DEATH IS A CERTAINTY.

"It is appointed unto men once to die."(Hebr: 9:27

The sentence of death has been written against all men: you are a man; you must die. “Our other goods and evils,” says St. Augustine, “are uncertain; death alone is certain” (Serm.97, E.H.). It is uncertain whether the infant that is just born will be poor or rich, whether he will have good or bad health, whether he will die in youth or in old age.

But it is certain that he will die. The stroke of death will fall on all the nobles and monarchs of the earth. When death comes there is no earthly power able to resist it. St. Augustine says, “Fire, water, the sword, and the power of princes may be resisted ; but death cannot be resisted” (In Ps. cxxi). Belluacensis relates that at the end of his life a certain king of France said “Behold, with all my power, I cannot induce death to wait one more hour for me.”

When the term of life arrives, it is not deferred a single moment. Thou hast appointed his bounds, which cannot be passed (Job,xiv, 5).

Dearly beloved reader, though you should live as many years as you expect, a day will come, and on that day an hour, which will be the last for you. For me, who am now writing, and for you, who read this little book, has been decreed the day and the moment when I will no longer write, and you will no longer read. Who is the man that shall live and not see death? (Ps. lxxxviii, 49). The sentence has been already passed. There never has been a man so foolish as to flatter himself that he will not have to die. What has happened to your forefathers, will also happen to you. Of the immense numbers that lived in this country in the beginning of the last century there is not one now living. Even the princes and monarchs of the earth have changed their country: of them nothing now remains but a marble mausoleum with a grand inscription, which only serves to teach us, that of the great ones of this world nothing is left but a little dust inclosed in the tomb. “Tell me,” says Saint Bernard, “where are the lovers of the world? Of them nothing remains save ashes and worms” (Medit. C. 3).

Since our souls will be eternal, we ought to procure, not a fortune which soon ends, but one that will be everlasting. What would it profit you to be happy here (if it were possible for a soul to be happy without God), if hereafter you must be miserable for all eternity? You have built that house to your entire satisfaction; but remember that you must soon leave it to rot in a grave. You have obtained that dignity which raises you above others; but death will come and reduce you to the level of the poorest peasant.

(Extracted from St. Alphonsus Ligouri's Preparation for death)