insult his God; and, because he contends with a powerful antagonist, " he is armed with a fat neck." " A fat neck" is the symbol of ignorance, of that ignorance which makes the sinner say: This is not a great sin; God is merciful; we are flesh; the Lord will have pity on us. O temerity! illusion! which brings so many Christians to Hell.
Moreover, the man who commits a mortal sin afflicts the heart of God. " But they provoked to wrath, and afflicted the spirit of the Holy One." (Isaias lxiii. 10.) "What pain and anguish would you not feel, if you knew that a person whom you tenderly loved, and on whom you bestowed great favours, had sought to take away your life! God is not capable of pain; but, were he capable of suffering, a single mortal sin would be sufficient to make him die through sorrow. " Mortal sin," says Father Medina, "if it were possible, would destroy God himself: because it would be the cause of infinite sadness to God." As often, then, as you committed mortal sin, you would, if it were possible, have caused God to die of sorrow; because you knew that by sin you insulted him and turned your back upon him, after he had bestowed so many favours upon you, and even after he had given all his blood and his life for your salvation.
[An act of sorrow, etc.]
SERMON VII.— SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY.
On the confidence with which we ought to recommend ourselves to the Mother of God[1]
"And the wine failing, the Mother of Jesus saith to him: They have no wine." - John ii. 3.
IN the Gospel of this day we read that Jesus Christ, having been invited, went with his holy mother to a marriage of Cana of Galilee. " The wine failing, Mary
- ↑ In a notice to the reader, prefixed to the Glories of Mary, St. Alphonsus explains the sense in which he wished his doctrine regarding the privileges of the Blessed Virgin to be understood. He concludes this explanation in the following words: " Then, to say all in a few words, the God of all holiness, in order to glorify the Mother of the Redeemer, has decreed and ordained, that her great charity should pray for all those for whom her Divine Son has paid and offered the most superabundant price of his precious blood, in which alone is our salvation, life, and resurrection? And on the foundation of this doctrine, and inasmuch as they accord with it, I have intended to lay down my propositions, which the saints, in their affectionate colloquies with Mary, and in their fervent discourses upon her, have not hesitated to assert." Glories of Mary. Monza Edition, vol. i., pp. 11, 12. In the third chapter of the first volume (pp. 123, 124), St. Alphonsus compares the hope which we place in the Blessed Virgin to the confidence which a person has in a minister of state whom he asks to procure a favour from his sovereign. "Whatsoever Mary obtains for us, she obtains it through the merits of Jesus Christ, and because she prays in the name of Jesus Christ." Glories of Mar y, vol. i., p. 188. “Mary, then, is said to be omnipotent in the manner in which omnipotence can be understood of a creature; for a creature is incapable of a divine attribute. Thus she is omnipotent, inasmuch as she obtains by her prayers whatever she asks. ”Ibid., p. 223. To obtain favours through the intercession of Mary, by practising devout exercises in her honour, "the first condition is, that we perform our devotions with a soul free from sin, or, at least, with a desire to give up sin." "If a person wish to commit sin with the hope of being saved by the Blessed Virgin, he shall thus render himself unworthy and incapable of her protection." Glories of Mary, vol. ii., pp. 325, 326.
