While St. Wilfrid of York lay dying in the fair town of Oundle, the monks did not cease chanting night and day around his bed, though with much ado, so bitterly they wept. When they came to the one hundred and third psalm, and were sweetly and solemnly singing the words, "Emittes spiritum tuum, et creabuntur, et renovabis faciem terræ," "Thou shalt send forth thy spirit, and they shall be created; and thou shalt renew the face of the earth," the words stirred the soul of the careworn abbot, by whose pillow lay the Lord's body and blood; he turned his head gently, and without a sigh gave back his soul to God.[42]
St. Gilbert, when he was more than a century old, used to exclaim, "How long, O Lord, wilt thou forget me for ever? Woe is me, for the time of my sojourning is prolonged!" His soul was at last released one morning at the hour of dawn, while the monks were repeating the verse of the office, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand."
Twenty abbots assembled to witness the death of St. Stephen Harding at Citeaux. Hearing them whisper that he had nothing to fear after so holy and austere a life, he said to them trembling, "I assure you I go to God in fear and trembling. If my baseness should be found to have ever done any good, even in this I fear lest I should not have preserved that grace with the humility and care I ought."
St. Francis of Assisi, when he found he was dying, wished to be laid on the bare ground. When this was done, he crossed his arms and said, "Farewell, my children. I leave you in the fear of God. Abide therein. The time of trial and tribulation cometh. Happy are they who persevere in well-doing. For me, I go to God joyfully, recommending you all to his grace." He had the passion according to the Gospel of St. John read to him, and then repeated in a feeble voice the one hundred and forty-first psalm. Having said the final verse, "Bring my soul out of prison," he breathed his last.
St. Thomas Aquinas died lying on ashes sprinkled on the floor. When he saw the holy viaticum in the priest's hands, he said, "I firmly believe that Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is present in this august sacrament. I adore thee, my God and my Redeemer. I receive thee, the price of my redemption, the viaticum of my pilgrimage, for whose honor I have studied, labored, preached, and taught. I hope I have never advanced any tenet as thy word which I had not learned from thee. If through ignorance I have done otherwise, I revoke it all and submit my writings to the judgment of the holy Roman Church." Thus lying in peace and joy, he received the last sacraments, and was heard to murmur, "Soon, soon will the God of all consolation crown his mercy to me and satisfy all my desires. I shall shortly be satiated in him, and drink of the torrent of my delights; be inebriated from the abundance of his house; and in him, the source of life, I shall behold the true light."
When the viaticum was brought to St. Theresa, she rose up in her bed and exclaimed, "My Lord and my Spouse! the desired hour has at length come. It is time for me to depart hence." Her confessor asked her if she wished to be buried in her own convent at Avila. She replied, "Have I any thing of my own in this world? Will they not give me a little earth here?" She died with the crucifix in her hands, repeating, as long as she could speak, the verse of the Miserere, "A contrite and humble heart, O God, thou wilt not despise!"
There is a touching account of a renowned and pious knight who, in the ages of faith, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Following lovingly the traces of our Saviour's steps, his heart became so broken with sorrow and love that his life flowed out through the wound. He visited with tender devotion Nazareth, whose hills leaped for joy when the Divine Word became incarnate in the womb of a Virgin; Mount Tabor, whose summit was lit up by God glorifying his only Son; the river Jordan, consecrated by the baptism our Lord received at the hands of St. John the Baptist; Bethlehem, where in a poor manger were heard the first cries of the Infant Word; the Garden of Gethsemane, which Jesus bedewed with a bloody sweat; Golgotha, where by his blood the Redeemer reconciled earth with heaven; and the glorious tomb whence the God-man issued triumphant over death. Finally, he came to the Mount of Olives. Here contemplating the sacred foot-prints left on the rock by the ascending Saviour, he pressed his lips upon them with loving gratitude; then gathering together all the strength of his love, raising his eyes and hands toward heaven, and longing to ascend by the way taken by our Saviour, "O Lord Jesus!" he cried in all the ardor of his love, "I can no longer find thee or follow thee in this land of exile; grant that my heart may ascend to thee on high!" And, as he uttered these ardent words, his soul fled to God like an arrow direct to its aim.
I find in an old book the following affecting account of the death of Friar Benedict, who died at La Trappe on the twentieth of August, 1674:
"Brother Benedict, of the diocese of Rouen, died five years and a half after his profession, the day of the fête of our father St. Bernard, aged thirty-two years. And as God visited him peculiarly with his grace in the progress of his disease, and at the time of his death, it has been thought desirable, in order both to recognize the mercy of Christ and for the edification of his community, to record the principal circumstances of his life and death.
"He fell sick nearly four years before his death of a disease upon his chest, and although, after that time, he was almost continually oppressed with a violent cough, with extreme pain, and with an intermitting fever, he never manifested even the slightest impatience of his suffering or the least desire to be cured. About Christmas of the year 1673, which preceded his death a few months, his disease increased. But he did not cease to discharge the peculiar offices prescribed to penitents in the monastery. The fever which seized him about the middle of Christmas did not prevent his following the same course of life he had long pursued. Five days after Easter, his disease having considerably advanced, the reverend father abbot ordered him to be conducted to the infirmary. There his fever immediately increased, his limbs inflamed, his cough became more violent, and the struggles in which he passed his nights quite exhausted him. Notwithstanding this, he continued to lie on a hard bed of straw till the moment when they removed him to the ashes, five hours before his death. He rose at four in the morning; he dined at the table of the infirmary, though his weakness was such that he was evidently unable to sustain the weight of his own head. During this time nothing was to be discovered upon his countenance which did not evidence the most complete tranquillity. He had been remarkably ingenious, and had nothing about him which he had not both invented and executed. Three weeks before his death, he said to the father abbot that, as he had been in the habit of constructing many things for the convenience of the monastery, and as it might be troublesome to the abbot to find and introduce workmen into the house after his death, he would on this account, if agreeable to the abbot, instruct one of the brothers in his various arts. The abbot having consented, he instructed a monk in less than a fortnight in the different arts in which he had been accustomed to be employed. And notwithstanding his weakness and pain, he did all this with so much patience and collectedness that he seemed to have lost all remembrance of his sufferings. The father abbot, knowing the grace which God had given to him, and the degree in which God had detached him from the world, thought it his duty to follow up what he believed to be the designs of Providence in regard to him. This led him in the various ordinances of religion to maintain all the rigor which charity and prudence would permit; though in all private communications with him he treated him with the tenderness of a father. One day, when so overcome with pain that he could take nothing, he described his state to the father abbot, accompanying his description with certain expressions of countenance which it is almost impossible to restrain in such circumstances. The father abbot, however, said with severity, (as though he had no compassion for those sufferings in which he sympathized so truly,) that 'he spoke like a man of the world, and that a monk ought to manifest under the worst circumstances the constancy of his soul.' Benedict in an instant assumed that air of severity that never afterward quitted him. The fear lest the great exertions which he made by day and by night, combined with his extreme debility, might suddenly remove him, led them to give him the holy sacrament and extreme unction. He received both with every demonstration of piety. Such, however, was his weakness that he immediately fainted away. The father abbot having asked, before they brought him the extreme unction, if he desired that the whole community should be present at the ceremony, he answered that, 'exterior ceremonies were not of vital importance; that his brethren would derive little edification from him; and that he had more need of their prayers than their presence.' All his conversation during his malady was on the necessity of separation from worldly things, of the joy which he anticipated in death, and of the mercy which God had shown him in suffering him to end his days in the society of the father abbot.
"Some days before his death, the father abbot inquired minutely into the state of his mind; he answered in these very words, 'I consider the day of my death as a festival; I have no desire for any thing here, and I cannot better express my total separation from things below than by comparing myself to a leaf which the wind has lifted from the earth. All that I have read in the sacred Scriptures comes home to me and fills me with joy. Nevertheless, I can in no action of my life see any thing which can sustain the judgment of God, and which is not worthy of punishment; but the confidence which I have in his goodness gives me hope and consolation.' He added, 'How can it be that God should show such compassion to a man who has so miserably served him? I desire death alone; what can a man be thinking of, not always to desire it? What joy, my father, when I remember that I am about to refresh myself in the waters of life.'
"His ordinary reading, for many years of his life, had been the sacred Scriptures, which were so familiar to him that he spoke of little else. He mentioned to the father abbot so many passages, and repeated them in a manner so touching, so animated, and so devotional, that his hearers were at once edified and astonished. Those passages which were uppermost in his mind respected chiefly the majesty of God; but as he had a most humble opinion of his own life, which had however been, in the main, faithful and pure, he always reverted to the subject of the divine compassion. It was in that he found peace and repose.
"On the day of the Assumption, he felt himself so weak that he was unable to leave the infirmary. The father abbot carried him our Lord, whom he received upon his knees, leaning on two of his brethren. Two days afterward, he fell into strong convulsions, and imagined that the hour of his deliverance was come. The father abbot asked, 'Is it with joy that you depart?' 'Yes,' said he, 'from my very heart.' He then added, 'Into thy hands I commend my spirit.'
"The customary prayers were then offered up for the dying; but the convulsions having left him, the father abbot said that the hour of God was not arrived; and having given orders to remove him from the ashes to his bed, he turned to the father abbot with a serene countenance, and said, 'The will of God be done.' He lived three days waiting with anxiety the time when God would have mercy upon him. And such was his desire of death that the father abbot was obliged more than once to say to him that it was not for him to anticipate the designs of Providence. His pangs lasted till within an hour of his death, but he endured them with his accustomed patience and serenity. He said three days before his death that the most dangerous moments were the last, and that he did not doubt the great enemy of man would seek to disquiet him, and therefore requested the prayers of the community. The father abbot, having asked, after some other general discourse, if he knew the guilt of sin, he answered sighing, and, as it were, looking into the recesses of his own soul, and in language expressive of the intensity of his feelings, 'Alas! once I knew it not; but now I see in the Scripture that God claims, as one of his chief attributes, the power of pardoning sin; "I am he who blotteth out your iniquities." I am therefore convinced that sin is a tremendous offence. I am far, indeed, from being like those who are always overwhelmed with a consciousness of their offences, but yet I believe, upon the testimony of faith and Scripture, that sin is a fathomless gulf of ruin.' These words were accompanied with a manner so extraordinary that they touched the very hearts of those who surrounded him.
"His bones having pierced his skin, and his shirt of serge sticking to his wounds, he begged them to move him a little; but at the end of the day, when the person who had the care of him wished again to ease his body, he said, 'My brother, you give me too much ease.' The father abbot having ordered some milk to be brought him, which was the only nourishment he took, he said, 'You wish then, my father, to prolong my life, and are unwilling I should die on the day of St. Bernard.' The father abbot having quitted him, he begged, perceiving that his death approached, that he might be called back. As soon as he saw him, he said, 'Father, my eyes fail me—it is finished.' The father having asked him in what state he found himself, and if he was about to approach Christ, 'Yes, father,' said he, 'by the grace of God, I am. I am not indeed sensible of any extraordinary elevation of my mind to God; but through his mercy I am in perfect peace. God be thanked!' This he repeated three times. The father abbot having asked him if he wished to die upon the cross and upon the ashes, 'Yes,' said he, 'from my heart.' With these words he lost his speech, or, at all events, it was impossible to hear any thing intelligible from him except the name of Jesus, which he pronounced repeatedly. They carried him to the straw spread out in his chamber. He was nearly four hours in a dying state, and preserved his recollection during the whole time. His eyes indicating a wandering state of mind, the father arose, took some holy water, and, having scattered it around him, repeated these words, 'Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered.' His face at this moment resumed its serenity. He kissed the cross several times, and, wanting strength to lay hold of it, they observed that he advanced his head to reverence it every time that it was presented to him. At length all his disquietudes ceased; they beheld him calm, peaceful, serene; and he breathed his last sigh with so much tranquillity that those who watched him scarcely perceived his death."
When William the Conqueror was on his death-bed, he confessed all the sins of his life, from his youth up, aloud and before a large number of priests and nobles from England and Normandy. We read that, after a long agony, on Thursday, the ninth of September, as the sun rose in glorious splendor, William awoke, and presently heard the great bell of the metropolitan church. He asked why it was ringing. "Seigneur," replied his servants, "it is ringing for prime at the church of our Lady St. Mary." Then the king raised his eyes to heaven and, lifting up his hands, said, "I recommend myself to holy Mary, Mother of God, that by her holy prayers she may reconcile me to her dear and beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ." With these words he expired.[43]