those who would willingly renounce all the riches and delights of a happy eternity if they could only live forever here below; nay, what is still more astonishing, who would barter heaven for the sake of enjoying themselves during this life, short as they know it to be? Like the mart of whom Father Drexelius writes: he had been drinking in a tavern and began to blaspheme in his cups; if, he said, God allowed me to enjoy my wealth and to have my own way for a thousand years, I would let Him keep His heaven; and then he began to sing: “The heaven of heaven is the Lord’s, but the earth He has given to the children of men.”[1] The wretched Martin Luther in his Table Talk has vomited forth similar blasphemies; a thousand years of a joyful life would be worth any amount of heaven to him. Elizabeth, one of the most cruel persecutors of the Catholics in England, used to say: let me only reign for forty years and I will not trouble about heaven. God granted her a longer time than that; she reigned for forty-four years, and then lost both life and kingdom. But for a long time after many people saw on the river a most doleful apparition that kept on crying out: wo! wo! alas! I have reigned for forty years, and now must suffer in hell forever! Would to God that there were none to be found among Catholic Christians who are of the same opinion as those people, and who would willingly give up all claim to heavenly glory if they had not eternal flames to fear! “They set at naught the desirable land;” that blessed land, the inheritance of the children of God, the reward of our labor and trouble, the beautiful heaven that others so long for and sigh after, and for which they shed so many hot tears; that they set at naught; that they have no desire for, and hardly think of it once in the day.
This want of desire for heaven comes from love of the world, and despair in trials. And what on earth is the reason of this? Why is it that we so seldom think of heaven, and have so little desire for it, although the way thither is open to our thoughts and desires at any and every moment? Because, my dear brethren, either our hearts are too much attached to the things of this world and its pleasures, or else we forget ourselves and allow ourselves to be driven almost to desperation by the miseries of this life. Thus there are, generally speaking, two classes of men who make no account of the joys of heaven. The first comprises those who allow their minds and hearts to be completely captivated by temporal happiness, so that they have no thought of heaven; the
- ↑ Cœlum cœli Domino: terram autem dedit filiis hominum.—Ps. cxiii. 16.
