On the third day of his retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Eugene is invited to meditate on death. He does so, remembering in a vivid fashion how he had nearly died earlier in the year. His fertile imagination gets carried away as he vividly and exaggeratedly describes all that would have happened after he would have died. All this leads him to the conclusion that all is vanity that is not for God.
If I had died last March when illness brought me to the threshold of the grave, I would no longer count for anything.
Not a single one of those people who speak to me, demonstrate their esteem and even affection, not a single one would give me a thought. Even my most intimate friends to bring my name to their lips would need an outside influence to remind them of my existence. And we are now in December, namely it would be only nine months since I was no more…. Indeed, it would not even take that long to wipe away the least trace of memory of my existence. The next day but one after my burial, I am perhaps too generous, I would have been forgotten. It would have been the very same day had there not been for the unusual interest that my illness aroused in people; so it is because of that unusual factor that I say “the next day but one.” They would have done all kinds of foolish things on the day of my burial and while I do not know myself what would have become of my soul, they would have looked on my body as that of a saint, but soon putrefaction and vermin doing justice to this pile of dust, the instrument of so many sins, before ever it had been entirely consumed by the worms, or the ghastly stench issuing from this abominable sewer had been totally given off, they would have been dancing on my grave.
So, what does my heart tell me in face of these just, indubitable thoughts? Does it bear up under the thought of this general oblivion, how does it react to the thought that those it loves most will forget it like the others with hardly a few days difference? Yes, yes, heart too sensitive, too loving, you will be completely forgotten even by those you love so tenderly. That much is certain.
Retreat Journal, December 1814, O.W. XV n.130