of the flesh, that the fear of death may utterly vanish and our
spirit may desire to be dissolved and be with Christ, and
existing upon earth in body only, in thought and longing our
conversation may be in Heaven. That the Father of mercies and
the God of all consolation may graciously come to meet the
prodigal returning from the husks; that He may receive the piece
of silver that has been lately found and transmit it by His holy
angels into His eternal treasury. That He may rebuke with His
terrible countenance, at the hour of our departure, the spirits
of darkness, lest Leviathan, that old serpent, lying hid at the
gate of death, should spread unforeseen snares for our feet. But
when we shall be summoned to the awful judgment-seat to give an
account on the testimony of conscience of all things we have done
in the body, the God-Man may consider the price of the holy blood
that He has shed, and that the Incarnate Deity may note the frame
of our carnal nature, that our weakness may pass unpunished where
infinite loving-kindness is to be found, and that the soul of the
wretched sinner may breathe again where the peculiar office of
the Judge is to show mercy. And further, let our students be
always diligent in invoking the refuge of our hope after God, the
Virgin Mother of God and Blessed Queen of Heaven, that we who for
our manifold sins and wickednesses have deserved the anger of the
Judge, by the aid of her ever-acceptable supplications may merit
His forgiveness; that her pious hand may depress the scale of the
balance in which our small and few good deeds shall be weighed,
lest the heaviness of our sins preponderate and cast us down to
the bottomless pit of perdition. Moreover, let them ever
venerate with due observance the most deserving Confessor
Cuthbert, the care of whose flock we have unworthily undertaken,
ever devoutly praying that he may deign to excuse by his prayers