TWENTY-FIRST SERMON
ON THE JUSTICE AND SHORT DURATION OF THE TRIALS OF THE JUST AND THE PROSPERITY OF THE WICKED
Subject.
1. That the just should live in afflictions here below and the wicked in prosperity is according to God's decree: therefore no just man should complain and no sinner should continue in.his evil ways. 2. The afflictions of the just and the prosperity of the wicked last only a short time: therefore no just man should envy sinners their luck and no sinner should boast of it. Preached on the Third Sunday after Easter.
Text.
" You shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice." (John xvi. 20.)
Introduction.
And is that right? " You shall lament and weep." Who are they to whom Our Saviour says that? His apostles and disciples, and with them all pious, just, and chosen servants of God.
You, My dear friends, says Christ, you My adopted brothers and sisters, My chosen children who observe My law exactly, and walk in My footsteps, and love and honor Me: " You shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice." What is that world? The wicked, perverse world, and all those who are attached to it and to its sinful customs, while they resist the holy teaching and maxims of the Gospel of Christ; that is, sinners and the wicked; they shall live in joy and abundance. But, I ask again, is that right? To weep and lament; is that the reward our dear Lord promises to the good? Joy and abundance; is that the punishment with which He threatens the wicked? If He had said quite the contrary for instance, you, My children, shall enjoy prosperity, while the wicked, who despise Me, shall suffer affliction then we might have understood Him. So we often think, my dear brethren, with secret envy and discontent, when we judge according to the dictates of the flesh and our sensuality. But we should not think so. That this decree of divine Providence is right and just, and that we have no reason to complain of it or to envy others on account of it, I mean to show today to the greater honor and glory of God. I ground my argument on the Gospel of today: first, it is the Lord who has said it: " Amen, amen, I say to you that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice;" thus it must and shall be. Secondly, "a little while;" this difference shall last only a very short time. There you have the heads of my sermon; namely:
Plan of Discourse.
That the just should live in afflictions here below and the wick ed in prosperity is according to God's decree: therefore no just man should complain; but neither should the sinner persist in his evil ways: the first part. The afflictions of the just and the prosperity of the wicked last only a short time: therefore no just man should envy sinners their luck; but neither should any sinner boast of it: the second part. Both are intended to terrify the wicked and to console the good.
Give us all Your light and grace to this end, God! We ask it of You through the intercession of Mary and of our holy guardian angels.
Are the wicked then the only ones who can be happy and prosperity, prosperous here below? Are we actually to believe that sin and vice is the road to temporary well-being? Yet it is from the hands of the great God that all blessings and goods must come. Without His favorable co-operation not a blade of grass can exist in the field, not a leaf on the tree, not an herb in the garden, not a stone on the mountain. What more contradictory, then, than to maintain that to attain prosperity we must despise and offend Him from whom all goods and graces must come. And if they alone who offend God enjoy wealth, health, and the es teem of their friends, what poor, distressed mortal would not prefer to live in sin, that things might go better with him? If the pious, who serve God with zeal, are to be the only ones to suffer poverty, sickness, and contempt, what rich man would venture to do penance and run the risk of living in misery? But, my dear brethren, that is not the case at all. I maintain quite the contrary: that sin and wickedness is the source from which all the miseries and troubles of life come. The Lord has nothing but woes for the sinner in the mouth of the Prophet Isaias: " Woe to the sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a wick ed seed, ungracious children." " Let it not be well with the wicked," says the Wise Preacher; " neither let his days be pro longed, but as a shadow let them pass away that fear not the face of the Lord."
Did not Saul in olden times gain a royal crown by his virtue and piety and lose it by becoming wicked? If King David ever had to suffer misfortune, it was when he forgot his God and committed the shameful crimes of adultery and murder. When and how did the wonderful good fortune of Solomon begin to decline? Was it not when that king and his successors began to practise idolatry? " As long as they sinned not in the sight of their God it was well with them: for their God hateth iniquity," so said Achior to Holofernes of the Jewish people; " But as often as beside their own God they worshipped any other they were given to spoil, and to the sword, and to reproach." So that it is not alone those who lead bad lives who enjoy prosperity, although the world nowadays is apt to have recourse to unjust means to secure it; and the same just God still lives and rules the world, and iniquity is still hateful in His sight. And, alas! how many are there not in the world who have hardly a bit of dry bread to eat, and lead wretched lives in sorrow and affliction, hunger and want, and yet, because they are wicked and sinful, shall be cast into hell when the time comes to separate the wheat from the chaff! Woe to the sinful nation, no matter who or what they are! Woe to them! sinners! do not persist in your evil ways! Wickedness is not the door to good luck and prosperity!
Meanwhile experience teaches us that although not all, yet many, and very many, and generally speaking the greater number of those who lead a pleasant, comfortable, idle, and apparently happy life are those who give least signs of Christian devotion are severely and piety, and are frequently addicted to the worst vices, such as pride, avarice, injustice, gluttony, impurity, etc.; and in spite of their wickedness things prosper with them and they get what they wish. On the other hand we see and experience that many, very many, and generally speaking the greater number of those who live piously, serve God faithfully, and regulate their actions by the laws and maxims of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, are visited by all sorts of crosses, trials, and adversities, as the Prophet David said long ago: "Many are the afflictions of the just;" those whom God loves He is wont to chastise.
It is this inequality that generally causes us to murmur as at a thing that we cannot understand. Is it right, we ask, to see unjust. the rich glutton, whose only care is to gratify his appetites, seat ed at a well-spread table, while the righteous Lazarus lies at his doorstep, perishing with hunger and begging for the crumbs from the rich man's table, a charity that is cruelly refused him? What an intolerable thing to see men who have nothing of the Christian but the bare name, while they are no better than heath ens in their lives and actions, enjoying such an abundance of all things, while true servants of God, who mean so well towards their Lord, have hardly enough clothes to enable them to make a decent appearance in church! How exasperating to behold so many impious men whose sole delight is to jeer at religion and what belongs to it sitting in high places, honored by all, endowed with the best of health, and spending their lives in peaceful, undisturbed enjoyment of their pleasures, while many a good Christian has to plague himself and toil day and night, and yet can hardly find enough to keep himself alive, and is moreover despised and contemned, perhaps by those very godless people themselves who live in prosperity! Can such an arrangement come from a God of infinite wisdom, holiness, and justice? Or does that God really interest Himself in even the most minute of our affairs, as we are taught to believe? Is He capable of acting so harshly towards His friends, while He is so generous to His enemies? Truly that father has a hard heart who admits his disobedient, obstinate servants to his own table, while he drives away from it his children who love him and are ready to obey his least sign, and allows them to suffer the pangs of hunger! How can we dare to attribute such a mode of action to the God of goodness and mercy to whom we daily cry out: "Our Father who art in heaven " ! And what could possibly be the result of it, if not to make virtue and goodness detestable, and sin and vice agreeable and laudable?
We are not the only ones who entertain such thoughts. Even the holiest servants of God have sometimes had a difficulty in finding a reason for the action of the Almighty in this respect. " I see," says the great and enlightened St. Augustine, "before my eyes a most difficult problem" to understand, namely, how to reconcile the justice of God and His all-ruling providence with the claims of equity and right, when I behold sinners generally prosperous on earth, while the good are tormented by temptations, persecutions, and trials. " It is a most difficult thing to explain." And I believe you, great Saint! Many centuries before you the prophets of God studied the same point, and had to confess that it puzzled them. "Why," asks Jeremias in astonishment, " why does the way of the wicked prosper; why is it well with all them that transgress and do wickedly? " Why is this, Lord? The same difficulty made David totter in his faith and hope. Hear what he says in the seventy-second Psalm. " But my feet were almost moved: my steps had well-nigh slipped." Why? " Because I had a zeal on occasion of the wicked, seeing the prosperity of sinners. They are not in the labor of men, neither shall they be scourged like other men," so that they may do whatever pleases them. But, thought I to myself, how is that possible? " Behold! these are sinners, and yet abounding in the world, they have obtained riches. And I said: Then have I in vain justified my heart, and washed my hands among the innocent: and I have been scourged all the day, and my chastisement has been in the mornings. I studied that I might know this thing, it is a labor in my sight."
This was the very thing that the heathens of old upbraided the Christians with. What sort of a God have you? said they. Where are His justice and goodness towards you? You are poor and despised; hunted from one city to another, tortured and persecuted and crucified alive. Is your God blind that He does not see those things? Or has He forgotten you, that He takes such little interest in you ? He must be either unwilling or unable to help you; if He is unable, He is no God; if He is unwilling, it is to no purpose you serve such a merciless Lord. But enough of such blasphemous talk! It is fit only for blind heathens, who know nothing of the inscrutable decrees of divine Providence.
Far from the Christian be such thoughts and complaints! Sufficient for us to keep us resigned should be the words in which the Prophet David speaks of his doubts in this matter: I studied that I might know this thing, I tried to find out the reason of it, but in vain; therefore I determined to suspend my judgment, to submit humbly to the divine decrees, and to wait " until I go into the sanctuary of God, and understand concerning their last ends." One thing I believe, and that is enough for me, that You, Lord, have so willed and ordained; for it is You alone who exaltest and humblest man as You pleasest; You castest him down and liftest him up again: from Your hand comes adversity as well as prosperity; and You givest to every one as seems good in Your sight. Therefore whatever You do must be right and just; but what Your reasons are we must not be too anxious to discover. We shall find them out hereafter, when we shall appear in Your sanctuary, "and under stand concerning their last ends." Then shall we see and know everything clearly in You as in a beautiful mirror; we shall understand why this just man was poor, and that wicked man rich; why that pious woman was persecuted, and had to spend her days in weeping in the bitterness of her heart, while that vain worldling abounded in pleasures; why, in a word, Your servants have to weep and mourn here, while Your enemies rejoice and make merry; then shall we see that all this has been arranged and permitted by You for most just reasons.
Such, my dear brethren, should be the tenor of our thoughts in circumstances which to our weak understandings appear strange and incomprehensible, so that we may be always undisturbed and content with the will of God. Many other mysteries still more difficult of comprehension are proposed to me by our faith: for instance, the Blessed Trinity of Persons in one Nature, and that there is one only God in the three Persons; that Jesus Christ is here present in His own house in the small est particle of a consecrated Host. How can such things be ? is the question that my understanding sometimes asks. I cannot comprehend it. But is my not understanding it a reason for saying that it is not true, or for wavering in my faith? God forbid! I need only say to myself: God has said it; and then I can at once conclude with certainty that it must be true. Now I am just as certain that God cannot ordain anything that is not right and just as He cannot say anything that is not true. Therefore when I sometimes feel an inclination to bitterness of spirit on considering the prosperity of the wicked and the trials of the just, and am not able to explain the cause of either, must I then murmur and say that an injustice has been committed? May God preserve me from such thoughts! I should rather at once say to myself: God has so ordered it; it is His will; there fore it must be good, right, and just. I am satisfied with Your will, Lord! thou art most just and givest to each one what ever he has; thou art most provident and givest to each one what You knowest to be most fitting for him; thou art most holy, and do nothing without good reason. I do not under stand some things, but I do not want to understand- them here; I can wait till I come to You in heaven, where I shall see every thing in its cause, that is, in You, God, " and understand concerning their last ends, The world then may rejoice, while I mourn with Your servants; let it laugh while I weep; let it abound in wealth, while I suffer poverty; let it live in pleasure, while I endure crosses and trials. I do not complain; I will be satisfied with everything; all is right since it is according to Your will! " Yes, Father, for so has it seemed good in Your sight." But I need not dwell longer on this point, as I have already explained it in detail. And in fact when I consider how short is the miserable joy of the wicked, I find that I have not merely no cause to complain, but also no reason for congratulating them, or envying them in the least. This, my dear brethren, we shall see in the
Second Part.
Generally speaking, the complaints we utter and the discontent we feel do not arise from own wants nor from temporal goods as they are in themselves, but rather from a secret envy and spirit of grudging. If we men were alike in all things, and no one had more than his neighbor, then we should all be satisfied, although no one might have much; for every one would think: it must be so. Again, if each one imagined he had some thing more or better than others, he would be not only content, but would esteem himself very fortunate. The peasant who never left his native village, and who on account of the extent of his lands is obliged to keep a horse more than his neighbors, looks on himself as the richest and most fortunate in the whole place; but if he goes into the town and sees the rich equipages of the wealthy, alas! he thinks, poor man that I am! how rich the people are here ! And he who was so happy before goes home discontented. Why? He is just as well off as before. Yes, but now he sees that others have more than he; and therefore his own condition now seems despicable to him.
In this matter we resemble little children. Suppose there are four or five of them together in a household; their mother gives them their breakfast as usual in the morning; each one gets a piece of rye bread rather thinly spread with butter, but all receive the same; for none of you would advise her to be more generous to one than to another. They are all quite satisfied and fall to with great gusto, munching their bread with such eagerness that it quite gives one an appetite to look at them. But suppose now that one of the children, a brother or sister, perhaps on account of being more delicate than the others, gets a piece of white bread instead of rye, and may be a morsel of meat in addition, oh, what a to-do there is in the house about it! All is upset and in disorder; the little ones begin to cry and howl, and look with disgust on what they before liked so well. Why so? Is the rye bread more insipid to them or coarser than before? No; but the bit of white bread or meat given to one excites the jealousy of the others. Be still! children, says the mother; your brother is sick, and must perhaps soon take to his bed and die; and what more has he had than the rest of you, except a bit of meat? And as he has eaten it in a hurry, he has just as little as you now. Be satisfied with what you have. But it is all to no purpose; the brother may be sick or not; the others make no account of that, and they would rather be sick themselves, or pretend to be so, than get less than he.
Such is the way, my dear brethren, in which children act; but old people are often not much better, as Seneca says: " We have the authority of age, the vices of youth." Our great Father in heaven distributes daily to us mortals His food and other goods, according to His own will; to one He gives more, to another less, and indeed, as we have seen already, those who seem to deserve it least receive the greater portion, that is, sinners and the wicked; and thereby arises much envy, grudging, and discontent. Why does he get so much, asks the dissatisfied man, and I so little? He has white bread, while I have hardly enough black bread to still my hunger. He can drink the best of wine, while I have to be content with water. Everything prospers with him, while nothing goes right with me, although I have hitherto tried to serve my God faithfully. But, my dear children, you should be satisfied with what you have received, says the heavenly Father by His Prophet David: " Envy not the man who prospereth in his way: the man who does unjust things." Do not grudge him his good luck; he to whom I have given something on earth is weak and sick in his soul; he will soon die of his illness, and that too an eternal death: " For they shall shortly wither away as grass: and as the green herbs shall quickly fall."
And what has he received more than you, after all? Only a trifle! Oh, how false and wretched the happiness that disappears so speedily! With reason does St. Augustine exclaim: The wicked man is in truth never happy, " but he is thought so, because we do not know what happiness is." But we will not dispute this point with him today. If the sinner prospers while the just man suffers, do not be uneasy on that account; for, ask again, how long will it last? A very short while. " For yet a little while," says David, "and the wicked shall not be, and you shalt seek his place, and shalt not find it." You will look around for some traces of his former prosperity, but you shall not find any. This very day, if I wish, I can put an end to it; all I need do is to visit him with some unforeseen calamity; then there will be an end to his riches; he will lose the favor of the great; his authority in the world will be at an end; a fever, a toothache, a pain in the head will suffice to rob life of all its joys for him. " See how fleeting that happiness is," says St. Augustine. Does that deserve to be envied by a reasoning man whose end is to possess an infinite Good in the kingdom of heaven? Let the supposed happiness of the wicked last as long as it may; the end must come; at the approach of death, and it is following our every footstep, there will be an end of all pleasure, and nothing of the things that made up their happiness here shall go with them into the next life. When a great lord visits a town in state he has in his train a number of led-horses gorgeously caparisoned with gold and silver trappings, while the horse of the poor peasant groans under the weight of the heavy wooden wagon. Truly there is a great difference between the two animals. But wait a little, till evening comes; then the grandly-equipped horses will be stripped of their trappings, and will appear just as bare as the peasant's poor animal; no, the former, since they are better fed, lose their value sooner, and are sent sooner to the knacker. So will it be with the wicked, whom David compares to horses and mules: " Do not become like the horse and the mule, that have no understanding." Many of them now abound in splendor and magnificence, in honor and authority, in joys and pleasures, in riches and wealth; they are heavily laden with those things, and strut about with them for a short time; their mangers are always ready for them, and are well filled: "They take the timbrel, and the harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They spend their days in wealth." Pious, just Christians, many of you on the other hand are poor and despicable in the sight of the world; you are oppressed with labors and trials, and have to earn your bread in the sweat of your brow, and you are, so to speak, harnessed to a wretched peasants wagon.
But be not troubled at this. Wait till the end, till evening comes, till the hour of death, and then you will find that the difference between you and the wicked will be a consoling one for you, but a very deplorable one for them. When your souls, laden with the merits you have acquired by your patience and good works, are awaiting joyfully to have the gates of heaven opened to them, the wicked shall against their will be stripped of their gorgeous trappings, and be thrust naked and wretched into a place where they never thought of entering. The goods they possessed in life will, although dumb, cry out to them on their death-beds, to their great terror and despair, what Our Lord says to His disciples in today's Gospel: "A little while, and now you shall not see Me. " For a little while, shall cry out the lusts and delights of the world, we have served for your comfort and enjoyment; now we can remain no longer; our successors shall be pains and torments, which are already knocking at the door and turning us out of the house. For a little while, the money shall cry out, I still regard you as my master; afterwards I shall belong to others, and not a farthing of me shall you be able to take with you on your journey to eternity. In a little while, honor shall say, I shall leave you; my years of service are at an end, and presently there will be no more thought of you. Truly those are bitter words for him who has set his heart during life on such things, and forgotten his God! Too faithfully will be fulfilled in his regard the words that Baruch spoke in the person of the world: "I nourished them with joy;" I have kept them well for a short time, and fed them with sugar and honey: ( but I sent them away with weeping and mourning." I dismissed them at last, sad and sorrowful. And, most terrible of all for the wicked at the end, where shall they go to after death, when their short career of happiness is over? Into a stable like the horse stripped of his trappings? Ah, they would wish to have even as good a place as that to remain in. But it is too good for them. " They spend their days in wealth," and what becomes of them afterwards? " and in a moment they go down to hell." The moment the breath leaves their bodies their souls are buried in hell. Oh, truly that is a sudden and a terrible change! From a place of honor to a pit of infamy! From a splendid dwelling to the prison of hell, where they shall lie packed together like herrings! From a well garnished table to a lake of brimstone, where hunger shall be their food, molten lead and the gall of dragons their drink! From the soft down-bed to the burning coals, where their covering shall be flames of fire! From laughter and amusement to eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth! From joys to eternal woes! From the midst of their dear friends to the company of the demons and goblins of hell! How strange their first entry shall be to them! How long eternity shall appear to them, when their short-lived joys and pleasures have come to an end!
My dear brethren, do we require anything beyond the consideration of these points to convince us of the false nature of the prosperity of the world? If it comes to such a wretched end with the wicked, who then should envy them on account of it, or complain that he has no share in it? " Do not envy men the happiness they enjoy in this life," says St. Peter Damian with reason; be not grieved if you have but a small share in it; " but rather condole with them, for like dumb brutes fattening on the pastures, they are hastening to the butcher." No, no! if that is the way with the joys and prosperity of the world I want none of them, and willingly leave them to whoever desires them! Just servants of God, rejoice even in the midst of your sufferings, in your poverty and persecutions! Much more desirable are your tears than the laughter and rejoicings of the world! Much better your poverty and destitution than the wealth and abundance of sinners! What you suffer will also last but a little time; only be satisfied, and do not complain. The true God whom yon serve calls out to you: " For a small moment have I forsaken you, but with great mercies will I gather you." For a short time, that is but a moment compared to eternity, I have appeared to abandon you; afterwards I shall invite you in My great mercy to a glorious banquet in heaven. " A little while, and you shall see Me," and see Me in everlasting joys! Oh, truly a most desirable change !
Yes, my God, I will be satisfied with You now, no matter what You do with me here on earth. " Better is one day in Your courts above thousands," and therefore with my whole heart I say with Your servant David, " I have chosen to be an abject in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners." Better to be the poorest and most abject amongst Your suffering and weeping children than to dwell in the most magnificent palace amongst all the pleasures and enjoyments of the wicked! You will I serve and serve faithfully and zealously, and this shall be my only care, this the only thing for which I shall implore Your grace. Then may the world go with me well or ill as it pleases! As long as I am Your friend it matters not; I am rich enough, and have joys and everything else in abundance. My riches, repose, and joys I reserve for the next life, where, as You say to me in today's Gospel, my heart shall rejoice, and no man shall take my joy from me, and my happiness shall never end. Amen.
For other motives to bear trials with patience, and to be re signed to the will of God, see several sermons in the first, third, and fourth parts.