You, My dear friends, says Christ, you My adopted brothers and sisters, My chosen children who observe My law exactly, and walk in My footsteps, and love and honor Me: “You shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice.” What is that world? The wicked, perverse world, and all those who are attached to it and to its sinful customs, while they resist the holy teaching and maxims of the Gospel of Christ; that is, sinners and the wicked; they shall live in joy and abundance. But, I ask again, is that right? To weep and lament; is that the reward our dear Lord promises to the good? Joy and abundance; is that the punishment with which He threatens the wicked? If He had said quite the contrary—for instance, you, My children, shall enjoy prosperity, while the wicked, who despise Me, shall suffer affliction then we might have understood Him. So we often think, my dear brethren, with secret envy and discontent, when we judge according to the dictates of the flesh and our sensuality. But we should not think so. That this decree of divine Providence is right and just, and that we have no reason to complain of it or to envy others on account of it, I mean to show to-day to the greater honor and glory of God. I ground my argument on the Gospel of to-day: first, it is the Lord who has said it: “Amen, amen, I say to you that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice;” thus it must and shall be. Secondly, “a little while;” this difference shall last only a very short time. There you have the heads of my sermon; namely:
Plan of Discourse.
That the just should live in afflictions here below and the wicked in prosperity is according to God’s decree: therefore no just man should complain; but neither should the sinner persist in his evil ways: the first part. The afflictions of the just and the prosperity of the wicked last only a short time: therefore no just man should envy sinners their luck; but neither should any sinner boast of it: the second part. Both are intended to terrify the wicked and to console the good.
Give us all Thy light and grace to this end, O God! We ask it of Thee through the intercession of Mary and of our holy guardian angels.
Sin is not a cause of prosperity.
Are the wicked then the only ones who can be happy and prosperity, prosperous here below? Are we actually to believe that sin and