the son for his good, there is no place for thee here! Vengeance and implacable anger shall pronounce the sentence. It is mere childishness too, compared to the bitter envy, confusion, shame, and despair with which the wicked shall hear the sentence of their condemnation, and see it actually carried into execution.
For it shall be pronounced in presence of all the elect. The holy Evangelist St. Matthew describes the terrible scene in order in his twenty-fifth chapter. When the whole universe, heaven and earth, and all that is in heaven, earth, and hell shall be gathered together, “then shall the king say to them that shall be on His right hand: Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”[1] Mark how He begins by bestowing the eternal reward with which His chosen children shall rejoice. Meanwhile the wicked shall have to stand there, gnashing their teeth with rage and envy, seeing the happiness of the others which might have been theirs too had they not excluded themselves from it by the perversity of their wills. “These seeing it,” says the Wise Man of them, “shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the suddenness of their unexpected salvation, saying within themselves, repenting, and groaning for anguish of spirit: These are they whom we had sometime in derision, and for a parable of reproach.” O fools and simpletons that we were! “Behold, how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints,”[2] with whom they will rejoice forever! Mark too, how the elect, after they have been invited to go into eternal happiness, shall not enter into it immediately, but shall wait till the sentence on the wicked shall be carried out. For although the just shall be the first to hear their sentence, they shall be the last on whom it will be fulfilled, as St. Matthew expressly says: “And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just into life everlasting.”[3] Again a source of fearful shame for the reprobate. Who could describe the fierce anger and intolerable shame and anguish of heart that the proud Aman suffered when he was forced to see Mardochai honored by the king, while he himself had to walk on foot, lead-
- ↑ Tunc dicet rex his, qui a dextris ejus erunt: Venite, benedicti Patris mei, possidete paratum vobis regnum a constitutione mundi.—Matt. xxv. 34.
- ↑ Videntes turbabuntur timore horribili; et mirabuntur in subitatione insperatæ salutis; dicentes intra se, pœnitentiam agentes, et præ angustia spiritus gementes: Hi sunt quos habuimus aliquando in derisum, et in similitudinem improperii. Ecce quomodo computati sunt inter filios Dei, et inter sanctos sors illorum est.—Wis. v. 2, 3, 5.
- ↑ Et ibunt hi in supplicium æternum, justi autem in vitam æternum.—Matt. xxv. 46.
