Pray in humility, O ye doubting, distrustful souls! God's truth is near enough and plain enough. It is you who are too high-minded to see it, too proud to pray that you may know it. Ask not with Pilate, "What is truth? what is truth?" in the presence of the Infinite Truth, and then, like him, turn away and never hear it.
Cease not to pray, though the morn is long in dawning, and the day of redemption be delayed; but cease not to pray humbly, for, says the wise man, "the prayer of him that humbleth himself shall pierce the clouds, and he shall not depart until the Most High behold." [Footnote 102]
[Footnote 102: Ecclus. xxxv. 21.]
[USCCB: Sirach xxxv. 17.]
Sermon XVIII.
Preparation For A Good Death.
(For The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost.)
Isaiah xxxviii. 1.
"Put thy house in order,
for thou shall die, and not live."
When I read the Gospel for to-day, which describes the raising of the widow's son to life, I ask myself the question—Did he die prepared? When his friends could no longer give him any hope of recovery—when he was forced to make that bitter acknowledgment to himself, "My time is come," then did he make ready to die? Did he put his house in order? Had he time to do it? Was he in a fit state to do it? When his soul had departed, could his widowed mother console herself with the thought—He lived a good life, and he died a good death? We can not answer for the young man, as the Gospel tells us nothing either of his life or of his death, but we can answer for many whose lives and whose deaths we know; and, knowing our own lives, we ought to be able to answer for the kind of death we would die if the word of the Lord came to us as it came to King Ezechias: "Put thy house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live."
A friend, about to take a journey to Europe, remarked: "I have arranged all my affairs, so as to have a pleasant journey." He did well. We will do better when we shall have arranged all our affairs for a pleasant journey to that far-off land from which we shall never return. Let us see, brethren, what it is to arrange one's affairs that one may die a good death. This preparation may be summed up in the fulfilment of three obligations—the first, to God; the second, to our neighbor; and the last, to one's self.