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We should pray for people without faith. People who don't love God or keep the Commandments are as if floating along on the great river of life, mostly unconcerned about the future, but likely to be carried as if over a great waterfall to disaster, when they die, unless they seek help from Heaven. They cannot save themselves by mere will-power, or good works alone.

We need not worry if we have so many duties to fulfil that we cannot name every individual whom we hold up before God in prayer. If we intercede for them all at once, we can be sure that as we hold them before God it's as if we are bringing them into the sunlight. God's warm love falls upon each one, with graces according to their needs, because of the merits of Christ, and our faithful intercession.

It can be hard for some priests as they grow old and frail, and step down from positions of influence, no longer able to preach and command a hearing. Some feel as though, in retirement, they are falling, helpless, towards oblivion; but they should believe that, underneath them, to hold them, are the 'everlasting arms' of God.

Just as the land which is not watered by spring rains becomes dry, causing subsidence and dangerous lesions in the road, so a spiritual life not fed by the sacraments becomes weak. Those most likely to fall into the pit are those preoccupied by earthly troubles, those careless in their everyday life, and those unable to go to church who sink into depression or despair.

To approach death is akin to arriving at the edge of the Abyss, and seeing a notice which lists the mortal sins that can cause us to fall over the edge. How important it is to repent before we die! What are those sins? - The Church tells us. Her teachings are true, since Christ founded her, and said, "Whoever hears you, hears Me."

The truth about salvation is that no unrepentant sinner can reach Heaven. Those who have freely chosen to refuse God's friendship and to continue in their sins are lost. Entry into Heaven is an amazing privilege: a gift given to the pure, not a right. Those who insist on enjoying forbidden pleasures, and never repent, shall fall into the pit, when they die.

People who spread the Faith, working to draw others from sinful acts and ways of life are acting, in the moral sphere, are as if drawing people away from a street that moves so swiftly downwards that people inevitably fall or crash. Of course, indirect evangelisation too is valuable, through good example, faithful work, and prayers and penances.

Only God can judge the hearts of human beings; but we must be wise, not naïve to the point of foolishness. The most dreadful cruelties are sometimes perpetrated behind the most beautiful facades, as if tortures go on, within a doll's house. Yet cruel people who refuse to repent, and who die, will fall into the Abyss, through their own fault.

Some people fall away if their comforts and consolations are removed. Those whose faith is real will not allow anything, or any circumstances, to damage it, whether opposition, temptation, or ejection from their churches, homes, land or families; they will keep the light of Christ burning in their souls and lives, and show out His love and light in all they say and do, until they reach Heaven.

People who live in mortal sin can be seen as immersed in a great river of sin which is sweeping them along, towards a great pit, where the waters fall underground. These people will be lost forever, unless they repent before they die. The Lord is especially aware of the horror, in our age, of the grave sins of abortion and pornography.

Those nurses and doctors who dispose of some unborn babies and adult patients, having judged them to be inconvenient or useless, are as if casting them into a pit. Yet they themselves will fall into the pit of doom, unless they repent before they die. The pit represents, for evil-doers, the perpetual alienation from God that they might freely choose.

There are people who lead outwardly respectable lives but who are half-way to Hell, God sees, because of their disbelief, and their deliberate refusal to lead good lives in obedience to His laws of morality. Unless they repent before they die, they will fall into the bottomless pit, which represents eternal alienation from God chosen by the wicked.

A couple who enter marriage while planning to disobey the moral laws, for example, by the use of contraceptives, or having agreed to divorce if they don't feel happy, are in great spiritual danger. It's as if they enter a meadow to begin the dancing after their wedding, yet do so near an old well, unfenced, nearby. It is very likely that someone will fall in and be lost.

No mother should fear for the future of her departed baby. God the Father loves every person He has created, including the very tiny and innocent infants who die unbaptised because they died through abortion, or miscarriage, or after birth but before Baptism could be administered - or when it was denied them by unbelieving parents. He cannot allow the innocent to suffer after death, for He is just; and so in some way they live eternally in His loving care: as if having fallen at death into a comfortable nursery cot.

No unbaptised baby will suffer after death. All the innocent babies who die by abortion, or in miscarriages, or in infancy, fall into the care of God. Though not praising God in glory with the Saints, they are held in God's love, in peace. It's as if they have fallen into a comfortable cot, held out in the loving hands of Jesus.

God is so good that He sent His own Son to suffer, to save us. Christ has warned us that we follow a 'hard road' to Heaven, and that few find it. People who have fallen into Hell have died unrepentant, having ignored God's laws, taken no notice of the Gospel, and having refused the help of wise friends who warned them of the danger of continuing in grave sin. And now they cry out in horror at their predicament, in the sea of fire in the depths of the Abyss.

We must work and pray to help the lost to avoid disaster. Many Catholics are falling away from the practice of the Faith. They don't seem to notice the moral vacuum at the centre of their lives, or in the life of society. It is like a great hole in the ground which endangers the lives of all who thoughtlessly walk or run around it. The hole has appeared through Christian societies introducing immoral laws, careless of the consequences: abortion, and other evils. Family life, and national life, are endangered.

It is important for us to be kind to the elderly as well as the sick. It is inevitable that when elderly people have serious mental problems, solely due to old age, their spiritual state can seem to be changed. They might be moody or impulsive, when they were not so in the past. A person can seem to resemble an old barn which still stands, but is evidently deteriorating. We must beware of falling beams - sudden rages - though persevering in kindness.

It is a cause for concern, when someone is following the Way of Christ, and had seemed willing to continue, but keeps pausing, wasting time, as he puts off doing the good things that he needs to do, to be worthy to enter Heaven joyfully rather than have to suffer in Purgatory. The temptations which threaten to overcome us could lead to our falling into the Abyss, nearby, and rising Eternal Loss.

Many people inhabit houses which were once a safe distance from the sea; but nearby cliffs have eroded, and the houses are in imminent danger of collapse. This plight mirrors the state of spiritual danger of Catholics who neglect the sacraments and rarely or never pray, and have not repented of their sins. God invites them to act, to find safety, to be freed from fear and danger. Unless they heed Him, they will fall, not into the sea but into the Abyss, for all Eternity.