thee but a costly dress with which thou didst make a display before the world. I came to serve others; but thou wert filled with anger if anything happened to be wanting to thy comfort. I have not hesitated to cast Myself at the feet of poor fishermen, and to wash them with My own hands; but thou wert so fastidious that thou couldst not bear to go near My sick and suffering servants when they were abandoned by all and in need of thy help, although the Christian law obliged thee to assist them under such circumstances. I was not ashamed to take in My circumcision the likeness of a sinner; but thou wert ashamed to confess thy sins candidly in the tribunal of penance in order to regain My grace. I have prostrated Myself on the ground in prayer to My heavenly Father; but thou, even in church, in My very presence, didst refuse to bend both knees, although thou couldst bow and scrape easily enough before a mortal. Where is thy excuse? Hast thou anything to allege in thy favor? “Tell if thou hast anything to justify thyself.”
The unjust man. “Put Me in remembrance and let us plead together,” O unjust man! Were My commandments too difficult for thee because thou wert a weak mortal? Then look at Me, thy Judge. I am a Man like to thee. I, to whom heaven and earth belong, have become poor in order to show thee the way to heaven, as I have told thee by My Apostle: “Being rich He became poor for your sakes.”[1] I was so poor that I could not point out a foot of land as belonging to Me during My whole life; I was poorer than the birds in their nests, the foxes in their holes; I had not even a stone whereon to lay My head, nor a corner in a barn in which to be born; naked I lay in the crib, and naked I hung on the cross; but thou wert not content with what I so generously bestowed on thee. Thy greed for gold was insatiable, and to gratify it thou hast had recourse to dishonest means, and hast robbed thy neighbor. Thou hast lived in luxury, and when I came before thee in the persons of My poor brothers and sisters, thou hast not given Me a farthing. Thou hast gratified thy gluttony, indulged in immoderate drinking and gambling, conformed to the vain customs of the world, and given away money enough to the object of thy sinful passions. Thou hast not borne temporal crosses and secret poverty with patience for My sake and to win heaven. What excuse hast thou? Thy weakness? As if I did not know thee, nor ever experienced in Myself what a man can
- ↑ Propter vos egenus factus est, eum esset dives.—II. Cor. viii. 9.
