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you can look back in after years when maybe you are far
from this college and among very different surroundings,
to which you can look back with joy and thankfulness and
give thanks to God for having granted you this occasion
of laying the first foundation of a pious honourable zeal-
ous christian life. And if, as may so happen, there be at this
moment in these benches any poor soul who has had the un-
utterable misfortune to lose God’s holy grace and to fall into
grievous sin, I fervently trust and pray that this retreat may
be the turning point in the life of that soul. I pray to God
through the merits of His zealous servant Francis Xavier,
that such a soul may be led to sincere repentance and that
the holy communion on saint Francis’s day of this year may
be a lasting covenant between God and that soul. For just
and unjust, for saint and sinner alike, may this retreat be a
memorable one.
—Help me, my dear little brothers in Christ. Help me
by your pious attention, by your own devotion, by your
outward demeanour. Banish from your minds all worldly
thoughts and think only of the last things, death, judgement,
hell, and heaven. He who remembers these things, says Ec-
clesiastes, shall not sin for ever. He who remembers the last
things will act and think with them always before his eyes.
He will live a good life and die a good death, believing and
knowing that, if he has sacrificed much in this earthly life,
it will be given to him a hundredfold and a thousandfold
more in the life to come, in the kingdom without end—a
blessing, my dear boys, which I wish you from my heart,
one and all, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of

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