We did what we could, his own clergyman being away. Never were we more impressed with the value of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. It is all very well to say that we must live so as to be ready to die; that as the tree grows so shall it fall. Here are trite axioms that will not stand a moment before the facts of life and the needs of humanity. They make no account of the mercy of the Creator on one side nor of the weakness of the failing spirit on the other. They forget the penitent thief on the cross, bidden to enter into Paradise upon the merit of a single cry. If the Church of our ancestors watches anxiously over the whole existence of her children; if she hovers about the cradle, how does she not hang over the deathbed to catch the faintest sigh of repentance; nay, how does she not “prevent” the least effort, pouring forth graces and supplications, anointing, absolving, pursuing the departing spirit beyond the very confines of the world, sublimely audacious, to the throne of God itself!
She has caught the precious soul, for whom the Lord died, before the infant mind was even aware of its own existence. She is not going to be robbed of her treasure at the end, if she can help it.
But our poor, dying Adam was not of this fold, and could have no such aid and sanctification for his passing. Even his afflicted wife quailed from the fruitless agony of witnessing his last moments. “Since I couldn’t do anything, ma’am, it’s more than I can bear.”
She went down to her cottage at the bottom of the garden to prepare a fit resting-place for the body, while in the garage the soul of her dearest accomplished its final and supreme act on earth.
We read the great prayers to ourselves--those wonderful prayers commensurate in dignity and grandeur to the awful moment. We cried upon the Angels and Archangels, upon the Thrones, the Cherubim and Seraphim; we bade the Patriarchs and the Prophets, the Doctors and Evangelists, the Confessors and Martyrs, the Holy Virgins and all the Saints of God to rush to his assistance. We supplicated that his place this day should be in peace and his abode in Holy Sion; we cast his sins upon the multitudes of the Divine mercies, and strong through the merits of Christ our appeal rose into triumph. With confidence we summoned the noble company of the Angels to meet him, the court of the Apostles to receive him, the army of glorious Martyrs to conduct him, the joyful Confessors to encompass him, the choir of blessed Virgins to go before him. We conjured Christ, his Saviour, to appear to him with a mild and cheerful countenance. And, with this great name upon our lips, we “compassed him about with angels, so that the infernal spirits should tremble and retire into the horrid confusion of eternal night.”