Last rites declaration of Ioannes Paulus PP. II (Karol Wojtyla)
2nd April 2005
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sentence be pronounced and
having only one hour to learn it, but this hour enough, if he knew that it
is pronounced, to obtain its repeal, would act unnaturally in spending that
hour, not in ascertaining his sentence, but in playing piquet. So it is
against nature that man, etc. It is making heavy the hand of God.
Thus not only the zeal of those who seek Him proves God, but also the
blindness of those who seek Him not.
201. All the objections of this one and that one only go against themselves,
and not against religion. All that infidels say ...
202. From those who are in despair at being without faith, we see that God
does not enlighten them; but as to the rest, we see there is a God who makes
them blind.
203. Fascinatio nugacitatis.[26] --That passion may not harm us, let us act
as if we had only eight hours to live.
204. If we ought to devote eight hours of life, we ought to devote a hundred
years.
205. When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the
eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see,
engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and
which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather
than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now
rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have
this place and time been allotted to me? Memoria hospitis unius diei
praetereuntis.[27]
206. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
207. How many kingdoms know us not!
208. Why is my knowledge limited? Why my stature? Why my life to one hundre