This is my desire for you, to see you fervent Christians. I would like to know that you are anxious to assist at the Holy Mass on week-days as well as on Sundays. I would like to know that you pray morning and evening. I would like to believe that you speak with God often as the day goes on. I would like to know that you are watchful over your lips for fear of giving offence with your tongue; that you are prompt to reject the first temptations to evil; that you are exact in the fulfilment of your duties; that you are careful in confession, and devout at communion—in a word, that you are living a life of watchfulness against the coming of Christ to judgment. This includes all. This is what our Saviour enjoined on us: "Take heed; watch and pray; for you know not when the Lord of the house cometh: at even, or at midnight, or at cock-crowing, or in the morning. Lest coming of a sudden, He find you sleeping." [Footnote 77]
[Footnote 77: St. Mark xiii. 35.]
"For my thoughts are not as your thoughts;
nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
For as the heavens are exalted above the earth,
so are my ways exalted above your ways,
and my thoughts above your thoughts."
—Isa. LV., 8, 9.
To-day, my brethren, is the beginning of Passion-tide, the most solemn part of the season of Lent. The two weeks between now and Easter are set apart especially for the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ. Therefore the Church assumes the most sombre apparel, and speaks in the saddest tone. The actual recital of the Passion, the following of our Blessed Saviour step by step in His career of woe, she reserves for the last three days of this sorrowful fortnight. In this, the earlier part of it, her aim is rather to suggest some thoughts which lead the way to Calvary, and prepare the mind for the great event that happened there. I shall then be saying what is suitable to the season, and at the same time directing your minds to what I regard as one of the most useful reflections connected with this subject, by asking you this morning to consider the sufferings of Christ as a revelation of the evil of sin.
But, it may be asked, does man need a revelation on this point? Is not the natural reason and the natural conscience sufficient to tell us that sin is wrong? Undoubtedly a man naturally knows that sin is an evil, and without this knowledge, indeed, he would be incapable of committing sin, since in any action a man is only guilty of the evil which his conscience apprehends. But this natural perception of sin is more or less confused and indistinct. Our Saviour on the cross prayed for His murderers in these words: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." He did not mean that they were ignorant that they were doing wrong, for then they could have needed no forgiveness, but that they did not realize the full atrocity of the deed. They were acting guiltily indeed, but inadvertently and blindly: And the same may be said of very many sinners. Sin is for the most part a leap in the dark. A man knows he is doing a dangerous thing, but he does not realize the full danger. He does not take in the full scope of his action, nor its complete consequences. St. Paul speaks of the deceitfulness of sin, and the expression describes very well the source of that disappointment and unhappiness which often overtakes the transgressor when he finds himself involved in difficulties from which it is all but impossible to extricate himself and sorrows which he never anticipated. It is the old story. Sin "beginneth pleasantly, but in the end it will bite like a snake and will spread abroad poison like a serpent." [Footnote 78] Oh! how many are there who are finding this true in their own experience every day.
[Footnote 78: Prov. xxiii. 31, 32.]
Tell me, my brethren, do you think that young persons who contract habits of sin that undermine their health know all they are bringing on themselves—the weakness of body, the feebleness of mind, the early decay, the shame, the remorse, the impotence of will, the tyranny of passion, the broken vows and resolutions, the hopelessness, the fear—perhaps the premature disease and death? No, all this was not in their thoughts at first. These are the bitter lessons which the youth has learned in the school of sin. He has not found out what he was doing till it was all but too late. Or that married woman who has stepped aside from the path of virtue, did she realize what she was doing? Did she think of the plighted faith broken; did she think of the horrible guilt of the adulteress, of the agony, the remorse, the deceit, the falsehood, the trembling fear of her whole future life; did she realize the moment when her guilt would be detected, the fury of her wronged husband, her family dishonored, her children torn from her embrace, her name infamous, herself forlorn and ruined? Oh, no! these things she did not realize. There was indeed, on the day when she committed the dreadful crime, a dark and fearful form in her path, that raised its hands in warning, and frowned a frown of dreadful menace. It was the awful form of conscience, but she turned away from the sight, and shut her ear to the words, and heard not half the message. And so the dreadful consequences of her sin have come upon her almost as if there had been no warning. Or that drunkard, when he was a handsome young man, with a bright eye and a light step, and was neatly dressed, and was succeeding in his business; when he first began to tipple, did he realize that he would soon be a diseased, bloated, dirty vagabond; that his children would be half naked, and his wife half starved; or that he would spend the last cent in his pocket, or the last rag on his back, in the vain effort to allay that thirst for drink which is almost as unquenchable as the fire of hell? No, he little foresaw it, and if it had been told him, he would have said with Hasael, the Syrian captain, when Elisha showed him the abominations he was about to commit, "What, am I a dog, that I should do such things?" Or that thief, when he yielded to the glittering temptation, and made himself rich for a while with dishonest riches, did he then see before him the deeper poverty that was to follow; the loss of all that makes a man's heart glow and his life happy; the lies that he must tell, the subterfuges he must resort to, the horrible detection, the loss of situation, the public trial, the imprisonment? No. Of course these were all daily in his thoughts, for they were part of the risk he knew he was running; but so little did he bring them home to himself, and the suffering he was to endure, that when they came it seemed almost hard, as if a wholly unlooked-for calamity had overtaken him. So it is. Wherever we look it is the same thing. Men imagine sin to be a less evil than it really is. It is so easy to commit it, it is so soon done, the temptation so strong, that it does not seem as if such very bad consequences would come of it. So it is done, and the bitter consequences come. It seems as if the lie that Satan told to Eve in the garden, when he tempted her to eat the forbidden fruit, "Thou shalt not surely die," still echoes through the world and bewitches men's ears so that they always underrate the guilt and punishment of sin; and although the lie has been exposed a thousand times, although in their own bitter experience men find its falsehood, yet they do not grow wiser, they still go on thoughtless, insensible to their greatest danger and their greatest evil, and when they stand on the shore of time, and hear God threatening eternal punishment hereafter to the sinner, they still set aside the warning with the same fatal insensibility. If they are not Catholics, they deny or doubt the existence of hell; if they are Catholics, they think somehow they will escape it.
Oh, my brethren, before you allow yourselves to act on this estimate of sin, so prevalent in the world, ask yourselves how it accords with God's estimate of sin. That is the true standard. God is Truth. He sees things as they are, and every thing is just what He considers it. He is our Judge, and it will not save us when we stand on trial at His bar to tell Him that we have rejected His standard and taken our own. What, then, is God's estimate of sin? Look at the Cross, and you have the answer. Let me for a moment carry you back to the scene and time of the Crucifixion. It is the eve of a great festival in the city of Jerusalem. It is the Parasceve, or Preparation of the Passover. On this day the Jews were required, each family by itself, to kill a lamb and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They were required to eat it standing, with loins girded, and with staves in their hands, because this feast was in memory of the sudden deliverance of their fathers from the bondage of Egypt, when God smote the first-born of the Egyptians with death, passed over the houses of the Israelites, and conducted them miraculously through the waters of the Red Sea. It was a great feast among the Jews, and always collected together a great multitude of strangers in the holy city. But on this occasion a new excitement was added to the interest of the holy city, for there was a public execution on Mount Calvary, and turbaned priests, and Pharisees with broad fringes on their garments, and scribes and doctors of the law, mingled in the throng of mechanics and laborers, and women and children, who hastened to the spot. The day is dark, but as you draw near the Mount, you see, high up in the air, the bodies of men crucified; and sitting on the ground, or standing in groups, talking and disputing among themselves, or watching in silence with folded arms, are gathered a vast multitude of spectators.
What is there in this execution thus to gather together all classes of the people? The punishment of crucifixion was inflicted only on slaves or malefactors of the worst kind, and two of the three that are hanging there are vulgar and infamous offenders. What is it, then, that gives such interest to this scene? It is He who hangs upon that cross, at whose feet three sorrowing women kneel. Read the title, it will tell you who He is. "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews." Yes, this is Jesus, the merciful and kind; He who went about doing good, healing all manner of sickness, and delivering all that were possessed with the devil; He who spoke words of truth and love. This is Jesus, the King of the Jews, whom a thousand prophecies fulfilled in him and a thousand miracles performed by Him pointed out as the promised Messias: Jesus, whom the Eternal Father, by a voice from heaven, had acknowledged as His own Son. "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Why is this? Why is it that the just man perisheth? The apostle tells us: "Christ must needs have suffered." He was the true Paschal Lamb that must die that we might go free. He was the victim of our sins. Pilate and Herod and the Jews were but the instruments by which all the consequences of our sins fell upon Him who came to bear them. "Surely He hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows; and we have thought Him, as it were, a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our iniquities, He was bruised for our sins. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, everyone hath turned aside into his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." [Footnote 79]
[Footnote 79: Isia. liii. 4, 5, 6.]
Yes, every sin of every kind received its special reparation in the sufferings of Christ. His mouth is filled with vinegar and gall to atone for our luxury. His ear is filled with revilings to expiate the greediness with which we have drunk in poisonous flattery. His eyes languish because ours have been lofty, and His hands and feet are pierced with nails because ours have been the instruments of sin. He suffered death because we deserved it. He was accursed, because we had made ourselves liable to the curse of God, and hell had its hour of triumph over Him, because we had made ourselves its children. Nor was it our Lord's body alone that suffered. It would be a great mistake to suppose that His sacrifice was merely external. The chief part of man is his soul. St. Leo says that our Lord on the cross appeared as a penitent. It was not only that He suffered for the sins of men, but it was as if He had committed them. The horror of them filled His soul; sorrow for the outrage they had done to the Majesty and Holiness of God consumed Him. "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death," He said. Afterward the evangelist says He began to be very heavy, and it was sinners that on the cross made Him bow His head and give up the ghost. He was not killed. His enemies did not take His life. The flood of sorrow for sin came into His soul, and overwhelmed Him. It was too much. His heart was broken. Oh, the weight of that sorrow! He bowed His head and gave up the ghost. Then sin was expiated. Then the work of man's atonement was completed. At last man had done adequate penance. At last sorrow for sin had reached its just proportion as an offence against God.
Here, I say, we have a revelation of the evil of sin. God does nothing in vain: His works are as full of wisdom as they are of power. Since, therefore, Christ died for sin, the cross of Christ is the measure of sin. "From the consideration of the remedy," says St. Bernard, "learn, O my soul, the greatness of thy danger. Thou wast in error, and behold the Son of the Virgin is sent, the Son of the Most High God is ordered to be slain, that my wounds may be healed by the precious balsam of His blood. See, O man, how grievous were thy wounds, for which, in the order of Divine wisdom, it was necessary that the lamb Christ should be wounded. If they had not been unto death, and unto eternal death, never would the Son of God have died for them. The cross of Christ is not only an altar of sacrifice, but a pulpit of instruction. From that pulpit, lifted up on high, Jesus Christ preaches a lesson to the whole world." The burden of the lesson is the evil of sin. "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." And yet, my brethren, the law was published afresh by Jesus Christ. Mount Calvary but repeats the message of Mount Sinai—nay, repeats it with more power. Here, indeed, God does not speak in thunders and lightnings, as He did there, but He speaks in the still small voice of the suffering Saviour. Oh, what meaning is there in those sad eyes as they bend down upon us! Oh, what power in those gentle words He utters! He does not say, "Thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness." No. He cries to a guilty people, a people who have already broken the law, and He says to them: "See what you have done. See My thorn-crowned head. See My hands and feet. Look at Me whom you have pierced. Is it a light thing that could have reduced Me to such a state of woe? Is it a light thing that could have bound Me to this cross? Me, the Creator of all things, to whom you owe all life and liberty? Who by My word and touch have so often healed the sick and released them that were bound to Satan. They say of Me, 'He saved others, Himself He cannot save.' And they say truly. Here must I hang. Not the Jews have nailed Me to this cross, but My love, and thy sins. Yes, see in My sufferings your sin displayed. See in the penalty I pay the punishment you have deserved. See your guilt in My sorrow. Look at Me, and see what sin is in the presence of the All Holy God!"
Can any thing show more than this what a mysterious evil sin is, that it is an offence against God, an assault upon His throne, an attack upon His life, an evil all but infinite? All the other expressions of the evil of sin, the cries of misery which it has wrung from its victims, the warnings which natural reason has uttered against it, the tender lamentations with which the saints have bewailed it, the penalties with which God has threatened to visit it, all pale before the announcement that God sent His Son into the world to die for it. I do not wonder that, as the evangelist tells us, the multitudes who came together at the sight of our Saviour's crucifixion returned smiting their breasts. Oh, what an awakening of stupefied consciences there must have been that day! How many, who came out in the morning careless and thoughtless, went back to the city with anxious hearts, with a secret grief and fear within they had never felt before. I suppose that even the scribes and Pharisees, who had plotted our Saviour's death, felt, for the moment at least, a guilty fear. Why, even Judas, when he saw what he had done, repented, and went and hanged himself saying: "I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." And this book of the Passion has been ever since the source from which penitents have drawn their best motives for conversion, and saints their strongest impulses to perfection. Here, on the cross, is the root of that uncompromising and awful doctrine about sin—the doctrine, I mean, that sin is in no case whatever to be allowed, that even the smallest sin for the greatest result can never be permitted; that it is an evil far greater than can be spoken or imagined; that it must never be trifled with, or made light of; that it is to be shunned with the greatest horror, and avoided, if need be, even at the cost of our life—which has always been so essential a part of Christianity.
And now, my brethren, it is because men forget the cross, because their minds no longer move on a Christian basis, that they make light of sin. There is a tendency in our day to do so. Crime—men acknowledge that, an offence against law, an offence against good order. Vice—they acknowledge that, a hurtful and excessive indulgence of passion; but sin, a creature's offence against God, that they think impossible. "What! can I, a frail creature," say they, "ignorant and passionate, can I do an injury to God? I err by excess or defect in my conduct; I bring evil on myself it is true; but what difference can that make to the Supreme Being? Can He be very much displeased at my follies? Will His serene Majesty in heaven be affected because I on this earth am carried too far by passions? Can He care what my religious belief is? or will He separate Himself from me eternally because I have happened to violate some law?" Such language is an echo of heathenism, and heathenism not of the best kind, for some heathens have had a doctrine about sin which approached very near to the Christian doctrine. It is moreover, a degrading doctrine; for, while it leaves a man his intellect and animal nature, it takes away his conscience. What is that conscience within us but a witness that God does concern Himself about us—that my heart is His throne, and that my everlasting destiny is union with Him. "Every one that is born of God," says the apostle, "doth not commit sin, for he cannot sin, because he is born of God." Not that sin is a physical impossibility with him, but it is in contradiction to his regenerate nature. In order, then, to soothe yourself into the belief that sin is not so very bad, that God cannot be very angry with you for it, you have got to tear conscience from your heart, you have got to give up the good gift, and the powers of the world to come, which came upon you at your baptism; and you have to give up all the brightest hopes of Christianity for the life hereafter. Nay, more, you have got to deny the cross, to deny our Lord's divinity, to deny His sufferings for sin, and thus to render yourself without faith as well as without conscience. I conclude with the affectionate exhortation of St. John the Apostle. "My children, these things I write to you that ye sin not." "All unrighteousness is sin." Every breach of the moral law is a failure in that homage, that obedience, that service we owe to God. It is a direct offence against God. It is a thing exceedingly to be feared and dreaded. A wrong word spoken or a wrong action done has consequences which go far and wide. Do not say, you have sinned, but have done harm to no one. You have done harm to God, and you have certainly done harm to yourself. Do not sin. Do not commit mortal or venial sin. Do not make light of sin. Do not abide in sin. If you are in sin now, remember at this holy time to repent and turn back to God: and if your conscience tells you that you are now in the friendship of God, oh, let it be all your care to avoid sin. Fly from the face of sin. Fly from the approach of sin. Avoid the occasions of sin. Watch against sin, and pray continually, not to be led into sin: and when your hour of trial comes, when some strong temptation assails you, then be ready to say, as the prophet Joseph, "What! shall I do this wicked thing, and offend against God?" This is that fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom. This is the happiness of which the Psalmist spoke: "Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the council of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence; but his will is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he shall meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit in due season. And his leaf shall not fall off; and all, whatsoever he shall do, shall prosper." [Footnote 80]
[Footnote 80: Ps. i. 1-3.]
"Seek ye the Lord while He may be found,
call upon Him while He is near."
—Isai. LV. 6.
The Wise Man tells us that "all things have their season, and in their times all things pass under heaven." [Footnote 81] Certainly, it is so in the natural world. There is a time for the birds to migrate. "The kite in the air knows her time, the turtle and the swallow and the stork observe the time of their coming." [Footnote 82]
[Footnote 81: Eccl. iii. 1.]
[Footnote 82: Jer. viii. 7.]
There is a time for seeds and shrubs to grow. Seed-time and harvest do not fail. There is a busy time and a slack time in the world of commerce. There is a time for education, a time when the mind is inquisitive and the memory retentive, and it is easy to acquire knowledge; and another time, when the powers of the mind, like the limbs of the body, seem to grow stiff and rigid, and can be employed only with difficulty. But does this law reach also to the supernatural world? Has the grace of God also its seasons and its times? I believe it has; and it is to this fact, so important in its bearing on our salvation, that I wish now to direct your attention.
But you may ask me what I mean by saying that the grace of God has its special times and seasons. Are not all times alike to God? Is not God always ready to save the sinner, and to bestow the graces necessary to his salvation? Undoubtedly He is. We, Catholics, believe that God gives to every man living sufficient grace, that is, He gives him the grace to pray; and if he prays, God is ready to give him other and higher graces, which will carry him on to salvation; but, ordinarily speaking, men do not use this common grace, unless some special and particular grace is given which excites them to do so. Now, it is of these special graces of which I speak, when I say that they have their times and their seasons. I refer to those Divine Calls and Warnings, those Providences, those sacred inspirations, which stir the heart beneath its surface, and bring it, for a time at least, in conscious contact with the Infinite and Eternal. These, I say, come and go. They have a law of their own. We cannot have them all the time. We cannot appoint a time, and say we will have them to-morrow, or next year. They are like the wind that blows; we hear the sound of it, but we cannot tell whence it comes and whither it goes. They are like the lightning, that shines from the east even unto the west. They come suddenly, and dart a flash of light upon our path, then they are gone. They are like the visit of Christ to the two disciples at Emmaus: as soon as their hearts began to burn within them, and they discovered who it was that talked with them, He vanished out of their sight.
Certainly there are proofs enough that such is the law of God's dealings with the soul. If we look back at our own lives, do we not see that we have had our special times when Christ visited us? our times of grace? red-letter days in the calendar of our life? I know God's grace acts secretly; and oftentimes when we are under the strongest influence of grace, we are least conscious of it. But when the time is past and over, and we look back upon it, we can see that there was a Divine influence upon us, especially if we have corresponded to it. I think each one of us, if he looks back upon the past, will see clearly the times when he has been under the impulse of some unusual movement of the mind, the result of some special grace of God. Perhaps it came in the shape of some great affliction. You had a happy home. The purest of earthly joys was yours—domestic happiness, perfect sympathy in gladness and in sorrow. But death entered your abode, and the loving voice was silenced, and the kindly eye was closed. And in that deep grief, in that darkness and loneliness Christ spoke to your sinking heart, saying, "Fear not;" and you came forth out of that affliction with a new strength, with purer aims, with a quietness and peace of heart which only suffering can give.
Or, perhaps, the crisis in your history was your attendance on a "mission." You had lived in neglect of religion, almost complete. Confession was a bugbear to you. Years of sin and forgetfulness of God had hardened your conscience. But suddenly all was changed. You seemed a new man. Your faith was illuminated with a new brilliancy. Sin had a new horror. The string of your tongue was loosed, and oh, with what ease, with what fidelity and exactness, you made that dreaded confession! What comfort you derived from it! and with what energy and determination did you enter on the duties of a Christian life!
Or, it might have been in less striking ways that grace did its work. It may have been a book, a word, an interior inspiration, some of the seasons of the holy Church, holy communion, some of the lesser changes of life, a fit of sickness, a violent temptation: these may have been the instruments which God made use of, from time to time, to convey special graces to your soul. Sometimes the aim of these graces was to arouse you out of some deeply-seated habit of sin; sometimes to draw your heart away from the world to heaven; sometimes it was a call to prayer; sometimes a warning of danger: in fine, for some purpose bearing on your salvation, there they are, those visits of grace in your past life, as distinct and unmistakable as any other part of your history. When we read the Bible story of such saints as Abraham, Moses, and Elias, what strikes us as most wonderful and most beautiful is the familiarity in which they lived with God, how God drew near to them and spoke to them. Now, such passages have a parallel in the history of each one of us. There are times in our lives, and not a few such times, when God draws near to the soul, when He confronts it, makes special demands upon it, addresses it no longer in general, but particularly and individually; when He says to the soul, Go and do this, Do not do that, as unmistakably as when He said to Abraham: "Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy father's house, and come into the land which I shall show thee." [Footnote 83]
[Footnote 83: Gen. xii. 1.]
And if this be so, the mode in which we receive these divine communications must have a great deal to do with our guilt or innocence before God. We read in the Book of Judges, that on a certain occasion an angel of the Lord appeared to Manne and his wife, with a message from on high. He appeared to them in a human shape, and spoke with a human voice, and they did not know that he was an angel. It was not until they saw him ascend to heaven in the flame from the altar that they understood that they had been talking with one of the heavenly host. Then they said: "We shall certainly die because we have seen God!" [Footnote 84]
[Footnote 84: Judges xiii. 22.]
Now, there is a sense in which this exclamation is neither superstitious nor strange, as the expression, that is, of their anxiety lest in their ignorance they might have treated their heavenly visitor in some unseemly way. O my brethren, it is no light thing for God to draw near to a human soul. It is no light thing for Him to speak to us. When He speaks we cannot be as if He had not spoken. "His word shall not return to Him void." The relation between the Creator and the creature is such, that the moment He speaks our position is altered. When He calls we must either follow or refuse to follow; there is no neutrality possible.
Oh, what a thought, that if indeed God has spoken to us often in our past lives, if He has given us special calls and warnings, we must often have resisted Him! There are many of us, I fear, who have altogether too little conscience on this subject. A man comes to confession after an absence of several years. He confesses his more prominent sins against the divine commandments, but perhaps he does not even mention his failure to perform each year his Easter duty. And if the confessor calls his attention to it, he has nothing to say but, "Oh, yes, I neglected that." You see, he does not realize at all that God has been calling him from year to year, has met him again and again, and exhorted him to repent, and he has refused.
Another man hears a sermon which thoroughly awakens his conscience. He sees in the clearest light the danger of his besetting sin. His conscience is stirred, he almost resolves to break off his sin, but he does not quite come to the point, he postpones his conversion, and, after a little, dismisses the subject from his mind. Now here again, you see, is a distinct resistance to grace. The man has not only continued in sin, but has continued in sin in spite of God's warning.
Again, a person, free from the grosser forms of sin, has some radical fault of character; some fault which is apparent to everyone but himself; a deep obstinacy; a dangerous levity; an inveterate slothfulness; an overbearing temper; a domineering spirit—faults which are the source of innumerable difficulties—and he is plainly warned of these faults, but refuses to acknowledge them, strengthens himself in his self-deception, and clings to these faults as if they were a necessary part of his character. What is he doing, but frustrating the designs of God, despising His reproof, and rejecting the grace which was meant to make him so much better, so much happier, so much more useful?
Resisted grace! What is that but to withstand God to His face, and to say: I will not serve? To resist grace, what is that but to despise the precious Blood of Christ. To obtain for us those graces, the Blood of Christ and all His sufferings were given, and without them we should have been left in our sins and miseries; and so to refuse these graces is to make light of Christ's most bitter Death and Passion. To resist grace, what is that but to refuse glory. For each grace of God has a corresponding degree of glory attached to it; and, if we refuse the one, we reject the other. The truth is, we forget too much God's personal agency in our salvation. We are on earth, and God is far away in heaven. He has indeed left us His Law, and He is coming to judge us at the last day, but He is not now a present, watchful, living, speaking God to us. We forget that "He is not far from every one of us." We forget that He is about our path, and about our bed; that He watches us with the eagerness and tenderness of a mother for her child; that He intensely desires our salvation; that He pleads with us, warns us, calls to us, stretches out His Hand to us all the day long. It is nothing that He Himself tells us He stands at the door and knocks; it is nothing that He calls to us from without, saying: "Open to Me, My love, for my head is wet with dew, and My locks with the drops of the night;" we open not; we heed Him not; we hear Him not. Oh! I believe, at the Judgment Day, many a man will be appalled to see how he has treated Christ. In the description which our Lord has given us of that day, He tells us that the wicked shall say, in answer to His reproofs: "When saw we Thee hungry or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to Thee?" So, I believe, many will say: "O Lord, when did we refuse to hear Thee? When did we shut our hearts to Thy grace?" And He will answer: "When, at the voice of My preacher, you refused to forsake that sin; when, at the invitation of My Church, you refused to repent and amend; when, at the call of My Spirit, you refused to awake from your sloth, and follow after that perfection I demanded of you. In rejecting My agents, you have rejected Me. It was I; I, your God and your Saviour; I, your End and Reward, who walked with you on your way through life, who opened to you the Scriptures, and sought to enter in and tarry with you."
And, again, as resistance to grace is a special sin in itself, and a special matter about which we must render an account to God, so, when persisted in, it is the sure road to final impenitence and reprobation. Let me bring before your mind some of our Lord's emphatic teaching on this point.
Toward the latter part of our Lord's life, in preaching to His disciples on a certain occasion, He used this parable: "A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the tiller of the vineyard: Behold, these three years I came seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and I find none. Cut it down therefore; why doth it take up the ground? But he answering, said to him: Lord, let it alone this year also, until I dig about it and dung it. And if happily it bear fruit: but if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down." [Footnote 85]
[Footnote 85: St. Luke xiii. 6-9.]
The same lesson which in this parable Christ conveyed to the ear, He addressed, about the same time, by a striking action, to the eye. As He was going from Bethany to Jerusalem, He saw a fig-tree by the wayside. "And he came to it, and found nothing but leaves only, and He said to it: May no fruit grow on thee henceforward forever. And immediately the fig-tree withered away. And the disciples seeing it, wondered, saying: How is it presently withered away?" [Footnote 86]
[Footnote 86: St. Matt. xxi. 19.]
The apostles could not fail to connect this action with the parable quoted above, and to understand them both as referring to the rejection of the Jewish people. For three years He preached to that people, warned them, and instructed them. Then, at last, when they refused to listen to Him, He withdrew from them His presence, grace, and blessing, and left them to the consequences of their unbelief and hardness of heart; left them to "wither away." Listen to His lamentation over that guilty city. It is Palm Sunday. He is coming to the city in triumph. The crowds are shouting hosannas. At last, in His journey He comes to the Mount of Olives, whence the Holy City is full before His view. He looks at it; He thinks of all He has done to warn that people and convert them; He thinks of the ill success He has met with; He knows that he is going there for the last time, and that in a few days they will fill up the measure of their sins by nailing him to the cross; and, as he looked upon it, He wept over it, and said: "If thou hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are for thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee: and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation." [Footnote 87] Behold the end! a people resisting grace, until at last grace forsakes them, and they are left to their own impenitence and hardness of heart! And behold the fearful image of a soul which has resisted grace, until its final reprobation!
[Footnote 87: St. Luke xix. 41-44.]
Yes, my brethren, this is but the fearful image of what passes in many a soul. What does the Holy Scripture say? "The man that with a stiff neck despiseth him that reproveth him shall suddenly be destroyed; and health shall not follow him." [Footnote 88]
[Footnote 88: Prov. xxix. 1.]
God does not desire the death of the wicked. God never entirely ceases to strive with man. God never leaves a man altogether destitute of grace. But then God is not bound to impart special graces; and when He finds that these graces are uniformly rejected, when he meets only a hardened heart and a will obstinately bent on evil, He withholds them, or gives them less frequently. Meanwhile bad habits increase; sins multiply; the root of sin in the heart becomes deeper and stronger: years pass on in sin, and at last death comes. What kind of a death naturally follows such a life? What kind of death often, in point of fact, follows such a life? I will tell you: an impenitent death; the death of the reprobate and the lost. Perhaps the man dies a sudden death. He may die in his bed, but die a sudden death for all that; for he may die out of his senses, and unable to do any thing whatever toward making his peace with God. Or, he may die in daring rebellion against God. It is possible for men to die so. It is possible for a man who has a deep enmity in his heart to refuse to give it up at the last hour; and it does happen. It is possible for a man who has dishonest wealth in his possession to clutch it even while his fingers are cold and blue in the last agony; and that does happen. It is possible for a man who has lived in shameful sins of unchastity to refuse to dismiss the partner of his guilt, though in five minutes his soul will be in hell; and that too has happened. Or, a man may die in despair. The devil may bring the fearful catalogue of his sins before his mind, in all their blackness and enormity; the remembrance of bad confessions and broken resolutions may paralyze his will; and the dreadful record of communions made in sacrilege may complete the temptation, and the poor soul turn away from the crucifix, turn away from the priest, and die pouring forth the ravings of despair.
Or, on the contrary, he may die in presumption, in self-deceit. He may indeed go through the form of a confession, may receive the sacraments, and cheat himself into thinking it is all right, and be all the time a hypocrite, turning from his sins, not because he hates them, but because he can no longer enjoy them; and may receive the absolution of the priest only to hear it reversed the moment he gets into the presence of the unerring Judge, before whom are open all the secrets of the heart.
Death in some such form is, I say, the natural end of neglect of divine calls and warnings; and such a death is, in point of fact, not unfrequently the actual end of such a course. "For," says the apostle, "the earth that drinketh in the rain, which cometh often upon it, and bringeth forth herbs useful for them by whom it is tilled, receiveth blessing from God. But that which bríngeth forth thorns and briers, is rejected, and very near to a curse, whose end is to be burnt." [Footnote 89]
[Footnote 89: Heb. vi. 7, 8.]
And, O my brethren, if this is so, you who are putting off your conversion, putting off your return to God, to what a risk are you exposing your salvation! You say you will go to your confession at some other time. You are young; you imagine it will be easier in coming years; you think your passions will be weaker, your temptations less. But you are deceiving yourselves. You are counting on that which you do not know will ever be yours. You cannot promise yourself another year. How many who were here a year ago are now numbered with the dead! some of them as young as you are, and who a year ago felt as you do now. You count on special graces, and you have no right to count on them. You are deceiving yourselves, my brethren, you are deceiving yourselves. The freeness and abundance of grace, the cheapness of grace, if I may so express myself, deceives you. God invites, and seems to plead and to beseech you to be saved, and you think it will always be so. You think a time is coming when God will save you in spite of yourselves. You know that you are not now on the road to heaven, you know that you are living in sin, but you think somehow God will interfere and make it right. We are told in the gospel that there was at Jerusalem a pool, around which usually lay a great multitude of sick and afflicted people, waiting for the moving of the water; for an angel came down at certain times and troubled the water, and whoever stepped in first after the troubling of the water was healed. So it is with slothful, negligent, procrastinating Christians. They lie in their sins, waiting for some aid which will raise them to their feet, and make them whole without any effort of their own. Vain hope! They will die in their sins. "You shall seek me," said Christ, "and you shall die in your sins." [Footnote 90]
[Footnote 90: St. John viii. 21.]
These fearful words are addressed to you, O despiser of God's grace; to you, O young man, who deferrest conversion; to you, lover of pleasure, who will not break with your idols; to you, O drunkard, who will not throw away the intoxicating glass; to you, O avaricious man, who are getting rich by fraud or by the blood of souls. "You shall die in your sins." That is the end to which you are tending. As you have despised God, so He will despise you. You shall seek Him, but you shall not find Him. You shall call upon Him, but He will not hearken. At your dying hour, every thing will fail you. Prayer will die on your lips, unused to pray. Your mind, so long accustomed to love sin, will find it hard to turn from it with true contrition. The priest, ah! the priest cannot save you. He can only help you, can only give you the consolations of religion if you are rightly disposed. And how can you dispose yourself at that dreadful hour, when your mind is filled with a fearful looking for of judgment, when all your sins, and all the graces you have rejected, rise up before your guilty conscience? Oh! meet this danger. Do not run this risk. Resist no longer the grace of God. Behold, now once more God calls you to His fear. Behold, the days have come "to do penance, and to redeem your sins." God by His Holy Church makes you another offer. "Turn unto me, and I will turn unto you," saith the Lord. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unjust man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him." [Footnote 91] "To-day, then, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." Resolve to prepare for your Easter confession. If you came last Easter and have persevered, bless God, and come now. If you have fallen away, see where the error was, and learn a deeper humility, and make a stronger purpose, and come again.
[Footnote 91: Isai. lv. 7.]
And, oh if you have stayed away in former years, and are purposing to stay away this Easter, too—or if you are too negligent to have formed any purpose; if you are just floating on, heedless and careless, then know, that for all these things God will bring you into judgment, that the severest part of your account will be for graces resisted and rejected; and that you are preparing for yourselves the retribution threatened in those dreadful words: "Because I called and you refused: I stretched out My Hand; and there was none that regarded. You have despised all my counsel, and have neglected my reproofs. I also will laugh in your destruction: and will mock, when that shall come upon you which you feared. When sudden calamity shall fall upon you, and destruction as a tempest shall be at hand: when tribulation and distress shall come upon you: Then they shall call upon Me, and I will not hear: they shall rise in the morning, and shall not find Me: Because they hated instruction, and received not the fear of the Lord, nor consented to My counsel, but despised all My reproof. Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way, and shall be filled with their own devices." [Footnote 92]
[Footnote 92: Prov. i. 24-31.]