QUOTATION: Desire for Death

It is a sign that we love God but little, if we have no desire soon to go to see Him, feeling certain that we shall never be able to love Him more. For the meantime, let us love God as much as we can in this life. For this alone should we live to increase in our love to Him ; the measure of love to God in which death will find us, will be the measure of our love to God in a blessed eternity.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death

QUOTATION: Dead Before Death

Dead before death, alive after death.

--Epitaph of St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: How the Saints Die

It seems in the sight of the unwise that the servants of God die with sorrow, and unwillingly, even as the worldly do ; but no, for God knows well how to comfort His children when they are dying ; and amidst the pains of their death, He makes them feel a certain incomparable sweetness, as a foretaste of that Paradise, which within a short time He will bestow upon them. Like those who die in sin, who even upon their death-bed experience certain foretastes of hell, such as remorse, fear, and despair; so on the contrary do the saints, by the acts of love which at that time they often make towards God, by the desire and by the hope that is in them, of very soon enjoying God, begin even before death to feel that peace which they will afterwards fully enjoy in heaven. Death to the saints is not a punishment, but a reward.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death

QUOTATION: Preparation of Death

The Lord does not say that we must prepare ourselves when death comes upon us, but that death, when it comes, must find us prepared.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death 

QUOTATION: Death

Nothing is more certain that death, nothing is more uncertain that its hour.

--St. Anselm, Meditations, 7.

QUOTATION: Sin and Death

What is it that renders death terrible? Sin. We must therefore fear sin, not death.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: The Epitaph of St. Francis of Assisi

Dead before death, alive after death.

--Epitaph of St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Death

Death is God’s necessary gift to a universe in which evil has been let loose.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: God Will Triumph

Even if the forces of darkness appear to prevail, those who believe in God know that evil and death, do not have the final say.

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: The Dying

We should be as tender to the dying as we are to little children. We must take great care not to leave them alone; no one fears loneliness more than the dying.

--St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, Conferences and Instructions

QUOTATION: Hell

In truth-- one thing is certain; there exists a night into whose solitude no voice reaches; there is a door through which we can only walk alone -- the door of death. In the last analysis all the fear in the world is fear of this loneliness. From this point of view, it is possible to understand why the Old Testament has only one word for hell and death, the word sheol; it regards them as ultimately identical. Death is absolute loneliness. But the loneliness into which love can no longer advance is -- hell.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Overcoming Existential Fear

When a child has to walk through the woods in the dark, he feels frightened however convincingly he has been shown that there is no reason at all to be frightened. As soon as he is alone in the darkness, and thus has the experience of utter loneliness, fear arises, the fear peculiar to man, which is not fear of anything in particular but simply fear in itself. Fear of a particular thing is basically harmless; it can be removed by taking away the thing concerned. For example, if someone is afraid of a vicious dog, the matter can be swiftly settled by putting the dog on a chain. Here we come up against something much deeper, namely, the fact that where man falls into extreme loneliness he is not afraid of anything definite that could be explained away; on the contrary, he experiences the fear of loneliness, the uneasiness and vulnerability of his own nature, something that cannot be overcome by rational means. Let us take another example. If someone has to keep watch alone in a room with a dead person, he will always feel his position to be somehow or other eerie, even if  he is unwilling to admit it to himself and is capable of explaining to himself rationally the groundlessness of his fear. He knows perfectly well in his own mind that the corpse can do him no harm and that his position might be more dangerous if the person concerned were still alive. What arises here is a completely different kind of fear, not fear of anything in particular, but, in being alone with death, the eerieness of loneliness in itself, the exposed nature of existence. How then, we must ask, can such fear be overcome if proof of its groundlessness has no effect? Well, the child will lose his fear the moment there is a hand there to take him and lead him and a voice to talk to him; at the moment therefore at which he experiences the fellowship of a loving human being. Similarly, he who is alone with the corpse will feel the bout of fear recede when there is a human being with him, when he experiences the nearness of a "you". This conquest of fear reveals at the same time once again the nature of the fear; that it is the fear of loneliness, the anxiety of a being that can only live with a fellow being. The fear peculiar to man cannot be overcome by reason but only by the presence of someone who loves him.

--Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Contrition at Death

Just souls surprised by death, for example, during sleep, or at a moment when they do not have sufficient control of reason, were not able at the last moment to make an act of contrition, a meritorious act which would have obtained the remission of venial sins. Such sins are remitted to them by the act of charity and contrition which they make immediately after death, at the moment of the particular judgment. This act indeed is no longer meritorious. But it is an act of charity and contrition which suffices to remit venial sins, though the soul must still endure the suffering due to these faults. Such is the teaching of St. Thomas, admitted also by Suarez, and by the generality of theologians.

This doctrine is very probable. Nothing prevents the separated soul from making at once an act of repentance. It is no longer hindered by the passions. General contrition would suffice for the remission of these sins. But, under the light of the particular judgment, the soul sees all its sins singly and consequently repents of each singly. This is a wonderful complement of the act of contrition made on earth, although that complement is not meritorious. Certainly it is better to make this act of contrition before death. To sacrifice life in union with the Masses celebrated at the moment of death would have been meritorious. But, while it is not now meritorious, it obtains the remission of venial sins. Such a soul is a saint, because all its venial sins are at once remitted, and it can no longer sin. This is truly a beautiful doctrine.

--Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Life Everlasting

QUOTATION: Immortality

The soul that loves God dies not. She simply reaches the end of her journey, and the barriers fall. She only changes her condition. Her love of suffering becomes a love of beatitude. Her body itself does but rest in the earth, therein preparing for its renewal in glory. Plants and animals die, but man dies not, he only changes his state. The earth will not retain the dust of his bones. It will restore all for the glorious resurrection, and the whole man will live again forever.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Salvation at the Moment of Death

When any one is passing to the other life, all the hopes that are conceived of his salvation depend on the judgment formed as to whether he has died in resignation or not. If, after having, during life, welcomed to your embrace all things that have come from God, you in like manner embrace death also in order to accomplish his divine will, you will certainly secure your salvation and die the death of a saint.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Way of Salvation and Perfection

QUOTATION: Fear Not

Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.

--Blessed John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Death

When we have lived a good life, we must not fear death: it's the gate to heaven.  There is so little distance between heaven and earth, that God always hears us.  Only a veil separates us from God.

--St. Andre Bessette, as quoted in Frère André disait souvent... Recueil de paroles de Frère André rapportées par ses amis.

QUOTATION: Seize the Day

Do now what you wish to have done when your moment comes to die.

--St. Angela Merici

QUOTATION: Death

The rational soul is of its nature immortal, and therefore death is not natural to man in so far as man has a soul. It is natural to his body, for the body, since it is formed of things contrary to each other in nature, is necessarily liable to corruption, and it is in this respect that death is natural to man. But God who fashioned man is all powerful. And hence, by an advantage conferred on the first man, He took away that necessity of dying which was bound up with the matter of which man was made. This advantage was however withdrawn through the sin of our first parents. Death is then natural, if we consider the matter of which man is made and it is a penalty, inasmuch as it happens through the loss of the privilege whereby man was preserved from dying.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: The Consequences of Original Sin

 

If for some wrongdoing a man is deprived of some benefit once given to him, that he should lack that benefit is the punishment of his sin. Now in man s first creation he was divinely endowed with this advantage that, so long as his mind remained subject to God, the lower powers of his soul were subjected to the reason and the body was subjected to the soul. But because by sin man's mind moved away from its subjection to God, it followed that the lower parts of his mind ceased to be wholly subjected to the reason. From this there followed such a rebellion of the bodily inclination against the reason, that the body was no longer wholly subject to the soul. Whence followed death and all the bodily defects. For life and wholeness of body are bound up with this, that the body is wholly subject to the soul, as a thing which can be made perfect is subject to that which makes it perfect. So it comes about that, conversely, there are such things as death, sickness and every other bodily defect, for such misfortunes are bound up with an in complete subjection of body to soul.

--St. Thomas Aquinas