as we shall see in the second part. Thus the thoughts of the damned are a hell in the midst of hell. My dear Christians, let us now earnestly wish, while we can, that we may not have to wish fruitlessly hereafter; such shall be the conclusion.
Give us Thy powerful grace to this end, O good God! We ask it of Thee through the intercession of Thy Mother and of our holy guardian angels.
To be miserable by one’s own fault causes bitter remorse. To be poor and miserable through sheer necessity, which one could not foresee or avoid, as is the case, for instance, with a Christian who, without any fault of his, is made a prisoner and slave by Turks; that is indeed a very wretched state; yet the sufferer can console himself with the thought that he could not help his condition, and that what happened to him was permitted by God; therefore he can arm himself with patience. But to be poor and miserable through one’s own fault and mere wantonness, and when it was easy to have avoided falling into that wretched condition and to have attained a more prosperous one, that is a source of bitter remorse in which no consolation is to be found, of a repentance that has no other fruit but self-torture. Do you remember, my dear brethren, how it was with the Egyptians in olden times? Seven fruitful years followed each other in succession, in which the harvest was so abundant that the barns were not able to hold it. Meanwhile the Egyptians saw the great diligence that Joseph employed in buying and collecting corn daily, but not one of them thought of following his example; they preferred to sell their produce for a very low price and thus get rid of it to others. But how was it with them afterwards, when the years of plenty had passed, and were followed by seven years of scarcity? They suffered from hunger and want. “The people cried to Pharao for food.”[1] So great was their distress that they had to give away all their money, their cattle, goods, and lands, and even themselves into perpetual slavery in order to get food. Think now how great must have been the remorse of those people when they remembered the fruitful times in which they were ho Abundantly provided with everything. Oh, then we might have kept our own crops and added to them at a slight cost; would that we had done so; we should not now have to suffer hunger and misery; but we were too careless! Remember the unhappy people who were in the world at the time of the deluge. How bitter their remorse must have been when they
- ↑ Clamavit populus ad Pharaonem, alimenta petens.—Gen. xli. 55.
