On the Death of the Sinner

First Point - What will be the state of the sinner at the hour of his death? What fears! What anxieties! What a contrariety of desires and sentiments. In life he had little faith, but how great will be his faith at death! In life his hope has been presumptuous and unfounded, and at death he can claim only despair as his portion. In life he could have had charity, he could have loved his God, but he was unwilling to do so. He will turn away in disgust from the goods, the pleasures and the creatures which he has preferred to his salvation and his God, but he will not be detached from them. He will be confounded at the thought of his many crimes, but he will not be repentant, or if perchance he should be repentant, it will be a forced repentance that will but add to his affliction and unhappiness. It is the just penalty, O Lord, which Thou dost impose on the sinner, to make him at variance with himself at death, because he has lived at variance with Thy law and with Thee during life.

Second Point - The sinner will be tormented when he remembers his past sins and his abuse of so many graces. He will be tormented by the thought of all the pleasures which have been so vain, so worthless and so fleeting, and which are soon to drag him down into the abyss of hell. Those pleasures which were his happiness in life, will be his punishment at death. Penance will then be the object of his vain desires, but his heart will be hardened by despair.

Third Point - The sinner's greatest torment will be the fear of what is to come. He knows that in a few hours he will pass from time into eternity. He knows that if he is not in the state of grace, an eternity of punishment awaits him. And not only does he know that he is not in the state of grace, not only does his soul bear witness that he is no longer a child of God and an heir to the kingdom of heaven, but he feels the visible marks of his reprobation in the multitude and gravity of his crimes, in the hardness of his heart, in the troubles of his conscience, in his distrust in the mercy of God and in his despair which overwhelms him. Thus he finds himself in a frightful state; hell anticipated! into which he is about to fall. Behold then the false and fleeting happiness of the sinner! Which does it arouse in you, envy or horror?

Ask yourself whether you desire to die the death of the sinner. Why then should you live the life of the sinner, since it ends invariably in this horrible death?

The death of the wicked is very evil. - Psalm 33:22

The sinner meets with this most just punishment, that as in life he has been forgetful of God, in death he forgets himself. - Saint Augustine of Hippo

- text taken from Meditations for Every Day in a Month, by Father François Nepveu