Above all, the state of grace is absolutely necessary at the moment of death; without it, salvation and supernatural happiness the beatific vision of God - are impossible.
Interpretation
A state of grace is essential for salvation at death, without which one cannot achieve divine happiness.
This quote emphasizes the importance of being in a state of graceβmeaning a state of being free from sin and in a right relationship with Godβat the critical moment of death. The implication is that without this grace, one cannot attain salvation or the ultimate joy of experiencing God, known as the beatific vision, which is central to Christian belief about the afterlife.
In practice
In a funeral speech, one might reflect on the importance of living in grace for a peaceful passing.
If a worker is deprived of hope to acquire some personal property, what other natural stimulus can be offered him that will inspire him to hard work, labor, saving and sobriety today, when so many nations and men have lost everything and all they have left is their capacity for work?
To live without risk is to risk not living.
It might be said that society speaks through the clothing it wears. Through its clothing it reveals its secret aspirations and uses it, at least in part, to build or destroy its future.
The faith of the Church is this: That one and identical is the Word of God and the Son of Mary Who suffered on the Cross, Who is present in the Eucharist, and Who rules in Heaven
True science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree β as though God were waiting behind every door opened by science.
You lose nothing through peace. You can lose everything through war.
In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.
The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The drying up a single tear has more, of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.
For pain words are lacking. There should be cries, cracks, fissures, whiteness passing over chintz covers, interference with the sense of time, of space ; the sense also of extreme fixity in passing objects ; and sounds very remote and then very close ; flesh being gashed and blood sparting, a joint suddenly twisted - beneath all of which appears something very important, yet remote, to be just held in solitude.β β Virginia Woolf, The Waves
We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.
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