The End of Days …Listen to what Don Bosco says. The end of man will happen like this.

“I have a soul; if I lose it I have lost everything. ! If I gain also the whole world, but with damage of my soul, what good is it to me?  If I become a great man, a rich man; if I acquire the fame of a scholar by making myself master of all the arts and sciences of this world, but then I lose my soul, to what benefits me “? All the wisdom of Solomon benefits you nothing if you lose yourself. Say therefore: “I have been created by God to save my soul, and I want to save it at any cost, and I want that for the future loving God and saving my soul is the sole purpose, my actions. It is about being or always blissful or always unhappy: go therefore everything, so long as I save myself! My God, forgive me my sins and make the misfortune of offending me never happen again: indeed, help me with your holy grace, so that I can faithfully love and serve you for the future. Mary, my hope, intercede for me “.

Consider, my son, that this body of yours, this soul of yours, were given to you by God without your merit, by creating you in His image. He then made you his son with the Holy Baptism; he loved you and loves you with tenderness as a father, and created you for the sole purpose that you love him and serve him in this life, and thus may one day be eternally happy with him in Paradise.

So you are not in the world only to enjoy, neither to make yourself rich, nor to eat, drink and sleep like the beasts; your end is far nobler and more sublime; your goal is to love and serve your God, and to save your soul. If you do this, how many consolations you will feel at the point of death! But if you do not wait to serve God, how many remorse you will feel at the end of life! The riches, the pleasures so much desired by you, will no longer serve to embitter the heart, then you come to know the damage these things have caused to your soul.

My son, be wise to be of those who think only of satisfying the body with works, speeches and bad entertainment: in that last hour they will be in great danger of going eternally lost. A secretary of the King of England died saying, “Poor me! I have consumed so much paper to write letters for my prince, and I have never used a piece of paper to notice my sins and make a good confession! “

 

2. Then grow in your eyes the importance of this end, if you consider that your salvation or your perdition depends on it. If you save the soul, all is well, and you will enjoy forever; but if you make a mistake, you will lose body and soul, God and Paradise, and you will be forever damned. Do not imitate those unfortunates who are deluding themselves by saying: “This sin, but afterwards I will confess it”. Do not thus deceive yourself: God curses the one who sins with the hope of forgiveness: Maledictus homo qui peccat in spe. Remember that all those who are in hell, had hope to be amended then, and in the meantime they are eternally lost. Who knows if you then have time to confess? Who assures you that you do not die immediately after sin, and your soul does not rush down into hell? Besides what crazy is this, to make you a plague with the hope of having a doctor who will heal her? So put aside the fallacious flattery of being able to give to God later; at the same time he detests and abandons sin, which is the summit of all evils, and which, moving away from your end, deprives you of all goods.

3. Here, however, I want you to observe a terrible snare, with which the demon seizes and leads to the destruction of so many Christians, and is to allow them to learn the things of Religion, but not to put them into practice. They know that they are created by God to love and serve him, and in the meantime, with their works, they seem to seek nothing but their own ruin. How many people do not see themselves in the world, who think of everything but save themselves! If I tell a young man who frequent the sacraments, that he does a little prayer, he replies: “I have other things to do, I have to work, I have to have fun”. Oh unhappy! and do not you have a soul to save?

Therefore you, young Christian who read this consideration, procures not to leave you in this way to deceive from the devil;promise the Lord that what you do, you will say and think in the future, it will be all for your soul; for it would be the greatest fame to occupy yourself so seriously about what ends so early, and to think so little of eternity that it will no longer end. St. Louis could enjoy pleasures, riches and honors, but he renounced everything, saying, “What’s the benefit of this for my eternity? Quid haec ad aeter nitatem »?

 

Conclude yourself like this: “I have a soul; if I lose it I have lost everything. ! If I gain also the whole world, but with damage of my soul, what good is it to me? Quidenim prodest homini, si mundum univérsum lucrétur, animae vero suae detriméntum patiatur? If I become a great man, a rich man; if I acquire the fame of a scholar by making myself master of all the arts and sciences of this world, but then I lose my soul, to what benefits me “? All the wisdom of Solomon benefits you nothing if you lose yourself. Say therefore: “I have been created by God to save my soul, and I want to save it at any cost, and I want that for the future loving God and saving my soul is the sole purpose, my actions. It is about being or always blissful or always unhappy: go therefore everything, so long as I save myself! My God, forgive me my sins and make the misfortune of offending me never happen again: indeed, help me with your holy grace, so that I can faithfully love and serve you for the future. Mary, my hope, intercede for me “.

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