St. Francis of Assisi tells us that only those who love God with all their heart and mind, love their neighbor as themselves, confess all their sins, receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, produce worthy fruits of penance, abstain from vices and sins, avoid excess in food and drink, venerate and revere the clergy–even the sinful clerics, and give their excess of wealth as alms shall hope to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.
Here is a little fable he wrote about the man who does not do all these things…notice how much this man resembles typical “good Catholic” in our Western culture. What a challenge to us all:
See, you blind ones, deceived by your enemies, that is, the flesh, the world, and the devil, for it is sweet for the body to commit sin and bitter to serve God, because every evil, vice and sin flow and proceed from people’s hearts, as the Lord says in the Gospel. And you have nothing in this world or in that to come. You think you possess the vanities of the world for a long time, but you are deceived because a day and an hour are coming of which you do not think, do not know, and are not aware.
The body becomes weak, death approaches, relatives and friends come saying: “Put your affairs in order.” Look, his wife and children, relatives and friends pretend to cry. Glancing about, he sees them weeping and is moved by an evil impulse. He says, thinking to himself, “See, I place my soul and body, all that I have in your hands.” In fact, that man is cursed who entrusts and places his soul and body and all he has in such hands; for, as the Lord says through the prophet, Cursed is the one who trusts in another. And immediately they make a priest come. The priest says to him: “Do you want to receive penance for all your sins?” “I do,” he responds. “Do you wish to make satisfaction, as far as you can, out of your wealth, for what you have done and the ways in which you have cheated and deceived people?” “No,” he responds. “Why not?” the priest asks. “Because I have placed everything in the hands of my relatives and friends.” And the wretched man begins to lose his speech and so dies.
But let everyone know that whenever and however someone dies in mortal sin without making amends when he could and did not, the devil snatches his soul from his body with such anguish and distress that no one can know except the one experiencing it.
And every talent and power and knowledge that he thought he had will be taken away from him. And he leaves his relatives and friends and they take and divide his wealth and, afterwards, they say: “Let his soul be cursed because he could have given us more and acquired more than he distributed to us!” Worms eat his body and so he loses his body and soul in this brief world and goes to hell where he will be tortured without end.
Later Admonition and Exhortation to the Brothers and Sisters of Penance (Second Version of the Letter to the Faithful)
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