work hard for heaven. with constant mortifications, suffered hunger, thirst, persecution, and trials, even to death, for My sake? Hear this, ye saints who were formerly princes, kings, emperors, queens, and empresses, who laid down your crowns at My feet, voluntarily left your courts, and retired into convents and solitudes in order to make more sure of coming to heaven! This man wishes to have the same happiness as you, although he has done nothing for it. He wishes to have the reward that cost Me thirty-three years’ toil and labor, and My life-blood in addition, to gain for you. What do you think of this? Eh! I will allow yourself, slothful Christian! to pronounce sentence. Would you pay so dearly your own servant if he had served you as you have Me? Would you give him an eternal reward? No; no labor, no pay; no work, no rest; no merit, no heaven. Go; let the world that you have served pay you; from Me you have nothing to expect. “The unprofitable servant cast ye out into the exterior darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Exhortation and resolution by diligence in good works to make sure of heaven. Ah, my dear brethren, let us not be in the number of those half-believing, lazy Christians! “We pray and beseech you in the Lord Jesus,” I conclude with the words of St. Paul, “that as you have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God, so also you would walk that you may abound the more…and that you do your own business,”[1] and work out your salvation with diligence. Bernard, why art thou here? this saint would often say to himself. And so should each one of us say to himself daily: why am I in this world? For what am I created? To eat, drink, sleep, waste my time? Eh! that is the happiness of the dumb beast! I am a far nobler creature. What is the business that I have to do here? Is it to make myself rich or honored before men? No; such things cannot satisfy my heart. Why am I then in the world? To serve my God, to enrich my soul, to gain the eternal joys of heaven. That is my business, my most important business, my sole and only business. If I do not gain heaven, alas! then everything is lost forever! Therefore in future I will devote my whole attention to this business; I will work most diligently for heaven, lay aside my former tepidity, and serve God with the utmost zeal. Every morning I will say to myself: perhaps this is the last day for me to attend to the business of my eternal salvation; how much I have lost already for
- ↑ Rogamus vos et obsecramus in Domino Jesu, ut quemadmodum accepistis a nobis, quomodo oporteat vos ambulare, et placere Deo, sic et ambuletis ut abundetis magis…et ut vestrum negotium agatis.—I. Thess. iv. 1, 11.
