said in his time: “Make straight the way of the Lord;”[1] prepare for the coming of the angry Judge; do penance for your sins; he converted to God, for the last day is at hand. And it is a mark of the great goodness and mercy of God to send those signs to warn the world, as it is also a mark of His goodness and mercy to afflict the world frequently by public calamities. Both these truths I shall now prove.
Plan of Discourse.
The signs that are to precede the last day are all effects of the goodness and mercy of God, that sinners, being terrified by them, may prepare by doing true penance, which, however, few of them will then do. Such is the subject of the first part. Public calamities in our own times are also effects of His goodness and mercy of God, that we, being chastised by them, may amend our sinful lives, which, however, few of us do: the second part.
I will do penance, O God of goodness, with Thy grace, which I beg of Thee through the merits of Mary and the prayers of our holy guardian angels; such is the conclusion that each one should make.
Those signs shall declare the mercy of God to the sinner. But what am I saying? That the signs that are to announce the coming of the Judge on the last day are signs and effects of God’s goodness and mercy? Those awful signs, the mere sight of which shall fill men with terror and dismay? Those signs that, as we have seen already, are ghastly portents showing forth the implacable hatred, anger, and wrath of God against sinners? Are they at the same time to be signs of His mercy towards the same sinners? Truly, my dear brethren, that is the case! They shall be signs of the implacable wrath of God that will be poured out without mercy on all sinners on the day of judgment; but at the same time they will be signs of the present goodness and mercy of God, according to the words of the Prophet: “When thou art angry, thou wilt remember mercy;”[2] so that the sin ners who are in the world in those days, frightened by the signs, may enter into themselves, do penance, be converted, and thus escape the anger of the Judge; as St. Thomas of Aquin says, “that the hearts of men may be prepared for the judgment, being forewarned by those signs.”[3]
