Meditation Forty-fourth.
On the folly of neglecting salvation.
I. WHAT doth it profit a man, saith our Lord, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? St. Matt. xvi. 26. How many rich men, how many nobles, how many monarchs are now in hell! What now remains to them of their riches and honours, but remorse and rage which prey upon their souls, and will continue to prey upon them for all eternity? O my God, enlighten me and assist me. I hope never more to be deprived of thy grace. Have pity on a sinner who desires to love thee.
II. How comes it, writes Salvian, that men believe in death, judgment, hell and eternity, and yet live without fearing them? Hell is believed, and yet how many go down thither! But, O God, while these truths are believed, they are not dwelt upon, and hence are so many souls lost. Alas, I also have been of the number of those who have been guilty of such folly. Although I knew that by offending thee I was forfeiting thy friendship, and writing my own condemnation; yet I was not restrained from committing sin! “ Cast me not " away from thy face I am sensible of the evil I have done in despising thee, my God, and am grieved for it with my whole soul: Oh cast me not away from thy face.
III. And then? And then? Oh what force had these two words with F. P. Francis Zazzera when repeated to him by St. Philip Neri, in order to induce him to renounce the world and give himself wholly to God![1] O that they would be wise, and
- ↑ The circumstance, to which Blessed Liguori here alludes, is thus related by him in his “ Sermoni: vol.l.p. 217. Dam. Settuag.
St. Philip Neri speaking, one day, to a young man named Francis Zaxzera, who expected to make his fortune in the world by his talents, said: Be of good heart, my son, you may make a great fortune, you may become an eminent lawyer, you may then be made a prelate, then perhaps a cardinal, and then, who knows, perhaps even pope. And then? and then? Go, Continued the Saint, and reflect upon these two words. The young man went his way, and alter having meditated on the two words, and then? and then? abandoned all his worldly prospects, and gave himself entirely to God.
Leaving the world, he entered into the same congregation which St. Philip had founded, and then he died in the odour of sanctity.”
