. Mary, mother of God, thou art my hope.
Meditation Twenty-second
On reforming our lives before death.
I. EVERY one desires to die the death of the saints; but it is scarcely possible for the Christian to make a holy end, who has led a disorderly life until the time of his death; to die united to God, after having always lived at a distance from him. The saints, in order to secure a happy death, renounced all the riches, the delights, and all the hopes which this world held out to them, and embraced poor and mortified lives. They buried themselves alive in this world, to avoid, when dead, being buried for ever in hell. O God, for how many years past have I deserved to be buried in that place of torments, without hope of pardon, or of being able to love thee! But thou hast waited
