Greatly to be Feared

It has finally dawned upon me, clear as the rising sun, why people on their very deathbeds sometimes find repentance impossible.  You'd think a person staring death in the face would hasten to repent as thoroughly as he could, but some, astonishingly, don't.  "It's too late," they say, and you want to tell them no, it's never too late until your last breath; hurry up and be reconciled with God! 

But you know what?  They're right.  It is too late for them, because it's no good asking God for forgiveness when you know in your heart you lived the way you wanted to and, given the chance, would make the same choices all over again.  Such people know what they did was wrong, but they cannot feel sorry; they tell themselves, by heaven, I am still glad I did it, because look how miserable (or perhaps just how dull) my life would otherwise have been!  Look at the pleasures I would have missed.

So they die still enslaved to the god Pleasure, who now, in their hour of need, not only cannot help them, but to their bitter resentment has already abandoned them - permanently.

Kyrie, eleison!  Have mercy upon us and deliver us from such a fate.