To be born in the morning and to die in the evening

17.01.2014

Saint Agnes: I told you so far about one method, thanks to which I was able to avert temptations and discern between what is good and what is evil; and today I would like to tell you about the second method, equally effective in the life of faith. One must completely divest oneself of looking at the world from the position of a man living forever.

All people, even though they know that someday they must die, rather believe that they will live a very long time, and even when they are old, they think that they still have time. And I lived the other way around. I always felt that I had little time to prove my love to God. One should expect death at any moment; then it is not a surprise and man is able to accept it, because he lives in anticipation of it. This is not sad, it is true. After all, our destiny is another life, and in this other life we should already rejoice during the earthly life more than in the present life. Each day can be the final day.

When we looks in this way at life, we pay no attention to unimportant things and we have no desire to sin, because who would want to sin just before his death? Also, there is no way to fall out with someone, because before death everyone wishes to reconcile with everybody. I can say that I have tried to live as if I was a one-day’s human, as if every day I had to die and was ready for death each night, and in the morning I woke up again to life, in order to die in the evening. Such was my life, but thanks to this, I did not waste time on superfluous things, and just tried to do as much good as possible, believing that this may be the last day of my life. How valuable then the day becomes; how much one loves it, because it is the last. No matter how hard it is, one loves it anyway. By acting and thinking in this way, we can free ourselves from an awful lot of temptations, truly giving our life to God, and not gaining attachment to anything, even to our own life.

–

Translated from : Kompendium IV z Orędzi na Czasy Ostateczne, które własnie nadeszły (z tomow 17-22), Warszawa 2014, p 157