Commentaria in Numeros
Thou wilt not be able to correct this death, nor shake off this damnation. Iphicrates, in the same author, said that the most shameful saying of a commander is: “I had not thought!” To the Christian this saying is imprudent and foolish: “I had not thought” that so much lies between a good and a bad life and death; I had not thought that so great an eternity hung on it; I had not thought that I should die so, and so soon.
Tropologically, St. Bernard, sermon 52 on the Canticle: “Would,” he says, “that I might often fall by this death, that I might escape the snares of death, that I might not feel the allurements of a luxurious life, that I might not be stupefied at the sense of lust, at the tumult of avarice, at the goads of anger and impatience, at the anguish of anxieties and the troubles of cares! Let my soul die the death of the just, and let no fraud ensnare it, no iniquity delight it. Good is the death which does not take away life, but transfers it to the better. Good, by which not the body falls, but the soul is lifted up. But this is the way of men. But let my soul die the death of the angels also (if it may be said), that, passing beyond the memory of present things, it may strip itself not only of the desires but of the likenesses of lower and bodily things, and its converse may be pure with those with whom it has a likeness of purity. Such a passing, I suppose, is called either only, or chiefly, contemplation. For not to be held by the desires of things in living is of human virtue: but not to be involved in the likenesses of bodies in contemplating is of angelic purity. Yet both are of the divine gift.”
THE DEATH OF THE JUST.—Would you know what the death of the just is? Hear and admire.
St. Nicholas of Tolentino, as his Life has it, chapters 11 and 12, for six whole months before his death, a little before the night prayers, every night heard a most sweet concert of angels, which gave him as it were a foretaste of the life to come. With what desire for that life do we believe him to have burned, to whose sweetness he was so sweetly invited! He himself declared it, who frequently had on his lips that saying of the Apostle: “I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.” Nay, when the time of his departure was at hand, in his last breath he began to utter the cries of one rejoicing and exulting: and when the Brethren who were present asked the cause of this unusual joy, he, astonished and scarcely master of himself by reason of the greatness of the thing, said: “My Lord Jesus Christ, leaning upon his most holy mother and our father Augustine, says to me: Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord”; in which words he expired.
St. Arnulph, bishop of Soissons, foretold the day of his death, and on the day before his cell was shaken three times with a great crash; to the rest, who were afraid, he said that he was called to heaven. “At the first shaking,” he says, “the blessed Apostle Peter came to me, signifying to me that my sins were forgiven and the gate of life lay open; there was present a crowded company of the Blessed continually singing divine praises. At the second shaking St. Michael visited me with many angelic spirits, promising that under his guidance I should enter into the blessed life. At the third shock there was present Our Lady, the true mother of mercy, thronged with many troops of holy virgins, assuring me with a most kindly voice concerning my soul, that it was to be translated into heaven amid the joys of her Assumption.” So it befell; for dying on the very day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, he went to heaven, as the Martyrology has it; so John Lisiard, his third successor, relates in his Life, and from him Baronius, tome XI, year of Christ 1087.
St. Gregory, Dialogues book IV, chapter 11, describing the death of the priest Ursinus, speaks thus: “When he began to cry out with great joy, saying: Welcome, my lords, welcome, my lords; why have you deigned to come to so little a servant of yours? I come, I come. I give thanks, I give thanks. And as he repeated this with a repeated voice, those of his friends who stood round him asked to whom he was saying it; and he answered them in wonder, saying: Do you not see that the holy Apostles are come together here? Do you not behold the blessed Peter and Paul, the first of the Apostles? Turning again to them, he said: Behold, I come, behold, I come; and in the midst of these words he gave up his soul. And that he truly saw the holy Apostles, he also testified by following them. Which for the most part befalls the just, that at their death they behold visions of the Saints that surpass, that they may not fear the penal sentence of their death itself; but, while the fellowship of the inward citizens is shown to their mind, may be loosed from the union with their flesh without weariness of pain and fear.”
In the same place, chapter 10, he relates of Abbot Spes that, having been blind for 40 years, he recovered sight at his death, and that, giving admonitions of salvation to his own, communicating, singing psalms and praying, he gave back his soul to God, which the Brethren saw carried to heaven in the form of a dove.
Chapter 12, he narrates of Probus, bishop of Reate, that to him dying came the holy martyrs Juvenal and Eleutherius, clothed in white, who invited him to the heavenly banquet.
Chapter 13, he narrates of St. Galla, who, seeing St. Peter, asked: “Are my sins forgiven me?” to whom St. Peter: “Forgiven; come.” Whence on the third day she died with another sister, whom St. Peter had named.
Chapter 14, he narrates the wonderful life and death of St. Servulus, a poor man and paralytic, who dying heard angels singing, inviting him and leading him to heaven, leaving behind him a wonderful fragrance of perfume.
Chapter 15, he narrates the passing of St. Romula and the heavenly obsequies; for at her death a choir of men and women singing psalms was openly heard, which led her soul to heaven; and the higher the choirs of singers ascended, the more softly the psalmody was heard.
Chapter 16, he narrates the passing of the virgin Tarsilla, who, called to heaven by her great-grandfather St. Felix, began to be sick, and dying cried out: “Depart, Jesus comes.”
On the contrary, would you know what the death of the impious is? Hear and shudder. The impious Jezabel, by the command of Jehu thrown from the window, was trampled under the hoofs of horses, and eaten by dogs, 4 Kings 9:33.
Baltasar, making himself drunk, saw the hand writing: Mane, Thecel, Phares, and was afraid; and the same night was deprived of life and kingdom by Cyrus, Daniel 5.
Antiochus, who had tortured many, suffering a dire pain of the bowels, stench and worms, died a miserable death in the mountains, 2 Machabees 9:9. Like was the death of Herod of Ascalon.
Hunneric, king of the Vandals, and a most wicked persecutor of Catholics, says Victor of Utica, book III on the Vandals, “held the dominion of the kingdom seven years and ten months, completing the death of his deserts; for, putrefied and boiling with worms, not his body, but the parts of his body, seemed to be buried.” Gregory of Tours, book II, On the Deeds of the Franks, chapter 1, says that, seized by a demon, he tore himself with his own bites, and that the sun appeared dismal, so that scarcely a third part of it shone: thus the unhappy Hunneric died in the year of Christ 484.
Known is the death of Chrysaorius, crying: “A truce until morning,” as St. Gregory testifies, homily 12 on the Gospels.
Hear another like death, which Gregory of Tours relates, History of the Franks book V, chapter 36, and from him Baronius, year of Christ 583: “By a deadly death,” he says, “was Nantinus, Count of Angoulême, snatched from this life, who, having done many evils to holy places and the ministers of God, was seized with disease: and, burnt up with excessive fever, he cried out, saying: Alas, alas, I am burned by the bishop Heraclius; by him I am tormented; by him I am called to judgment. I recognize my crime, I remember that I unjustly inflicted injuries on the Pontiff; I beg for death, that I may not be tormented longer by this torture. When he cried out these things in the greatest fever, his bodily strength failing, he poured forth his unhappy soul, leaving indubitable traces that this had come upon him as vengeance for the blessed man; for the lifeless body turned so black that you would think he had been burnt laid upon coals. Let all therefore be astonished at this, marvel, and fear lest they inflict injuries on priests, because the Lord is the avenger of His servants who hope in Him.”
Calvin, miserably tortured by various diseases, as Beza testifies, was moreover eaten by lice, as Jerome Bolsec, physician of Lyons, once his disciple, relates in his Life, chapter 21. Where note that those who persecute the Church are by the just judgment of God devoured by worms. So it befell Hunneric, Herod, Antiochus, the Emperor Maximian, the Emperor Arnulph, successor of Charles the Fat, and Calvin.
Now would you die the death not of the impious but of the just? “Learn to die”; think constantly that you are to die: while you are well, prepare yourself for death.
So St. Bernard counsels Pope Eugenius, epistle 237: “In all your works remember that you are a man, and let the fear of Him who taketh away the spirit of princes be ever before your eyes. How many deaths of Roman Pontiffs have you in a short time beheld with your eyes? Let your very predecessors admonish you of your own most certain and most speedy departure, and let the short time of their dominion announce to you the fewness of your days. By constant meditation, therefore, amid the allurements of this present glory, remember your last things, because those whom you have succeeded in the see you will without doubt follow to death.”