Hunolt Sermons/Volume 10/Sermon 53
FIFTY-THIRD SERMON.
ON THE EASY MEANS THAT WE MAY USE TO INCREASE OUR GLORY IN HEAVEN.
Subject.
Wonderfully easy has God made it for us to increase sanctifying grace here and glory in heaven.—Preached on the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text.
Quærite ergo primum regnum Dei.—Matt. vi. 33.
“Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God.”
Introduction.
Blind mortals on this world, who, weighed down by incessant cares during your lives, trouble yourselves only about what you shall have to eat and drink, and wherewith you shall be clothed, how you arc to heap up wealth and riches, or to gain an honored place among men, or to secure your bodily comforts and gratify your senses! Blind mortals, I repeat; for how vain is your labor! It has nothing to do with what we are sent on earth to seek. Quite different is the end that God had in view when He created us. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God;” it is an eternal gratification of body and soul, an eternal garment of glory, an eternal treasury of riches, an eternal crown of honor, eternal joys and delights in the kingdom of God, that we should alone strive for with all our might; and this too we can if we are in the state of grace and wish to do so; this we can gain and increase, and in fact gain and increase with ease. Ah, where is our avarice, our ambition? where our desire for true joys if we take no care of this? “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.” My dear brethren, on last Sunday we have seen that we can always add to our heavenly honor, wealth, and happiness in the kingdom of God; and we have seen too what a great good even the least increase of the kind must be, and in what it consists. If we now consider how wonderfully easy God has made this increase of merits and consequently of eternal glory, we can easily conclude that He has a great desire to bring us to heaven and give us a high place there, and a great wish that we should strive incessantly for this high place; as we shall see in this instruction.
Plan of Discourse.
Wonderfully easy has God made the means of increasing sanctifying grace here, and eternal glory hereafter. Such is the whole subject. Let us then use them with unceasing zeal, and in all our actions seek first the kingdom of God.
Such shall be the conclusion, with Thy grace, O dear Lord! which we beg of Thee through the Mother of grace and our holy guardian angels.
God does not require anything very great or extraordinary of us to gain heaven. If the Almighty were to exact of us mortals great, extraordinary, and most difficult work and labor in order to gain His eternal heaven; if He were to say to each one of us: see, heaven is offered you, but if you wish to gain it you must cut yourself with knives over your whole body, tear yourself with hooks, burn yourself with glowing torches, cut off your limbs, allow yourself to be boiled in oil, and those torments you must endure for a thousand years without interruption or alleviation, for I will not give heaven to any one for a lower price: what would you think of that, my dear brethren? Would it not be a hard price to pay? Would you not shudder with horror at the thought of having to endure such torments? And yet would it’ be asking too much? Would the price be too high for the possession of an infinite Good? for the privilege of dwelling in the land of everlasting joys? For the sake of gaining an eternal heaven, says St. Augustine, it would be but right to undertake an eternal labor; and as we heard in the last sermon, the evil spirit offered to endure the most fearful torments till the last day if he might thereby enjoy the sight of God only for a moment. And several saints professed their willingness, if such were the will of God, to suffer the most painful illness till the end of the world, only to increase their glory in heaven by as much as could be gained by saying devoutly one Hail Mary.
But accepts our daily and even But, O God of goodness! how little Thou really askest of us as the price of Thy eternal kingdom of heaven! What easy means in themselves trivial acts as meritorious of glory. Thou hast supplied us with to enable us daily, hourly, nay, every moment, to add to our eternal joys in Thy kingdom, if we only wish! God has, my dear brethren, so to speak, all sorts of clever inventions to make it easy for us to increase our glory. For in the first place lie reckons as meritorious of sanctifying grace, and consequently of everlasting glory, each and every good work we do, not merely those that are very perfect, but even the ordinary, in themselves trivial and even seemingly useless works we perform, provided only we are in the state of grace and do those works for God’s sake with a good intention. We are assured of this by the Council of Trent, which anathematizes expressly those who dare to teach the contrary. Now, although all good works are not equally meritorious, but one merits more than another according as it is in itself more perfect, or difficult, or performed with greater zeal, yet even the least works have their value and merit for eternal life. What can be easier or less difficult than to give a piece of bread to a hungry man, to give a drink of water to the thirsty, a rag of clothing to cover the naked, advice to the doubting, a word of consolation to the afflicted, or to visit the sick and imprisoned? Yet all this is reckoned as meritorious, and according to the measure of the merit gained will be rewarded with endless treasures in heaven for all eternity; and our Judge, Jesus Christ Himself, tells us that it is for such things that He will call the just to His kingdom on the last day. What is more commonplace, or more seemingly useless than eating, drinking, walking, standing, sitting, working? And yet if these things are done according to the requirements of our state of life, in the grace of God, and to His honor and glory, according to the exhortation of the Apostle they too will be considered meritorious of eternal glory.
How generous our God is! Oh, dear Christians, what a good, generous Lord we serve! Who has ever seen or heard of such wonderful munificence, even in the mightiest monarch of earth! for what potentate is there who would reward with whole provinces or countries the least services rendered him by his subjects, such as, for instance, an inclination of the head, bending the knee, or offering an humble prayer? No, indeed! Great men know nothing of small things as far as rewarding them is concerned; and if they were to act otherwise their treasury would soon be empty. God alone is that great Lord who is as rich as He is generous, and He can and will reward with an immense, eternal recompense even the slightest things we do for Him, such as a genuflection, a sigh, pronouncing the name of Jesus, an aspiration during our work; nay, a mere good will and act of desire, although it is never carried into execution, will merit heaven. O Christians! I repeat, how good it is to serve such a rich and generous Lord!
God has so ordained that our good works cannot merit anything but grace and heavenly glory. In the second place we can see how easy God has made it for us to increase our eternal glory from the fact that our good works, according to the present disposition of Providence, merit nothing but an increase of sanctifying grace and of glory hereafter; and this we must not forget, my dear brethren. Riches, honors, temporal prosperity, success in business, health, a long life, the conversion of a sinner, help and assistance in temptations and dangers of the soul, good inspirations of the Holy Ghost, constancy in the love of God, and that which is most important of all and on which everything depends, the grace of final perseverance and a happy death: these are the goods that the Lord can and will bestow on us, but they are not goods with which our good works shall be rewarded; we may humbly pray for them but we cannot merit them; they may be received as a free gift, but not claimed as a just recompense of merit. Why so? Are the good works we perform in the state of grace and which are united with the merits of Jesus Christ, not worth so much as to merit those goods? Truly, they are worth it and much more. But God has determined to give them no other reward than the increase of grace here and glory hereafter; this exhausts all their merit, so that we may be able to make our eternal joys always greater and greater.
And this merit we may not give away to any one. Thirdly, this is the very object God has in view in making the merit of our good works altogether our own property, so that it cannot be transferred to others, living or dead. He thus, as it were, places us in the same condition as little children who are under the care of a guardian, and who are indeed owners of their property, but with such limited rights that they cannot make away with any of it lawfully. It is nearly the same with the merit of our good works. I can, for instance, by my prayers, fasting, alms-deeds, Masses, acts of mortification, etc., obtain some blessing from God for the soul or body of some other living person, but no matter how willing I may be to do so, I cannot give him the merit of these good works; it is out of my power to assign that over to another; it is and remains my own property. And if I say a Mass for the souls in purgatory; if I give them, as many pious Christians do, all my good works, what do I do? I merely give away the satisfaction for the punishment due to sin, and by those very works that I thus give away I merit for myself the increase of sanctifying grace here and of eternal glory hereafter as my reward; this, although I might wish to give it away, or might imagine I have already given it, I cannot alienate from myself; it is a property, a fund that belongs to me alone as its lawful owner. “For,” says the Apostle, “what things a man shall sow those also shall he reap,”[1] and no other can have any right or claim to that property. Oh, what a comfort for us, my dear brethren, if we only wish to do good works! How careful the good God is of our gain and eternal interests!
According to the degree of grace, merit increases, as well a the grace itself and heavenly glory. Fourthly, our good works continually increase in merit more and more according to the measure of the increase and augmentation of sanctifying grace. For example: a child who has just come to the full use of reason has only the grace it received in baptism,—one single degree, let us call it. Now this child says the Lord’s prayer with devotion, and thereby merits anew degree of grace here and of glory hereafter, so that it actually possesses two degrees. If it again says the Lord’s prayer, it adds still more to its grace here and glory hereafter than it gained by the first recital. Why? Because the second prayer is said in a state of greater sanctifying grace than the first, and thus it comes from a soul that is more pleasing to God. The third prayer is still more meritorious than the second and first, the fourth than the third, and so the merit of good works goes on increasing more and more till death, in proportion to the increase of grace. What a happiness this is for us Christians if we only earnestly wish to do good! What an immense accumulation of eternal joys can we not heap up even in the course of one year! Nay, how much may we not gain in one day if we are in the state of grace, and are united with God from morning till night by the good intention!
Besided, our merit is increased immediately by the merits of Christ in the recep- Fifthly, the good God is not satisfied with the mere merits that we can gain by our own work and labor, that is, by our own good works; for in the institution of the holy sacraments He has opened to us an inexhaustible living fountain of graces and merits that are given to our souls in the reception of those sacraments, immediately through the merits of Jesus Christ, or as tion of the sacraments. the theologians say, “ex opere operato,” and that are rewarded hereafter with eternal glory. Thus, for instance, if I am in the state of grace, and confess my sins again with true sorrow and contrition, and am again absolved from them, I merit a new degree of sanctifying grace and heavenly glory, not merely on account of my contrition and humble confession, but also through the virtue of the sacrament, which immediately through the merits of Christ, without any work of mine so far, confers new merit on me. Of all the other sacraments the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar has most power in this respect when one receives it worthily; partly because its proper effect is to increase sanctifying grace in the soul, partly because Jesus Christ, who comes to us, God and Man, as our Guest, for our good, acts on the occasion like a wealthy prince who, as beseems his high personality, gives away not copper money, but gold and silver, and that too with the utmost liberality; and that we may all the more easily enjoy His generosity He has made this sacrament the easiest of all to be received, penance alone excepted. Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders can be received validly but once in a life-time, and Extreme Unction but once during the same dangerous illness; Matrimony can be received but once, except one of the married couple dies. But the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar and Penance can be repeated and received as of ten as we wish,—every month, every week, nay, frequently during the week. What else can be the object of such a beautiful invention of the divine generosity if not to entice us to receive that sacrament often, that we may thus drink more deeply at the living fountain of grace, enrich our souls more and more with merit, and make our future glory in heaven greater and greater?
Our merits cannot be lessened by venial sin. Sixthly, what should be a source of great consolation for us, God has ordained that the merits which we have accumulated by our good works during life, or that have been granted us out of the treasure of Christ in the reception of the sacraments, can never be lessened in the least by any venial sin or imperfection or fault whatever. Mark this, my dear brethren. Venial sin is an offence against God and deserves temporal punishment, but it does not take away sanctifying grace either in part or altogether, even if our small sins surpassed in number the sands on the sea-shore. All the sanctifying grace that we have once collected and accumulated belongs to us always, as long as we do not make God our enemy by committing mortal sin; and hence it still preserves its right, according to its measure and degree, to the eternal joys of heaven. The accounts between God and us are not regulated as they are between men; in the latter case the receipt is compared with the expenditure, the debt with the payment; thus, for instance, I have lent you twenty shillings, and you owe me twenty shillings. On the other hand I have on a certain occasion received goods from you to the amount of ten shillings, so that that sum has to be deducted from your debt, and you owe me only ten. Again, you have in my name given six shillings to Peter; thus your debt is lessened again, and you owe me only four, and so on. This, I say, is not the way in which God reckons with us; He keeps two different books; in one He writes down the merit of our good works, for which He has bound Himself to give us heaven as a reward; in the other He writes down our daily faults and venial sins, as well as the mortal sins we have repented of, for which we deserve some punishment. Neither of these books has anything to do with the other. God does not say: you have done so many good works, and therefore I owe you such and such a reward in heaven; but you have often offended me by venial sin, and you have not yet satisfied for the mortal sins you have blotted out by repentance, so that I shall strike out some of your merit and only give you so much. No, my dear brethren, that is not the way; otherwise what on earth would become of us poor mortals? And how would we fare in the summing up of accounts, with the repeated sins and short-comings that we are guilty of day by day? How could our sanctifying grace ever increase if it were constantly lessened? and what sort of a reward could we expect in heaven? No; praised and blessed a thousand times be the loving arrangements of divine Providence! He assures to us forever the whole capital of grace and merit so that we can never lose any of it. In the book of thy debts, O man! (so will the Almighty reckon with us) I find so many thousand venial sins, and so many mortal sins that have been blotted out by repentance; for all these thou must pay me to the last farthing, either by satisfaction in this life, or by suffering in the next. In the book of My debts, on the other hand, I find so many thousand good works that thou didst perform in the state of grace; for all these I owe thee so many degrees of eternal glory; and these thou shalt receive without the least diminution in the kingdom of heaven if thou diest in My friendship. Mark, my dear brethren, what a consolation this should be for us. If I have to spend a thousand years, and even several thousand, if the world lasts so long, in purgatory, and to burn there till the end of the world on account of my sins and to pay my debts, I am still certain and assured that my glory in heaven is kept for me quite intact, and that I shall receive it without the least diminution according to what I have merited by my good works on earth. Oh, I repeat, what a consolation!
Merit mortified by mortal sin revives after repentance. Mortal sin is the only thing that robs us altogether of all our treasure of grace and merit. Ah, Christians! beware of it! But even here the goodness and generosity of God have found another clever means of promoting our interests. How so? In this way; when a man consents to mortal sin, the book in which his merits are written out is as it were thrown down under the desk and forgotten; the Lord God looks on that man now as an enemy, and if he dies in that state he cannot expect the least reward for all his merits throughout eternity; he is just as badly off as if he had never done a good act in his life. But when he makes a good confession or an act of perfect contrition, and thus recovers the grace and friendship of God, the book of his merits is again taken up; it still contains the record of all he gained before falling into sin, and he receives it all back again in addition to the new merit he has gained by his perfect contrition or repentance; and his subsequent good works are as meritorious as the grace he had before his fall would have made them; nay, on account of the increase of grace gained by repentance, those works are more meritorius than any similar works he did before. We cannot speak in the same way of sin; for when it is once forgiven it does not revive again, nor is it again imputed to the sinner who relapses into grievous guilt; because God’s generosity surpasses His severity, and He seeks our greater glory, but not our greater punishment. Oh, what a comfort for those who have often sinned grievously, and have truly repented and made a good confession! O good God! be Thou again blessed for Thy fatherly providence! How loving Thou art to us! How anxious Thou art to further our welfare and eternal interests!
God prolongs our lives that we may in- Seventhly, the desire that God has to exalt us in heaven is evident from the lengthening of our lives. One man He keeps alive for twenty, another for thirty, a third for forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety years; and what is the reason of that? crease our merit. If He merely wished us to gain heaven as a reward, would not a short time suffice? As I have told you before, I may, if I am in the state of grace, gain everlasting happiness by a single fervent sigh, by one act of charity. And the little infant who dies immediately after having received baptism has an assured claim to heaven. So it is; an hour, a quarter of an hour, nay, a minute is more than enough for any one to gain heaven. Why then does God prolong our lives for such a lengthened period? Oh, my dear brethren, here again we have another invention of the divine goodness in our regard! God is not satisfied with merely having us in heaven; He wishes us to mount higher and higher, in order to enjoy ourselves all the more with Himself forever; we must become like to the angels in glory, nay, if we wish, we may ascend even higher than the angels; therefore He keeps us so long in life in order that by continually doing good works we may all those years constantly add to our eternal treasures every day, hour, moment even, of our existence.
What a great benefit that is! And hence too a long life is one of the greatest blessings that God bestows on us, and one that He has promised specially to those who honor their parents; but it is a blessing withheld from the wicked on account of their sins, for the Lord has threatened to shorten their lives as no slight chastisement of their misdeeds. Mark this well, you cowardly, pusillanimous souls, who often sigh: ah, would that I had been so happy as to have died in my infancy; now I should be with God in heaven! Truly, you would be in heaven; but, nevertheless, thank the divine goodness for having spared your lives so long; for if you earnestly wish it you can and will ascend a hundred times, a hundred million times higher in heaven than you would be if you had had your wish. Every morning, as one of the elect who appeared to St. Mechtildis said to her, raise your hands to God and thank Him heartily for having granted you another day, every moment of which you can turn into a fruitful field of merits for eternal life. Let those also take notice of this who wilfully shorten the precious treasure of life, and contrary to the original intention of the Almighty precipitate themselves into a premature grave by intemperance, by unbridled anger, impurity, and wantonness. And finally, let all Christians see what an immense loss they cause themselves to suffer by wantonly wasting the time of their lives in habitual gambling, idleness, useless amusements, sleeping too long in the morning and omitting the good intention; thus they become grey in years, and at last enter into eternity as poor in merits as the little infant.
God is always urging us to add to our merit. Finally, while thus preserving our lives, how does not the good God keep constantly urging us to increase our merit and glory by diligently performing good works? The salutary inspirations with which He speaks to our hearts and moves us to do that work of devotion, to undertake that act of penance and mortification, to bestow that alms on the poor, and do other works of charity, to visit that church, to hear the word of God, to assist at holy Mass, and so forth: what else are they but loving invitations to increase our glory in heaven by those holy actions? That misfortune, sickness, poverty, death, trouble, and adversity: what else is it but a check to keep us from vice, a spur to urge us on to the fulfilment of the divine will, to humility, to penance, to prayer, and other virtuous and meritorious works? And as a matter of fact a single “My God, Thy will be done” in the time of trial brings in more merit than a thousand prayers in the time of prosperity. The very temptations that we suffer from the devil, by which that evil spirit seeks our ruin, are permitted by God, and ordained by Him, as the Apostle says, for our greater good and profit: “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be able to bear it.”[2] He allows us to be tempted in order to purify our virtue, to prove our love and fidelity towards Him, and to earn for ourselves a crown greater in proportion to the trouble we have in bravely overcoming our enemy. And besides all this, how earnestly He exhorts us to do good! In the Gospel of St. Matthew He tells us not to be careful about the transitory things of earth, but to devote our whole attention to the eternal riches of heaven: “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.”[3] In St. Luke we read that we must not allow the talents and gifts of nature and grace that have been entrusted to us to lie idle, but rather make an advantageous use of them until the time of His coming: “Trade till I come.”[4] By the wise Ecclesiasticus He tells us not to lose the smallest iota of precious time, but to spend it all in meritorious works: “Defraud not thyself of the good day, and let not the part of a good gift overpass thee.”[5] For that reason He has forbidden all idle words, and commanded us by the Apostle not to eat or drink or do anything except for the honor and glory of God: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God,”[6] so that during the whole day nothing may pass by without merit and an increase of heavenly glory. Therefore He condemns to eternal darkness the lazy servants who allow their talents to lie unused; and He casts into the fire the barren tree, although it may be green and covered with leaves.
So much does God wish us to add to our glory in heaven, and we think so little of it. My dear brethren, could God have done more either to make the increase of glory easier for us, or to prove His own great eagerness to see us amassing immense treasures for heaven? Admire, praise, bless, and thank His infinite goodness in occupying Himself so much for our welfare and greater interests. But at the same time wonder at and deplore the blindness and laziness of most Christians, who live as careless of that great good as if they knew or valued not their own eternal happiness. And how many there are who, buried in temporal cares, do not cast a thought on heaven once during the day! How many who have such low and grovelling minds that they say in the words quoted by Gerson: I do not want the merits of the apostles; I do not desire the highest place in heaven; if I can be happy with the lowest there I shall be content!
Exhortation always to strive for more glory in heaven. Christians, away with such thoughts! Far higher should our holy ambition ascend! Much more exalted should our desires be! If God had given to us mortals the choice of a state of life when we come to the use of reason, who would content himself with the condition of a poor peasant when he could have that of a rich lord, or prince, or king? Now the freedom that is not allowed us in this miserable world God has reserved for us in heaven, where the highest position of immortal glory may be ours if we choose. There we can, if we wish, be princes, kings, monarchs in glory and happiness; nay, the Almighty invites us to choose a high place; He urges and drives us thereto; and shall we, through sheer laziness, refuse to accept what He offers us? Truly, O good God! with the help of Thy grace I will in future endeavor with all earnestness to reach the place in heaven that Thou hast prepared for me. I am sorry for the beautiful time of my past life that I have so uselessly squandered without merit, for the many opportunities of gaining glory that I have neglected, for the many grievous sins by which I have completely forfeited all claim to heaven. I will now begin to repair these losses with greater zeal, redouble my daily good works, have a pure intention in all my actions, and labor till the end of my life, as far as I can, to ascend higher in heaven, that, O great Lord! since such is Thy wish, my greater joy and glory may also increase Thy honor and glory for all eternity. Amen.
- ↑ Quæ enim seminaverit homo, hæc et metet.—Gal. vi. 8.
- ↑ Fidelis Deus est, qui non patietur vos tentari supra id quod potestis sed faciet cum tentatione proventum ut possitis sustinere.—I. Cor. x. 13.
- ↑ Nolite thesaurizare vobis thesauros in terra: ubi ærugo et tinea demolitur, et ubi fures effodiunt et furantur. Thesaurizate autem vobis thesauros in cœlo: ubi neque tinea demolitur, et ubi fures non effodiunt, nec furantur.—Matt. vi. 19, 20.
- ↑ Negotiamini dum venio.—Luke xix. 13.
- ↑ Non defranderis a die bono, et particula boni doni non te prætereat.—Ecclus. xiv. 14.
- ↑ Sive manducatis, sive bibitis, sive aliud quid facitis: omnia in gloriam Dei facite.—I. Cor. x. 31.