These words I have just recited to you from the inspired writer, my beloved friends, tell us by example and analogy that death comes upon us suddenly--that it shall come, as we are told elsewhere, "as a thief in the night." As the birds in the air have their being in the air, and drink it in and live their life mainly in the air, and as the fishes have their life in the sea, they shall find their death in that element in which they have their life. And so, too, we who are here living upon the earth, having our life, as it were, in the social world round about us--finding our being there--we, too, frequently find our death there, unawares and suddenly. In fact, we carry death in and around and about us, even, I may say, in our very being, for from the moment of our birth until the moment of our death, death is ever with us, death is ever working in our members. It is death that is forever bearing us down; it is death that is ever causing the ailments of humanity, which are a premonition of what is to come; and, as the sacred writers have told us, no matter when death comes, it will always come suddenly to us. We can never be enough prepared for it. We can never take it unawares, but it will too frequently take us unawares. The lesson, then, taught us to-day by this text is that we should be prepared to meet this death whenever and wherever it shall come, and passing from the text of to-day to him whose memory we serve, it teaches us the lesson that death often comes as sudden as a thief in the night. It comes to snatch us away from all social relations, to take us away from home, to take us away from friends, family and all that is dear to us; to take us from earth to heaven, to take us from time to eternity. Death points this out to us, and his death should teach us a strong and emphatic lesson. If he (pointing to the bier) were here to-day to talk to you, he would not ask for a eulogy on his life, but he would ask you to take a lesson home to yourselves from his life to make you purer, richer and better. He would say: "By my life so guide your own. If there is anything else in my death to teach you to value life, to teach you to value Christ, and Almighty God, and the Holy Church, and the sacraments--oh, take it home to your own hearts, and make it part of yourselves. If I have suffered, let my suffering be a lesson to you; let it come home to your hearts and make you better and holier." His life and his death, dear friends, teach us to make ourselves better, teach us to make ourselves holier, and to prepare ourselves for our last moment.