The Holy Church, as a stimulant to the doing of good, as an encouragement to persevere under many difficulties and temptations, and as a reward for all our labors in saving our souls, ever keeps the thought of heaven before our minds. In the Sacraments she does this. {232} The unregenerate cannot go to heaven because there is an obstacle--original sin; it is removed in Baptism; and the strength to fight in the spiritual warfare, is given by Confirmation. She calls us to Confession, because something is again between the soul and heaven, and that is mortal sin. She absolves us, and sends us to Holy Communion, which is a foretaste of heaven. She anoints the dying, that all the peculiar temptations which attack them in the hour of death may be overcome. She unites the "children of the saints" in Matrimony, because marriage is a sign of the union of heaven and earth, and gives the grace for the married couple to "marry in the Lord." She ordains her clergy, that they may teach the way to heaven, and distribute all those means of grace that are sure to bring us there. So you perceive that this seems to be the leading thought in the mind of the Church. It is the development of the response to the question that every Catholic child can answer--Why did God create you? "That I might know Him, and love Him, and serve Him here in this world, and be happy with Him for ever in the next." The thought of heaven conveys the greatest consolation to those who in this world find but little happiness, and are surrounded by peculiar difficulties in the practice of virtue. It gives strength to those who grow tired of the spiritual life, and who would give up were it not for this thought. Hence the thought of heaven is good, necessary, and comforting. {233}