so despairing as not to desire to escape hell. Is that not the case? But wishing and desiring alone will not do here.
We must also work for it, keeping the commandments. Shown by similes from Scripture. To enter a town it is not enough to look at it from a distance, and to send forward your desires in its direction; you must stir yourself and move forward. Are you hungry? Then it is not enough for you to wish to see the table laid and to eat; you must sit down and take the food prepared for you. The peasant would have to wait a long time for his harvest if lie trusted merely to his wishes and desires; he must put his hands to the work, and plough and sow his field. In these and similar parables does Our Lord represent heaven to us. Heaven is a city that comes to no one of itself. We read in Holy Writ that it once descended to one man, the holy Evangelist St. John: “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem,” he writes in the Apocalypse, “coming down out of heaven.” But where did he see that? The angel “took me up in spirit to a great and high mountain.”[1] Why not on the level plain, which would have been a much more convenient place for the aged and decrepit apostle? No; he as well as all other men must climb up thither with great toil and exertion: the way to it is rough and narrow, the gate small and low, and one has to force his way through it by violence, as it were. “Strive to enter by the narrow gate.”[2] Heaven is a great banquet. “A certain man made a great supper and invited many;”[3] but they who excused themselves on account of other occupations, and did not wish to come, were excluded and had no share in the banquet. Heaven is a field, a yineyard to which laborers are sent at different hours; but they must work therein till the evening, and bear the heat of the day. Heaven is a treasure buried deep in the earth, and one that requires hard work to dig out: “Thou shalt seek her as money,” says the Holy Ghost of the true wisdom required to work out our salvation, “and shalt dig for her as for a treasure;”[4] otherwise you will not find her. Heaven is a precious stone for the purchase of which one should give up all he has, and if so unfortunate as to lose it, he should give himself no rest until he has found it again. Heaven is a prize for which we must run and compete. “So run that you may obtain,”[5] such is the exhortation given us by St.
- ↑ Vidi civitatem sanctam Jerusalem novam descendentem de cælo. Sustulit me in spiritu in montem magnum et altum.—Apoc. xxi. 2, 10.
- ↑ Contendite intrare per angustam portam.—Luke xiii. 24.
- ↑ Homo quidam fecit cœnam magnam, et vocavit multos.—Ibid. xiv. 16.
- ↑ Si quæsieris eam quasi pecuniam, et sicut thesauros effoderis illam.—Prov. ii. 4.
- ↑ Sic currite, ut comprehendatis.—I. Cor. ix. 24.
