Publisher's Synopsis
"The Art of Dying Well, by the wise and humble St. Robert Bellarmine, is like a message in a bottle, washed upon our shore from another world. Except that in our case, St. Robert is in the real world, with its real and inevitably effectual moral laws, and we are lost on an island in the misty seas of corrupted imagina- tion and self-deception. The message comes to us, then, with urgency. He says, "The world is not as you imagine it to be." He says, "You are on the way, whether you know it or not, whether it pleases you or not." We must all die. What are we doing right now to prepare for that moment, which, as St. Robert reminds us, will come upon us like a thief in the night? His initial recommendation is so simple, so clear, that it sur- prises us, and yet it is the wellspring of the rest of his work. We cannot die well, he says, unless we live well. Do not be fooled by the example of the Good Thief. That man did not live well, says St
