Hunolt Sermons/Volume 1/Sermon 4
THIRD SERMON
HOW TO MAKE THE THOUGHT OF DEATH USEFUL.
Subject.
For the thought of death to be useful in helping us to lead good lives it must be serious and apt to influence our future actions. Preached on the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text.
" Behold there was a certain man before him that had the dropsy." (Luke 14:2)
Introduction.
In the Gospel of last Sunday we have seen how, when Our Lord was approaching, " a dead man was carried out; " in today's Gospel we read that " there was a certain man before him that had the dropsy; " this man was dangerously ill, and would certainly have died had not Our Lord cured him. Here again, my dear brethren, we have a warning that we must die, a sermon and an exhortation to think often of death. In my last exhortation I showed you how the frequent meditation of death is a powerful means to induce us to avoid sin and practise virtue; the Gospel of today furnishes me with another opportunity of treating of the same matter, which cannot be sufficiently insisted on, and of showing in what manner we may derive advantage from the frequent meditation of death.
Plan of Discourse.
We must think of death seriously, and in such a way that the thought may influence our future actions. Such is the whole subject of this instruction. The plan of discourse will be made clearer as we go on.
Do Thou, God of goodness, give us Your light through the merits of Mary and of our holy guardian angels.
If any hap-hazard thought of death that may occur to us could inspire us to lead holy lives there would be hardly one man in the world who would not live piously, and there would be no necessity of trying to extirpate the vices that are now, alas! so common. For who of us is not reminded of death, and that, too, even frequently, either by our faith, or by daily experience, or as we have seen on the last occasion, by the sight of a corpse being carried to the grave, or by a monument in a churchyard, or by meeting people clad in mourning, or by our own bodily weakness and failing health? Even those who do their utmost to fly the thought of death are compelled to think of it against their will. For it is brought before their minds by their own horror of and aversion to it, by their unwillingness to hear of it, by the medicines and other means they use to ward it off, by the fear they have of being separated from their pleasures worldly goods, comforts, and luxuries by a sudden and early death. So it is; there are many things that remind us that we must die, no matter how much we try to shun the thought of death; but the thought thus inspired is generally a superficial one, that touches only the imagination a useless thought that annoys without helping one to amendment of life.
The recollection of death should be lively, effective, and apt to have an influence on our future actions, such as God spoke of to His servant Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy: " that they would be wise and would understand, and would provide for their last end!" (Deut 32:29) That is, that they would now, during their lifetime, find out what will be good for them at the end, what will be then a source of joy, of sorrow, of terror to them, and would now try to do what they shall then wish to have done, to amend what they shall then wish to have amended, to avoid what they shall then wish to have avoided. O that all would think of death in that way! Consider the horse, the mule, the ass (pardon me, rational human beings, if I bring forward such unreasoning, stupid animals as an example in this weighty matter); consider, I say, how they act when one tries to lead them over a frozen river in the winter; you will see how they, while still on the bank, try the ice with their fore feet, in order to see if it is strong enough to bear their weight. Nature has implanted this instinct in them, that they may not expose their lives to danger. According to Pliny, the fox, cunning as he is in other matters, shows a peculiar cunning in this; although he is light and swift of foot, he does not venture over a frozen stream until he has first studied the nature of the ice. Mark how he does that. He listens attentively to hear if there is any sound of water flowing underneath; if he hears it flowing noisily, it will be a long time before he trusts himself to the ice. Why so? The ice bears him up at the bank. Yes, but it would not do so in the middle of the stream, where it must necessarily be thinner, since the water makes such a noise at the bank. He knows that, therefore, although he might take a few steps without danger, yet he could not cross the river without imperilling his life, and so he prefers to go another way.
My dear brethren, our life is a passage, and a very dangerous one; for we have to bring our one immortal soul from time to eternity. Can we then afford to take blindly the first way that seems a little safe, and trust ourselves to it? No; he who wishes to act prudently and secure his soul's salvation goes far more carefully to work. Now, he thinks, while I am strong and healthy, this or that appears good and desirable to me; but how will it be hereafter? Will it bring me to the haven of salvation? What shall I think of it at the end of my life? Oh, if we acted thus, how far different would be our opinion of things from what it now is! As it is, our understanding, especially in what concerns our souls, is darkened and blinded by many evil inclinations and appetites, by our love for creatures and by our own self-love, so that it is almost incapable of forming a correct judgment of good and evil. But when we come to the last supreme hour; when the lighted candle is in our hand, the eyes of the body are in deed dimmed, but the eyes of the mind become all the clearer; and how our judgment, our wishes and desires will then be altered! " When he shall sleep? says Job of the vain worldling, "he shall open his eyes, and find nothing." (Job 27:19) When he begins to sleep the last sleep, his eyes will be opened for the first time, and he will see what he before neither wished nor tried to see. The sins that he committed through culpable ignorance and therefore did not look on as evil, or that he continued to commit in doubt, or that he excused and palliated, or even thought nothing of, " when he shall sleep? when he is at the point of death, they shall weigh on his conscience like a millstone.
Go down to the Moselle, my dear brethren, and see how easily a huge balk is drawn hither and thither by one man, as long as it floats in the water; but if even a part of it is on the bank it takes all the strength of two, three, or four horses to move it. So shall we find it, too, with our sins. During life we are, as it were, floating in the water; we think so little that sins appear but a light matter to us; we drag them along one after the other without feeling their wickedness, without being aware of any weight on our conscience. But " when he shall sleep," when a man comes to the point of death and has to drag his sins out of the water to the haven of eternity; then he opens his eyes and sees what an intolerable burden he has been bearing about with him. Then will appear as great balks of timber the revengeful feelings he so long entertained against his enemy, the scandal he gave by his loose conduct, vanity in dress, and dissolute behavior, the freedom with which he allowed his eyes to wander on dangerous objects, the impure thoughts and desires that he so often amused his imagination with, not believing or wishing to believe that they were vicious or dangerous, the pleasures that he looked on as innocent, the confessions that he made insincerely, not disclosing his secret sins, the confessions he made through hypocrisy, mere custom, human respect, without true sorrow and repentance, without a firm resolution of amendment, without avoiding the proximate occasion of sin, without restoring ill-got ten goods things of which he thought little and made no scruple of; those uncharitable conversations about the faults of others that tend to injure their good name; those superstitious practices contrary to the teaching of the Church that were indulged in with even a show of piety; those injustices so frequently committed in business and so easily excused as trifling; that carelessness on the part of parents and superiors with regard to their children and subjects; all these things, of which so little is made now, "when he shall sleep, " when he shall come to the haven of eternity, will appear in their full gravity. Then will he say as the wicked king Antiochus said on his death-bed: "Into what tribulation am I come, and into what floods of sorrow, wherein now I am: I that was pleasant and beloved in my power. But now I remember the evils that I did in Jerusalem." (Mach 6:11) Now I remember, will many a one cry out, now I remember the sins I committed at home, in the garden, in company, alone, which my sloth, my wilful blindness concealed from me. Alas! what anguish and fear have come upon me now about things that I formerly laughed at! Ah, would I had thought of this before!
Truly, my dear brethren, now is the time to think and to weigh everything carefully in the balance of death. Now, while we are still in life and have no fear of death, we often fear and avoid what we shall at the end wish to have eagerly embraced; now we long and yearn for and look on as a great happiness what we shall then wish we had avoided as the greatest evil. Solitude, humiliation, self-denial, mortification of the senses, poverty, crosses and misery, the bare idea of such things fills us now with aversion and disgust; but how differently death will speak to us of those things! And here I can best explain my meaning by a story that Plutarch relates of a certain queen. Mark what I am about to say, my dear brethren, not for the sake of the story, which I bring forward only as a simile, but on account of the application of it to our subject. Berenice, wife of King Deiotarus, and a model of beauty, heard that there was, in a certain village, a peasant girl who resembled her in every particular, features, gait, and gesture, so that if she were clad in royal robes she might be mistaken for the queen. The king, and especially the queen, were very anxious to see this girl and sent for her to come to court. And now comes the wonderful part of the story. The queen and the girl entered the hall of the palace by different doors at the same time; but hardly had they come together when the queen held her nose tightly with her fingers, the peasant girl flung her hands up above her head and both fled precipitately without greeting each other. The fact of the matter was that the queen, being delicately reared, could not bear the odor of hay, straw, and cow-dung that came from the peasant girl, while the latter on her part, being unused to perfumes, could not stand the smell of the balsams and other scents with which the queen's garments were saturated, so that to avoid fainting, she had to hold her head with both hands and escape as quickly as possible. Thus they went away, having the same opinion of each other; the queen thinking the girl smelt ill and the girl having the same opinion of the queen;, both were right in their own imagination, according to the training they had received.
Now for the application of this. It- sometimes happens that two women of equal age and standing go to church together; the one pious, humble, modest, according to the Christian law; the other worldly, vain, light-minded, bold. In the same way two young men meet; the one quiet, well-reared, inclined to piety and the fear of God; the other insolent, proud, dissolute. Two men meet; one goes regularly to church, to sermons and devotions, the other seldom; the one is resigned to the will of God in poverty, contempt, and adversity; the other lives in splendor, dignity, and superfluity. If we could see the heart, we should find out the different opinions those people form of each other. The vain woman, the tepid man would think: oh, what a simple woman or girl! what a melancholy man! See how abject they are, with their prayer-books always under the arm, the rosary always in the hand; they have no pleasure in life! They should enter religion and not live in the world. I would rather die than lead such a life as they lead! See, thinks the dissolute young man with scorn and contempt, what a stupid fellow that other is! how scrupulous he must be! He never omits going to church; never goes into society; he cannot know anything of the world; he ought to turn hermit. Alas! cries the rich man, how poor and miserable that other is! He has hardly enough bread to eat, all his clothes are on his back! God protect me from such misery! And so on. But the others have their say, too. For shame, they think, that men and women should be so haughty and conceited ! How proud and stuck-up they are! How dissolute in their be havior! Ho\v vain and scandalous in dress! How inconsiderate in speech, how irreverent in the house of God; how luxurious in eating and drinking; how idle and useless in their mode of life! Are they Christians? Do they ever think of their souls? Do they expect to get to heaven? Thus they mutually reproach each other's mode of life; just as the queen and the peasant girl found each other's presence insupportable. Now, which of the two parties is right? Which will gain the victory?
You who are skilled in the law know very well that if one of two contending parties gives way voluntarily to the other the latter gains the case, and the suit is at an end even before the judge pronounces sentence. Wait now, and see which of the were parties in question will be the first to yield. "When he shall sleep, he shall open his eyes." When they come to the point of death their eyes will be opened. Then will the dissolute young man moan and sigh, if not in words, at least with the heart, if so much time shall be given him: " Therefore we have erred. " Ah, what a mistake I have made! In what a wretched, immoral, godless manner I have spent my young years! What will now become of my soul? And would that I had served my God better! Then will the tepid, luxurious, idle, rich man cry out, as the pious Philip II. of Spain did on his death-bed: " How happy I would be now if I had spent my life in some corner of a desert." Then will he sigh forth, like that dying rich man of whom St. Vincent Ferrer speaks: " I have built many houses on earth; would that I had built even one small cell in heaven!" Then will he cry out with that dying courtier: " I have served a mortal king for some forty years; would that I had spent the twentieth part of that time in the service of the Emperor of heaven! I have written many reams of paper; would that I had used one leaf to write out my sins for a general confession! " Then will that vain woman, if so much grace will be given her, full of anguish and remorse, send for a confessor, and exclaim with lips and heart: Ah, would to God! Ah, if I had only. .. ! Well? What do you wish for? If you had only what? Ah, if I had only lived a more pious, devout, and Christian life! If I had only made more use of my crucifix than of my looking-glass! If I had only been more zealous in going to adore God in the church, and in attending sermons and devotions, than in paying visits to mere mortals! If I had only my rosary more frequently in my hands than the pack of cards! If I had only wrapped myself up in a mantle many a time, so that no eye could see me, instead of giving scandal to others by my indecent dress! If I had only spent more time in adorning my soul with virtues than in tricking out my body with vain apparel! If I had only given to Christ in His poor what I squandered on luxury and superfluities! If I had only chastised my body with penances instead of indulging in those pleasures I sought after so eagerly! If I had only mortified my body by hair-shirts and disciplines and iron girdles instead of decking it out for show! If I had only given the morning to devotion in stead of spending it in sleep! But what a change in your opinion! Those wishes are quite contrary to what you formerly expressed. Now you appear to wish to have led the very life that formerly inspired you with horror and disgust. Ah, so it is! Now you wish you had acted like those whose piety and modesty you used to hold in derision. So you have completely changed your judgment; and why? The blessed candle that I hold in my hand to remind me that I am about to journey into eternity has filled my eyes with such a powerful light that I now can see what I before was blind to. I have made a great mistake; I must ac knowledge it!
Sighs of that kind and a repentance that in many cases comes too late are common enough amongst all sinners and tepid Christians who, during their lives, have seldom thought of death; they are like moles: blind during life, and able to see only when at the point of death. I would wish to call upon you, Reverend Fathers who have to attend the dying, as witnesses of the truth of what I say, if you were allowed to speak out freely what you have heard in those death-bed confessions. I appeal to all who have ever assisted at a death-bed. What signs have you remarked in the dying person? When he was filled with fear, anguish, remorse, and repentance, was it not because he had not been zealous enough in the service of God, because he had not been sufficiently careful to avoid sin? If he was filled with consolation, was it not because he had performed good works, borne his cross es with patience, fasted, given alms, and practised different devotions and mortifications? Were not these the cause of the inward peace and joy he experienced at the last? Truly the sen tence of death is right and just!
Such is the way, my dear brethren, in which a soul desirous of salvation often remembers death, and that, too, in a way that helps to amendment of life and makes her think beforehand what she would wish to have done and omitted at the approach of death, so that she may now regulate her life accordingly, She asks herself: is the life I am now leading one that will bring comfort or anguish to me on my death-bed? Should I like to die with the goods of others in my possession, in that dangerous intimacy, in that impure love in which I have hitherto lived? Should I like to die in that hatred and anger against my neighbor, with that secret sin on my conscience that I have not yet properly confessed? Ah, no! God forbid! Why, then, should I wait any longer, since death may surprise me in any place, at any time? At once, therefore, I will restore those ill-gotten goods, avoid that dangerous intimacy and occasion, change that hatred into Christian charity and meekness, confess my sins candidly, and follow the humble Gospel of Christ to the best of my ability! That is the real, practical manner of thinking on death, "O that they would be wise and would understand, and would provide for their last end! " Oh, if we all frequently thought of death in that manner! No other means should we require to lead a Christian life, no other to die a happy death. This, as Silveira remarks, seems to be what Our Lord desired to teach us when He raised the dead to life. How did He act when He raised the daughter of Jairus? " He went in," says St. Matthew, " and took her by the hand. And the maid arose. This was all the ceremony He used on that occasion, and having worked the miracle, He went His way. How did He act in the case of the widow's son of Nairn? " Young man," He exclaimed, " I say to you, arise." The dead man stood up, ( and He gave him to his mother." a That was all. He raised Lazarus from the grave. "Lazarus," He cried out, "come forth. And presently he that had been dead came forth. Jesus said to them: Loose him and let him go." Why did He do no more on those occasions? Be cause, when healing the sick, He generally gave an exhortation to the people, as was the case with the man born blind, whom we read of in the ninth chapter of St. John, and of the paralytic man in the fifth chapter, to the latter of whom He addressed this exhortation before dismissing him: " Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest some worse thing happen to you." Why did He not act in the same manner when raising the dead, especially since He had such a fine opportunity of exhorting the people to good, and besides those whom He restored to life, being still young, would require some words of warning to induce them to avoid the dangers that threaten youth? " No, " says Silveira, " that was not necessary; for death itself was their best teach er." For he who has once died and knows what death is, requires no other master to teach him to live well; while the mere sight of dead people was already sermon enough for the bystanders. He who meditates seriously on death needs no other incentive to amend his life and avoid sin: "For death itself is the best teacher."
But, alas! thought of death, practical meditation, careful provision for the last end, how rare you are amongst men! From how many hearts are you not excluded day by day and year by year! The inordinate care for temporal things, as if we had to live here for eternity, insatiable desires that seek a heaven on this earth leave no room for you in the heart. The celebrated Italian preacher, Father Paul Segneri, of our Society, ascended the pulpit once on Ash Wednesday and commenced his sermon in the following words: "My dear brethren, to my great sorrow I must announce to you sad and unexpected tidings. Pay attention to what I am about to say; for it will certainly frighten you." And then he kept silent for a moment. The people were amazed; they pricked up their ears, and stared open-mouthed at the preacher, partly through curiosity, partly through fear, to hear what was coming next. " Listen to me," he said in a deep voice, quoting the words of St. Paul to the Hebrews: It is appointed to men once to die, and after this, the judgment. The sentence is pronounced; all of us who are here present, without exception, must die. This is the news I have for you." Then he kept silent again. The people's astonishment and fear were almost changed into laughter at this unexpected turn things had taken; they began to shake their heads and to murmur. "Is this the terrible news?" they said. "Is the man trying to make fools of us with his silly talk? Do we not know well enough, does not our daily experience convince us that we must die? " This sudden change in his audience was the very thing that the clever and zealous preacher wanted. " Pardon me," he said, " pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, if my news has fallen short of your expectations; however, I have not deceived you, but you have deceived me. To judge from the lives that most of you lead I could not persuade myself that you had the least knowledge of death. I see you sunk altogether in earthly things, given up to transitory pleasures and joys, indulging in sins and vices of all kinds without fear or shame, and leading dissolute, idle, worldly lives. What else could I think but that you knew nothing of death, and looked forward to living always on this earth? Therefore I thought I had some news for you;" and he went on with his sermon. But my time is nearly up and I must close. I do so maintaining that the reproof that was necessary for the Italians in those days would also be required for the Germans in our day. For truly in our country there are many, I am afraid, who live as if they knew nothing of death. And forgetfulness of death is the cause of their wicked lives, for they either refuse altogether to cast a thought on it, or else they think of it in a careless manner. "Therefore," says the Prophet David, " pride has held them fast; they are covered with their iniquity and their wickedness. Their iniquity has come forth, as it were, from fatness: they have passed in to the affection of the heart." And what is the cause of that? "For there is no regard to their death." Therefore evil comes forth, as it were, out of their very entrails. There is nothing for me to do but to sigh forth in the words I have already quoted for you: " that they would be wise and would understand and would provide for their last end! "
Ah, brethren, why are we so backward in meditating on death? Why do we so obstinately close our hearts to it, although it will infallibly come to each and every one of us? How carefully we set about some temporal end we have in view, although we may never gain it! What preparations we make to entertain a dear friend, although he may never come to visit us! How eagerly we work and plan in order to leave rich legacies to our children, although they may die before us! Death is infallibly certain for all; why, then, do we not think of it? Why do we not take care that we may once die well? Once, I say; because if we make any mistake in dying, we shall never have the chance of repairing it. And why should we not think of death? Tell me poor mortal, why do you so obstinately reject such 9, wholesome consideration? You must die; you may die this very moment. If death were to come to you now, and it is actually coming to many, and may easily come to you, you would go to hell for all eternity. But you do not consider this, and therefore you go on living as a careless sinner. You must not say: the thought of death is a sad one, and therefore I reject it; but say and acknowledge candidly: my sins and the love I have for earthly things embitter the thought of death, so that I can never recall it without shuddering. Therefore I will at once be converted; at once detest my sins and detach my heart from the false joys of this miserable world. Then I shall be able to think of death, and make provision to avoid danger without sadness. But you refuse to do this because you do not now wish to detach your heart from sensual and sinful pleasures. I say to you, how ever, and let the words sink deeply into your mind, what St. Malachy said once to a vain worldling. The latter had often been warned by the holy man to give up a dangerous intimacy, but had been deaf to all exhortations. At last St. Malachy said to him: Sir, you refuse to renounce this sinful love, although you are required to do so by the love of God, the love of your own soul and its eternal salvation, as well as by the fear of eternal ruin; " but the Lord God Himself will make you renounce it even against your will." That very evening, as the unhappy man was going in pursuit of forbidden pleasure, he was assassinated on the way. But his soul, sunk, alas! deep in hell, amidst terrible torments, how it now must curse the unlawful love that ensnared and infatuated it! How it must curse its own obstinacy in re fusing to listen to the warnings of the Saint who meant so well by it! Consider now this incident, and say to yourself: if I do not at once renounce my sinful life God will separate me from it against my will. I will not avoid that sinful intimacy; I will not restore those ill-gotten goods; I will not give up the hatred I feel against my neighbor; God will take all from me against my will. I will not amend my bad habits by a speedy conversion; God will separate me from them by force, by a speedy death. If I will not now give up my sinful life, I shall have to do it against my will.
Now is the time, my dear brethren, to prepare. Now is the time for frequent and mature reflection. Now is the time to do that which will render the death that certainly awaits us a happy one! I dare not advise all of you to do what one of our brethren used to practise in this way daily. He was sacristan, and as we have to make an hours meditation every day, he used to go for that hour into the church, and there lay himself out with folded hands and closed eyes on the bier, just as if he was about to be carried to the grave, and then he would say to himself: " On this bier and in this position you will one day lie cold and dead; do you believe that? If so, live today as you would then wish to have lived." Truly a beautiful and salutary meditation. But, my dear brethren, I dare not advise all to adopt the same plan; many would be frightened out of their lives at it. Yet we all can and should adopt that form of meditation on death to which St. Bernard exhorts us: " In all his works let him say to himself: if you were now about to die, would you do this? " In all temptations and occasions of sin let each one ask himself: if I were now about to die, would I commit that sin? Would I speak, act, think in that manner? Would I listen to that talk, look at that object? Would I permit that person to act as he does? And if I should, at the hour of death, wish to have acted in a certain way, let me choose that way now. Perhaps death is actually very near me. If I were now about to die, would I not wish that the action I intend doing, the work I am engaged on, the devotion I am practising were done well and zealously? Would I not wish to have borne this trial, poverty, illness, and tribulation patiently for God's sake? Truly I would! Therefore I will do so now and suffer resignedly and with Christian fortitude. happy man who has death daily before his eyes! He belongs to the number of those faithful servants of whom Our Lord has said in the Gospel: "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching. " Let us all, then, in future, think and act accordingly. Amen.