As long as he had faith in God, he would be a success. While I could not help seeing the problems in his view of Providence, I had to admit that I too secretly hoped that my faith would make me a success in my endeavors. After all, it is a natural enough heresy. Yet, a moment's reflection on this subject shows the insufficiency of this way of thinking. In fact, this kind of thinking does not take into account our everyday experience of life.
Death is very much a part of life.
St. Augustine observed that we are dying from the moment of our birth because each second that ticks away brings us that much closer to death. In a sense, our life is actually defined by our death, perhaps as much by our death as by our accomplishments. For it is death that limits our life, and things are most clearly understood by their limits. We describe what it is by differentiating it from what it is not. A quart of ice cream is a limited amount of ice cream, something between a pint and a gallon.