VIGIL OF ST. JAMES THE GREAT.
VIGILS prepare for Feasts: but Feasts of Saints (mostly) celebrate the Saint's death.
Thus mortal life corresponds with a Vigil, death with a Festival.
We discern this clearly in the case of St. James, and of other such eminent saints; we acquiesce in it cheerfully and are fully persuaded that so it is.
But when ourselves come into question, we seem to see all reversed: our own life, that is, appears as something of a festival, though chequered; our own death as an appalling and beyond experience anxious vigil.
"My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?"
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