In bed, settle yourself as though you were in your tomb, think for a moment what your body will look like then, say over yourself, as you would over a dead person, a response, or a Pater Noster, and Ave Maria.  As often as you awake during the night say a Gloria Patri, or a Jesu nostra redemptio, or any similar prayer; and each time you hear the clock strike the hour, say: ‘Blessed be the hour in which my Lord Jesus Christ was born, and died for me.  Lord, at the hour of my death, remember me’.  Then think how you have an hour less of life, and that, little by little, this voyage draws to a close.  –St Peter of Alcantara ‘Treatise on Prayer and Meditation’

St Peter of Alcantara