this life there were neither a heaven nor a hell, could they think less of it than they do now? And it is on this account that they lead such wicked lives. My brother, if you wish to lead a proper life, endeavour to live during the days which may remain to thee, keeping death ever in view. " O death, thy judgment is good." (Ecclus. xli. 3.) Oh how well does he who judges of things and regulates his actions act; who judges and regulates them, with death ever in view. The memory of death makes us lose ah" the affection which we feel for things that are earthly. " Let the end of this life be thought upon, and there will be nothing in this world to be loved," observes S. Lawrence Justinian. " For all that is in the world: the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." (i S. John ii. 16.) All the pleasures of the world may be reduced to the pleasures of sense, the pleasures of riches and honours; but he who thinks that within a short time he will be reduced to ashes, and that he will be food for worms under the earth, despises all the pleasures the world can give him.
And the saints, indeed, who have kept death ever in view, have despised all the goods of this world. To keep death ever in view, S. Charles Borromeo kept a skull upon a little table, so that he might continually contemplate it. Cardinal Baronius had these words inscribed upon his ring: " Remember death!" The Venerable Father Juvenal Ancina, Bishop of Saluzzo, had this motto written on a skull, " What thou art I was once; what I am thou wilt be." Another saint, a hermit, being asked when dying why he was so rejoiced, answered, "I have kept death ever before my eyes, and therefore, now that it is come, I see nothing new in it."
What folly would it not be for a traveller, if when travelling, he were only to think of making himself great in that country through which he only has to pass, without minding the being reduced to live miserably in that country where he will have to spend his whole life? And is he not foolish, who seeks his happiness in this world, where he has to remain but a few days, and who by so doing, runs the risk of being unhappy in the world to come, where he will have to remain for ever?
He who possesses anything that is borrowed does not place
