Rav Leib Moshiach of Polnoah zy”a would deliver lectures every day for his congregation, and he would say fiery words of rebuke that shook the people up very much. One day, the Toldos Yaakov Yosef zy”a was there, and he saw how frightened and sad the people looked. He turned to Rav Leib and said, “Why do you have to rebuke the people every single day? Don’t we see that even though Moshe Rabenu had a lot of things to chastise the nation about, he only actually did so right before his death?”
Rav Leib replied, “On the contrary, that is a proof that I must give mussar every day. Chazal say (Avos 2:10) that one should repent one day before his death. Since we don’t know when we will die, we must do teshuva every day. So too, since I don’t know when I will die, I must rebuke the nation every day as if it were my last day on earth and my last chance to do so.”
