will joyfully await the Judge’s sentence on me. My dear brethren, if we are in need of doing so, let us observe this and do penance, and then we shall attain to the desired consummation. Yes, O my Lord and my God, such is now my firm resolution; now let men think and say of me and against me what they will, I shall pay little heed to them; but I do fear to meet those accusers at Thy tribunal, and to escape them I will this very day begin to amend my life. I renounce thee, Satan, and thee, corrupt world, and thee, too, wanton flesh! I belong to my God, and to Him alone arid completely; Him too will I serve with all my strength according to the terms of my holy profession, and that constantly till the end of my life. Amen.
Another introduction to the same sermon for the third Sunday of Advent.
Text.
Tu quis es?—John i. 19.
“Who art thou?”
Introduction.
An unusual and ticklish question: “Who art thou?” One that is often difficult to answer, especially when it concerns what a man is at heart. Yet, my dear brethren, that is the difficult question that all men shall be asked on the last day at the tribunal of God’s justice, and that even the worst sinners shall have to answer. Who art thou? What are you, not merely in outward state or condition, but in the secrecy and privacy of your conscience? And that question shall have to be answered in presence of the whole world before heaven and earth, to the great confusion of sinners, as we have seen in the last meditation. But even if the wicked man could then keep silence and conceal what he is, or if he could take refuge in falsehood, or say in the words of St. John in to-day’s Gospel: “I am not;” I am not so bad as you pretend, what would that help him? For he will have accusers enough and more than enough to convict him and show beyond the shadow of a doubt what he is: as I now proceed to prove. Continues as above.
