Job 34:20

"They acted wickedly, when their weakness drove them away. Their exclusion strangely blinded them when, because of their weakness, they were deprived of this vision which discovers with what wisdom God leads everything, and disposes of everything. They went astray in their thoughts, to the point of believing that God was forgetting his creatures. So the emptiness was in their souls, when in the midst of their trials they implored the help of men instead of praying to God.

Suddenly shall they die, and the people shall bow down at midnight, and pass away. However long it be before the ungodly are taken out of this life, they are taken away suddenly, and at an instant, since they know not how to foresee their end by thinking on it. That is sudden to any one, which he has not been able to think of beforehand. That rich man was taken away suddenly, who left the barns which he was preparing, and found the place of hell, which he was not looking for. He was employing his soul in thinking in one direction, he parted with it in another by his sentence. He fixed his thoughts on one object when alive, he experienced another when he was dying. For he left those temporal things, which he had long engaged in, and he found eternal things which he did not look for. Whence, in consequence of this his blind ignorance, it is well said to him by the Divine sentence, This night do they require thy soul of thee. [Luke 12, 20] For that soul was taken away by night, which was lost in blindness of heart. That was taken away by night, which refused to enjoy the light of consideration, in order to foresee what it would suffer. Whence the Apostle Paul rightly says to his disciples who are thinking on future things, But ye, brethren, are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and children of day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. [l Thess. 5, 4. 5.] For the day of death seizes as a thief in the night, when it casts out the souls of foolish men, which do not look onward to the future. Whence it is here also fitly subjoined, And the people shall bow down at midnight, and pass away. They bow down and pass away at midnight, who are brought low and swept away by the darkness of their negligence. They will then be bowed down by the sentence of the Judge, who now refuse to bend with humility of heart. But the Elect bow themselves of their own accord in humility, that they may not be bowed down against their will in death. Whence is it said to Holy Church, of the converted children of her persecutors, The sons of them who humbled thee, shall come bending to thee. [Is. 60, 14] And he says properly of dying peoples, not that 'they will pass along,' but pass away, because simply by living in the world we are daily coming to an end, and we pass along this present life, as though wearing a track in a…