and works gave not the slightest occasion or excuse for sin, a thing which unfortunately cannot be said of many men? For has not God threatened the man by whom scandal comes? But out of what work of Christ could scandal be taken? “The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the Gospel preached to them.”[1] Are these scandalous works? And why then does He add, “Blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in Me”? Truly, in those days many took scandal at those works, for they put a wrong interpretation on them, ridiculed them, and even condemned Our Lord as a sorcerer on account of them. His own disciples, as He Himself foretold, were scandalized in Him on the night when He was led away a prisoner and sentenced to be crucified; for partly they were influenced by fear, and partly by the suspicion that they had been misled by Him by means of false miracles. My dear brethren, on the last occasion I explained a reason that renders it necessary to have a general judgment, etc. Continues as before.
TWENTY-FOURTH SERMON.
ON THE JUSTICE OF THE DIVINE DECREES.
Subject.
We must believe and hold it for certain that everything is good, right, and just in the highest degree that Divine Providence does with us and with everything and everybody in the whole world, although we cannot now understand the reason of this justice and goodness.—Preached on the tenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text.
Dico vobis, descendit hic justificatus in domum suam ab illo.—Luke xviii. 14.
“I say to you, this man went down into his house justified rather than the other.”
Introduction.
If one of us had seen these two men and the different lives they led, he would most likely have approved of the first, and condemned the second in his own mind. For when a man is
- ↑ Cœci vident, claudi ambulant, leprosi mundantur, surdi audiunt, mortui resurgunt, pauperes evangelizantur.
