Prayers & Reflections for January 21

The Armor of God
Reflections and Prayers for Wartime

Chapter V
Looking Into My Soul

Earth must fade away from my eyes, and I must anticipate the great and solemn truth, which I shall not fully understand until I stand before God in judgment, that to me there are but two beings in the whole world, God and myself.

The sympathy of others, the pleasant voice, the glad eye, the smiling counte­nance, the thrilling heart, which at present are my very life, all will be away from me when Christ comes in judgment. I shall have to think of myself.

My eye shall see Him; my heart will be full of Him. He will speak to me; and I shall be rendering to Him my own account.

By self-restraint, by abstinence, by prayer, by meditation, by recollection, by penance, I now anticipate in my measure that dreadful season.

By thinking of it beforehand, I hope to mitigate its terrors when it comes.

By humbling myself now, I hope to escape humiliation then.

By owning my faults now, I hope to avert the disclosures of that day.

By judging myself now, I hope to be spared that judgment which mercy tempers not...

[Continued tomorrow]
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From:
The Armor of God
Reflections and Prayers for Wartime
by Rt. Rev. Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen
(C) 1943, P.J. Kenedy & Sons