THE JOY OF THE ANGELS OVER THE REPENTANT SINNER.

feast, saying, "This my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found."

O, marvellous mercy of the holy Sacrament of Penance, which thus restores the dead to life, the lost child to his inheritance and to his heavenly father's love! "Amen, amen, I say unto you," are the words of our Divine Redeemer, "there is more joy among the angels in heaven over one sinner that doth penance, than over ninety and nine just persons who need not penance."

For an explanation of the nature of the Sacrament of Penance, its frequent repetition, and its separate parts, viz., sorrow for the sin committed, full and perfect confession of the sin, the firm and sincere purpose of amendment, the absolution of the priest, the willing acceptance of the satisfaction or penance imposed by the priest, together with the distinction between venial and mortal sins, the reader, if not familiar with them, may be referred to any Catechism of Christian Doctrine. The purport of what has been said, has mainly for its object to justify the goodness, mercy, and wisdom of God to our understandings, who is thus willing, again and again, to rescue the unhappy sinner from the gulph which is yawning to receive him, without thereby affording him the least pretext or license for continuing in the hateful and most miserable state of sin.

THE PREPARATION FOR DEATH.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SACRAMENT OF EXTREME UNCTION,

ов,

The Fifth Pillar of the House of Wisdom.

THE OIL OF CONSOLATION FOR THE WIDOW AND HER SON.

THE restoration of the Christian to the supernatural life has not repealed the original sentence passed upon Adam, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Though he has been regenerated in Baptism, anointed with the unction of the Holy Ghost in confirmation, and fed with the bread of life in the Holy Eucharist, still the Christian must die. "It is appointed unto all men once to die, and after that the judgment," writes St. Paul. Death is the soul's farewell to the body, which has been its instrument and servant during life; it is the passage from this visible world to the world which is invisible, and it does not, ordinarily speaking,

THE CARE AND FORETHOUGHT OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

take place without a conflict and a struggle. To this the popular expression by which it is most commonly known, viz., the word "agony," bears a remarkable testimony. The Devil, moreover, is said by St. John, in an especial manner, to come down at the hour of death, "having then great wrath, for he knoweth that he hath but a short time."

From the twofold reason, therefore, that at the time of death the powers of the soul necessarily suffer from the tearing asunder of their companionship with the body, while the wrath and malice of the enemy are at their height, the good Shepherd has shown a particular compassion, for the pains and danger of the passage of the soul from the body to the world of spirits, by instituting the sacrament of extreme unction, for its especial consolation and protection.

As the Christian was anointed in confirmation to fight the good fight of faith with his spiritual enemies, so at the hour of death he is in a similar manner anointed in the sacrament of extreme unction, for the final struggle with his last enemy, Death. The last enemy that is to be overcome is death," writes St. Paul; or as the same apostle says in another place, "him who has the empire of death, that is to say, the Devil." If the Devil is foiled in this last encounter, he knows that he