represent to Eve how sweet and pleasant the fruit was, she answered at once that God had forbidden it to be touched and that under a severe penalty: "God hath commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die."[1] Eve! would that thou hadst remained firm in thy resolution! Then shouldst thou indeed have done well and save thyself and us, too, from destruction! But when the crafty serpent had persuaded her to forget the warning, and to believe his lies: "No, you shall not die the death;"[2] be not afraid of death; the Lord does not mean it so; then, without any hesitation, the unhappy resolution was formed of transgressing the divine command: "She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave it to her husband, who did eat"[3] and thus the sin was accomplished. An evident proof of the evils that follow the neglect and forgetfulness of the thought of death.
All creatures remind us of death that we may avoid evil. And we poor, wretched mortals, who are naturally so inclined to evil, how much more are we not in need of something to restrain us from evil, and to keep us on the right path! Yet we are not unprovided with that restraint if we only take the warning to heart. Wherever we go divine Providence has surrounded us with exhortations to this effect. Nearly everything we perceive by the senses is a picture and messenger of death, that calls out to us; memento mori! remember, O man! that thou must die. Hardly a day in the year on which we go out into the street that we do not see either a corpse being carried to the grave, or a priest going with the Blessed Sacrament to a dying person, or some one clad in mourning, or an altar in the church on which Mass is offered for souls departed, or else a grave-stone in the church-yard under which some one lies buried; or some friend comes up to us and says: such a one is dead; such another has received the last sacraments; and so on. Nothing grows or is born on earth, in the air, or in the water, but something has died or decayed in its place. If the wind blows it reminds us of the words of holy Job: "Remember that my life is but wind, and my eyes shall not return to see good things."[4] If a fog rises in the morning, see, exclaims St. James the Apostle, that
- ↑ Præceplt nobis Deus ne comederemus, et ne tangeremus illud, ne forte moriamur.—Gen, iii. 3.
- ↑ Nequaquam morte moriemini.—Ibid. 4.
- ↑ Tulit de fructu illius, et comedit, deditque viro suo, qui comedit.—Ibid. 6.
- ↑ Memento quia ventus est vita mea, et non revertetur oculus meus ut videat bona.—Job vii. 7.
