If then we would be saved, we must, even until death, have our lips ever opened to pray and say: "My God, help me; my God, have mercy; Mary, have mer… - Alphonsus Maria de Liguori

The soul enters eternity alone and unattended, except by its works. Woe to me! where are my works to accompany me to a blessed eternity? I can discover none but such as render me deserving of eternal torments.

With regard to the subject matter of sermons. Those subjects should be selected which move most powerfully to detest sin and to love God; whence the preacher should often speak of the last things—of death, of judgment, of Hell, of Heaven, and of eternity. According to the advice of the Holy Spirit, “Memorare novissima tua, et in æternum non peccabis,” (Ecclesiasticus 7:40,) it is particularly useful often to make mention of death, by delivering several discourses on that subject during the year, speaking at one time on the uncertainty of death, which terminates all the pleasures as well as all the afflictions of this life; at another, on the uncertainty of the time at which death may arrive; now, on the unhappy death of the sinner; and again, on the happy death of the just.

Let us examine in what true wisdom consists, and we shall see, in the first point, that sinners are truly foolish, and, in the second, that the saints are truly wise.