On Rahere Ward

As I left for the Hospital at 5.45 this morning I grabbed a book, the Abbe de Tourville's Letters of Direction, subtitled "Thoughts on the Spiritual Life". For years and years it had been shelved at the bottom of my bookcase, but the collapse of a couple of shelves under the weight of reference books has led to some reshelving and it was lying on my desk. Henri de Tourville (1842-1903) spent eight years as a priest in Paris, wore himself out, and spent the remainder of his life as an invalid. But his ministry did not cease and he became an influential spiritual director. The little book gathers material from his letters under various headings; it was first published in English in 1939, with an introduction by Evelyn Underhill. One passage had particular relevance this morning:

Do not be anxious about death even though you feel it to be imminent and have every reason for despair, but give yourself up all the more to the mercy of God. No one, not even the saints, can do anything else. They can only confide themselves hopefully to God. Death is frightening only when it is far off, and it is useless to think of it from our present standpoint. I have seen many people die, and not one of them had the slightest fear of death once it was there.