are still closed on ill-gotten goods? Would you rejoice, O unchaste man, who have hitherto indulged your foul passions, and by your wicked importunities have seduced many an innocent soul; who still continue to live in unlawful intimacy with one who has captivated your heart in the meshes of impure love? Would you rejoice, O vindictive man, who still nourish anger against your neighbor, and indulge in dreams of revenge? Would you rejoice, O drunkard, who on every occasion that offers itself rob yourself of your reason, and ruin yourself and those belonging to you? Would you rejoice, O vain child of the world, who are still so much attached to the world and know no law but its false maxims, leading meanwhile an idle, tepid life? In a word, all of you who have a mortal sin on your consciences, would you exult at the coming of your Judge? Should one have reason to encourage you in the words of Our Lord when the terrible signs are seen in the heavens: “look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand”? Alas! it is easy to speak to you of joy! Fear, anguish, terror, withering away for fear; such are rather the sad effects that those signs will have on you. Ah, why then do we not fear to offend God? How can we dare to spend even one hour in the state of mortal sin; for if death were to surprise us then, we should have nothing to expect but judgment without mercy and a hell without end.
To the afflicted just to bear their trials with patience. Just souls who have a good conscience! for you is the joy, the exulting hope! Ah, only continue to serve your God with fidelity and zeal! “We should live soberly, and justly, and godly in this world,” such is the exhortation given us by St. Paul, “looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and Our Saviour Jesus Christ.”[1] Afflicted Christians, who have to suffer all kinds of trials and contradictions, what are you to think? Troublous are the signs you now see, visited as you are so severely by the hand of God; troublous indeed! But be comforted! For as the terrible signs that are to announce the end of the world shall be forerunners of approaching redemption for the just, and therefore a source of joy and consolation to them, so the sorrows, no matter how great they may be, that now afflict you, if you only bear them with a good conscience and resignation to the divine will, are for you infallible signs of future glory in heaven, as I shall show you on a future
- ↑ Sobrie, et juste, et pie vivamus in hoc’sæculo; exspectantes beatam spem, et adventum gloriæ magni Dei, et Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi.—Tit. ii. 12, 13.
