That He
may turn our haughty will to lament its faults, that it may
deplore its past most vain elations, may retract its most bitter
indignations, and detest its most insane delectations. That His
virtue may abound in us, when our own is found wanting, and that
He who freely consecrated our beginning by the sacrament of
baptism, and advanced our progress to the seat of the Apostles
without any desert of ours, may deign to fortify our outgoing by
the fitting sacraments. That we may be delivered from the lust
of the flesh, that the fear of death may utterly vanish and our
spirit may desire to be dissolved and be with Christ, and
existing upon earth in body only, in thought and longing our
conversation may be in Heaven. That the Father of mercies and
the God of all consolation may graciously come to meet the
prodigal returning from the husks; that He may receive the piece
of silver that has been lately found and transmit it by His holy
angels into His eternal treasury. That He may rebuke with His
terrible countenance, at the hour of our departure, the spirits
of darkness, lest Leviathan, that old serpent, lying hid at the
gate of death, should spread unforeseen snares for our feet. But
when we shall be summoned to the awful judgment-seat to give an
account on the testimony of conscience of all things we have done
in the body, the God-Man may consider the price of the holy blood
that He has shed, and that the Incarnate Deity may note the frame
of our carnal nature, that our weakness may pass unpunished where
infinite loving-kindness is to be found, and that the soul of the
wretched sinner may breathe again where the peculiar office of
the Judge is to show mercy.
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