Our Own Death
We see but two things on Calvary, Jesus and Mary; and from each we learn a lesson, one about our own death, and one about the deaths of others. Jesus vouchsafes to teach us how to die. If He in His great hour would have His Mother by Him, how shall we dare to die without her?
In all things must we imitate Jesus, although it be in a sphere so infinitely below Him. But most of all, it is of importance to us to imitate Him in His death. If it had been well, He would have loved to spare His Mother that terrific scene, though she perhaps would have accounted her absence a cruel mercy. It was there, at that deathbed, that she became our Mother. There is surely not one of us into whose mouth faith does not many times a day put that universal prayer, the prayer of the pope and the peasant, of the doctor and the scholar, of the rich and the poor, of the religious and the secular, that the Mother of God may assist us in the hour of death. But we must embed this petition into all our prayers. Let us leave to God, without dictation or even wish, the time, and place, and manner of our death, so only that it be not an unprovided death, and above all things not unprovided with Mary.
The hour of death is a thirsty time and exhausts great graces. Unsuspected chasms open suddenly in the soul, and swallow up past years, old habits, and a thousand other things we can ill spare then. The devil reserves his worst weapons for the last. It is very terrible not to be able to die twice, lest the novelty get the better of us the first time,—and it is a tremendous stake. There are great sacraments for that hour but not greater than are needed. Watch a dying man! See how absolutions sink swiftly in his dry soul, like summer rain into the gaping ground, and yet the battle is still coming and going into his eyes. Let us have Mary. Whether she be there visibly or invisibly, whether she speak and work, or work without speaking, let it be an agreement of long standing, a pledge not to be broken, that she shall be present to conduct for us a ceremonial so difficult and yet of such unutterable import. It is worthwhile to spend a whole life in asking this, if only we gain the object of our petition at the last.
What is a good life worth, if it be not crowned by a good death? Yet a good life is the nearest approach in our power to a good death. There have perhaps been comparatively few good deaths which have not come at the end of good lives. And those few, so all the believing world says, have been contrived by Mary. But a good life is the likeliest of all things to bring her to our bedsides in that hour. A cross-bearing life is forever meeting Mary. At crucifixions she is present as it were officially. If Jesus would not die without her, she will love us all the more if we refuse to do so either. However long the agony has been, however troubled in spirit the poor passing soul, blessed above all the dead are those whose eyes Mary herself has closed!
Death of Others
Such is the lesson which Jesus teaches us about our own deaths. We learn one from Mary about the deaths of others. It is, that devotion for those in their last agony is a Mary-like devotion, and most acceptable to her Immaculate Heart. There is not a moment of day or night in which that dread pomp of dying is not going on. There are persons like ourselves, or better than ourselves, and whose friends have with reason loved them more than ever ours have loved us, who are now straitened in their agony, and whose eternal sight of God is trembling anxiously in the balance. Can any appeal to our charity be more piteously eloquent than this? When we think of all that Mary has done for each of those souls, those who are ceaselessly, momentarily fixing their eternity in death, when we call to mind the long train of graces which she has brought to every one of them, and consequently the yearning of her maternal heart for their final perseverance and everlasting salvation, we may form some idea of the gratefulness of this devotion to her.
The deathbed is one of her peculiar spheres. She seems to exercise quite a particular jurisdiction over it. It is there that she so visibly cooperates with Jesus in the redemption of mankind. But she seeks for us to cooperate with her also. She would fain draw our hearts with hers, our prayers to hers. Is she not the one Mother of us all? Are not the dying our brothers and our sisters in the sweet motherhood of Mary? The family is concerned. We must not coldly absent ourselves. We must assist in spirit at every death that is died the whole world over, deaths of heretics and heathens as well as Christians. For they, too, are our brothers and sisters; they have souls; they have eternities at stake; Mary has an interest in them. And their eternity is in more than double danger. How much more must they need prayers, who have no sacraments! How much darker must their closing scene be, where the full light of faith shines not! How much more earnest must be the prayers, when not ordinary grace, but a miracle of grace, must be impetrated for them! Alas! they will have none of our other gifts; at least, and affectionately in their own despite, they shall have our prayers.
We must remember also that we too have to die. We shall one day lie in the same strait, and need unspeakably the same charitable prayers. The measure which we mete to others shall be measured to us again. This is the divine rule of retribution. Nothing will prepare a smoother deathbed for ourselves than a lifelong daily devotion to those who are daily dying. Mary assisted her Son to die in many mysterious ways. By His will, and in the satisfaction of her own maternal love, she has now assisted at the deathbeds of many millions. She has great experience by this time, if we might so speak, and is wonderfully skilled in the science of the last hour. By prayerful thoughts, by pious practices, by frequent ejaculations, by the usages the Church has indulgenced, let us win a bright and gentle end for ourselves, by following Mary everywhere to the deathbeds she attends.