TWENTY-SEVENTH SERMON.
ON THE TERRIBLE SIGNS THAT ARE TO PRECEDE THE LAST DAY OF GENERAL JUDGMENT.
Subject.
1. There shall be terrible signs in the heavens and in all the elements. 2. These signs shall be for the wicked a source of fear, anguish, and dread; but for the good a source of joy and exultation.—Preached on the first Sunday of Advent.
Text.
Erunt signa.—Luke xxi. 25.
“There shall be signs.”
Introduction.
All Catholic Christians believe that in His second advent Jesus Christ shall come as the Judge of the living and the dead into chis world; but no man knows the day of His coming. Yet the world shall be able to learn that the day of judgment is at hand from the signs that Christ Himself has announced as forerunners of the last day. The first sign, namely the reign of Antichrist, and what we have to learn therefrom I have already explained. I now go on to speak of the other signs.
Plan of Discourse.
There shall he terrible signs in the heavens and in all the elements. These and their causes I shall explain in the first part. These signs shall be to the wicked a source of fear, anguish, and dread; but to the good a source of joy and exultation. This I shall show in the second part. Sinners! if you wish that the last day should not he a cause of dread to you, be converted! Just Christians! rejoice if you now have to pass through times of tribulation! Such shall be the conclusion.
Help us, O future Judge, to observe it by Thy grace, which we ask of Thee through the intercession of Mary and of our holy guardian angels.
Terrible signs shall appear in the planets.
When the three and a half years of the reign of that terrible persecutor Antichrist shall have expired, then, says Our Lord in the Gospel of St. Matthew, “Immediately after the tribula-