2. _The understanding_ will then fully realize that one thing alone was necessary while on earth, that life was given to work out salvation, that all the rest was vanity, that all illusions are now dispelled, and there is no happiness to be found by the creature except in God; there is only total disappointment, absolute loss of all satisfaction; and this pain of disappointed love will then be greater than all the other sufferings. 3. _The will_ then will desire only God, for the love and possession of whom all its nature longs, because it was made for Him alone. Therefore the soul will hate its own perverseness with a sovereign hatred, and curse itself in its absolute despair. 4. The soul will always have present to its mind _the awful sentence_ pronounced by the Supreme Judge: “Depart from me into eternal fire.” “Eternal”: What, in comparison, are days, or nights, or months, or years of suffering? Ever in pain, ever in despair; no end, no hope of an end or of any mitigation. _Colloquy_ with Jesus crucified, dying for our sins; with Mary, the refuge of sinners. THE THIRD DAY THE FIRST MEDITATION A Preparation for Death _1st Prelude._ A captain of infantry had been ordered by his general to lead his company at the first dawn of light the next morning up a neighboring hill where the enemy had just planted a masked battery. To spend the intervening night he had a log cabin allotted him. He felt it was a dangerous task assigned him, as he was likely to be shot while ascending the hill at the head of his men. Yet he faltered not, for he was brave. But before lying down to rest, he lit a candle, pulled out his prayer book, and knelt down to prepare himself for a good death. Imagine that God gives you the present hour to prepare for your own approaching death. _2nd Prelude._ O Lord: give me the grace of making to-day a thoroughly good preparation for death. _POINT I._ _It is absolutely certain that I shall die_, it is only a matter of more or less delay; “It is appointed unto men once to die” (Hebr. ix, 27). “Dust thou art and into dust thou shalt return” is the sentence pronounced on me, as on all men. No sensible man doubts this, yet many try to forget it, and live as if the sentence were not for them. O my Lord God! I will not be so foolish; and I accept with humility the sentence of death. I have deserved it, and I will suffer it in punishment and expiation of my sins.