TWENTY-FIFTH SERMON
ON THE SECOND REASON FOR THE GENERAL JUDGMENT.
Subject.
There must be a day of general judgment, that God may publicly, before heaven and earth, justify and defend His chosen servants. Preached on the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost.
Text.
"He has done all things well." (Mark vii. 37.)
Introduction.
The same praise shall one day be given to the Almighty by all the angels and men in heaven and on and under the earth: " He has done all things well." That will be on the last day of general judgment,, when God shall in the sight of the whole world avenge His injured honor and justify the ordinations of His Providence, which now appear to us in many cases incomprehensible, no, often inconsistent and unjust, as you have heard three Sundays ago; and in the two following sermons we have seen that since we cannot understand the decrees of the Almighty, and shall not understand them till the last day, we should not pry into them curiously, and much less blame or find fault with them, but rather, as we know they proceed from a God of infinite goodness, justice, and holiness, look on them as right, just, and holy; the conclusion we deduced from that is, that in all cases we should be completely and quietly resigned to the divine will. There we have the first reason on the part of God which renders a general judgment necessary. There is still another reason that regards us men and especially the elect, which I now intend to explain.
Plan of Discourse.
There must be a day of general judgment., that God may publicly, before heaven and earth, justify and defend His chosen servants. Such is the whole subject. From it the pious may derive consolation; the wicked and the tepid, instruction.
Give us Your light hereto, Holy Ghost, which we humbly beg of You through the intercession of Mary and of our holy angels.
That pious and virtuous servants of God are during their lives not appreciated nor honored, but, generally speaking, despised and persecuted unjustly, comes from three causes. The first is their own humility, which impels them to hide their virtue from the world; the second is the wickedness of sinful men, who, by rash judgments, uncharitable talk, and persecution, try to vilify their good works; the third is the false maxims and judgments of vain worldlings, who ridicule and laugh at true virtue and piety as folly. It is then just that there should be a day of general judgment, on which God shall defend His servants against these two latter classes of people, and justify their virtue, and make known to heaven and earth the holiness that their humility kept hidden.
With regard to the first point, my dear brethren, true piety and virtue have this property and inclination, that they are always anxious as far as may be to remain hidden from the eyes of men, and to creep out of the light into the darkness. To wish to be looked on as pious, and therefore to make one's good works public, and to speak and act in a boastful manner, is nothing but hypocrisy and affected piety, of which true goodness, which is founded on humility and self-contempt, knows nothing. Hence saints chose to live in solitude, and made their dwellings in deserts and in caves in the wilderness; and they were wont to go from one country to another, that they might remain unknown and hidden from the eyes of men; for the same reason many of them concealed their noble descent under mean clothing, their great natural gifts under continual silence, the supernatural favors conferred on them by God under the appearance of a childish simplicity, no, sometimes they actually pretended to be mad and out of their senses.
It has indeed often been the case that God has brought His humble and hidden servants out of the retirement and obscurity they loved so well into the clear light of day, and made them known to the world in order to put the wicked to shame and to encourage the weak by their holy example. Thus the first hermit, St. Paul, after having lived a hundred years in the desert without other company than the wild beasts, was visited and reverently saluted by St. Anthony, to whom an angel had revealed Paul's great sanctity. Thus the humble servant of God, who had disguised himself as a charcoal burner to escape being recognized, was betrayed by a little child and raised to the dignity of bishop against his will. Thus St. Alexius died in his father's house after having spent forty years in it unknown, living as a poor mendicant in a closet under the staircase; if God Himself had not taken care to publish this fact after the saint's death, his heroic humility would have remained concealed from the world. Such too would have been the case with that Mark, who for seven years pretended to be a fool, if his holy wisdom had not been at length discovered; but the day after his secret was found out he was found dead in his hut. In like manner an Egyptian nun named Isidora, simulated folly with such success that for a long time the whole convent looked on her as a fool and treated her as a beast of burden; she had to do all the work that the others refused, and she pretended that she liked best what was most abhorrent to her nature and her senses. At last a man of great sanctity discovered the secret, and made known the holiness of that heroic virgin.
Meanwhile such cases are very rare. Oh, how many there are of both sexes whose holiness is buried from the light! How many chosen souls there are in religious houses, no, even in the world, whose great virtue is utterly unknown, because they conceal it so effectually! How many decent poor suffer the privations of their state with the utmost patience for God's sake! How many a workman offers up his daily toil to God with a pure intention! How many a lowly servant-maid spends her life in the meanest occupations, in the stable of some peasant, and her holiness, patience, and resignation to the divine will are known only to the all-seeing eye of God! How many tears of repentance and divine charity are shed in private houses in the secrecy of the bedchamber! How many privately and by night mortify their bodies by the frequent use of the discipline! How many there are who wear hair-shirts and iron girdles under costly robes! How many acts of mortification are practised of which one never hears a word! How much is given and taken in charity with out the generous donor's name ever coming to light! It seems to me quite true that there are souls in heaven greater in holiness and higher in glory than many others who have been canonized by the Church and whose relics are honored by the world; and it seems equally certain to me that there are actually many souls on earth who imitate or even surpass the example of the saints, and yet are not looked on as holy.
And must this remain always hidden, and that too from the world out of which the greater number of men shall be condemned to hell? No; it must not and cannot be so. The Lord Himself says to all His servants by the Prophet David: " Commit thy way to the Lord, and trust in Him: and He will do it." What will He do? " He will bring forth your justice as the light: and your judgment as the noon-day." For this purpose is fixed the day of general judgment on which all in heaven, on earth, and under the earth shall be summoned to the same place by the sound of the trumpet, and there, as it were, on a vast public stage shall be exhibited with the utmost pomp and splendor the hitherto hidden virtues and good works of the elect. How the an gels will then wonder, as well as men and demons, at the sight of so many unknown souls! Ob, they will exclaim with one voice, "who is she that comes forth as the morning rising?" " Who is this that comes up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved?" by whom she is led, as it were, in triumph? Who is that soul of whom no one ever heard anything extraordinary during life? See that poor citizen, that simple peasant, that lowly maid-servant; who would ever have thought they had led such holy lives? Their former masters and mistresses, who appeared to do so much for the glory of God, must now give way to them in rank. Many religions even of the strictest orders, who were looked on as saints during their lives, must now occupy a lower place than they in heavenly glory. How have those people managed to do such wonderful work so quietly, and in the midst of a barren and corrupt world to heap up such great merits? Now we see what we never could have imagined during life. Such is the manner in which the virtue that is now hidden through humility shall be brought to light.
Now, my dear brethren, if justice requires this, is it not still more imperatively demanded by justice that misinterpreted, persecuted, and calumniated virtue should be defended and publicly vindicated? What is more foolhardy, and at the same time more common in the world, than the vice of calumny and detraction? To sneer at, criticise, find fault with, and misinterpret the actions of others, and to spread false tales about one's neighbor is nowadays a privileged and public trade. Amongst all the holy servants of God there is hardly one who has not had to suffer in honor and reputation, and whose good name has not been made the butt of malice. Jesus Christ Himself, the Holy of holies, has not even yet redeemed His good name from the calumnies and aspersions that were cast on it by wicked Jews and envious Pharisees and Scribes during His lifetime; for at the present day He is looked on by the Jews as a seditious and treacherous man. The holy martyrs were condemned to painful deaths as disturbers of the public peace, as sorcerers and dealers in the black art; and as such they are still looked on by all heathens.
If God Himself had not revealed to Daniel the wickedness of the two elders who falsely accused Susanna, that chaste matron would have been stoned by the people as a guilty adulteress. Joseph languished in prison under the charge of having attempted the chastity of his master's wife, although his only crime was that he resisted her wicked solicitations; if God had not saved him, he would have perhaps died in prison as a criminal. But, alas! how many there are who are publicly decried by a whole city, although they are as innocent as Joseph and Susanna were of the crime of which they are accused, and they never have an opportunity of regaining their good name! And how many are not deprived of their employment, their property, their honor, through ill-founded suspicion, or envious and false accusations, that they never have a chance of refuting? There are few who have not to suffer from the evil tongues of those who envy and hate them and try to blacken their good name behind their backs in all sorts of ways. Nearly every one measures others by his own passions and imagination; the words that are spoken are misinterpreted and taken in an evil sense. And there are some who, if they cannot find anything blameworthy in the outward actions of others, wickedly assail their inward intention, of which they know nothing. Nor are private individuals the only ones who have to suffer from this; whole communities and nations lose their good name through the ill-conduct of some of their members. All the opponents of our holy faith have always looked on the popes as so many Antichrists; they say that our clergy are immoral, wicked, hypocritical, and avaricious in a shameful degree. All our convents they consider as houses of ill-fame, our churches as synagogues, our whole religion as a mass of mummeries and idolatry.
Here again we see how necessary it is that there should be a time in which all these calumnies and falsehoods shall be refuted, and that too publicly, so that all those innocent and injured servants of God may recover their lost honor before the world, and the frightful perversion of truth resulting from wicked tongues before be put to rights. Yes, my dear brethren, this time shall come: the Prophet David assures us that " the Lord will not leave the rod of sinners upon the lot of the just." "Now indeed," says St. Augustine commenting on this text, " the just have some thing to endure, and the wicked domineer over them; but shall it always be the case that the wicked command the righteous? Not by any means; the rod of the wicked shall be felt for a time up on the lot of the just; but it shall not be left there. The great day is to come when a complete change shall be made. The time shall come when Christ alone appearing in His glory shall assemble before Him all nations, and divide them, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. " And that is the last day of the world, when the trumpet shall summon the dead from their graves to appear before the judgment-seat of Christ in the valley of Josaphat. And how great shall then be the glory of the elect, when they see themselves justified from the calumnies they suffered so patiently on earth, while their persecutors are put to shame in the sight of the whole world! What a consolation it is even during this life to see truth sometimes prevailing and injured innocence protected! What joy there will then be on that day for the pious, when their holiness and virtue are made manifest to all, and when they see what treasures of merit they gained by their patient silence, and how their good name and honor are amply restored to them!
It was, according to Tertullian, the thought of the last day that always comforted the early Christians; it was to that they appealed whenever they were falsely accused before the judges or unjustly condemned to death. " You sentence us," they used to say, as we learn from Tertullian, ( without giving us a hearing; the only crime we are guilty of is that we are Christians; but we appeal from your judgments to that of the Almighty God; He will judge us and you at the last day. Now you may hold your heads as high as you please; then you shall not be able to save your necks from the noose, and we shall have our case tried in the sight of the whole world. " In the same strain St. Cyprian wrote to a wicked calumniator: You accuse me of words that I never dreamt of uttering; of deeds that I never dreamt of doing; but wait a while; one day we shall both appear in the same place; there we shall have the case tried: "you have my letter, and I have yours; on the day of judgment they shall both be read before the tribunal of Christ," a and the whole world shall then be able to see who is right.
Finally, there must and shall be a day of general judgment in order to defend and uphold the lives of the just and pious against the erroneous opinions and judgments of vain worldlings, If we contrast the laws and maxims of the Gospel of Christ with the lives and conduct of most Christians,, what a discord we shall find between them! It will seem as if Our Lord had preached mere fables to us, or at least as if His truths are not necessary to be practised by Christians who wish to go to heaven. The Gospel blesses the poor in spirit, but threatens woe to the rich who seek their pleasure and consolation in earthly goods; it says that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man, whose heart and desires are attached to temporal things, to enter heaven; it blesses the meek and the peaceful, who give way in silence to their opponents, and repay injuries with prayers and benefits, according to the law which says you must love your enemies and do good to those that hate and persecute and calumniate you; you must refrain from taking revenge under pain of eternal damnation; he who does not pardon his enemy cannot expect pardon from God; he who says to his brother with real, deliberate anger in his heart, " you fool! " is deserving of hell fire, and so on. It blesses those who weep and mourn here, and are tried by all kinds of crosses and tribulations, provided they bear them with patience and resignation to the divine will, while it threatens woe and eternal gnashing of teeth to those who laugh here and lead a voluptuous life. It blesses those who hunger and thirst after justice, while it threatens the tepid and slothful in the service of God, and warns them that God will vomit them out of His mouth. It blesses those who suffer persecution for justice sake, and are despised and looked down on by others, while it menaces eternal curses to those who are addicted here to cursing. It raises up to heaven the humble, who seek the lowest places here, while it says to the proud that unless they change and become as little children they shall never enter the kingdom of heaven. It treats of self-denial, mortification, crucifying the flesh, moderation in eating, drinking, and sleeping; of taking up and bearing the cross daily; of imitating the life and example of Christ, if we wish to go to heaven, but it holds out no hope of heaven to the voluptuous, to glut tons, and drunkards. It treats of flying the world, whose usages and customs we are forbidden to follow; and it condemns the friends of the world as enemies of God. It points out the rugged way and the narrow gate that lead to heaven, into which a few elect shall enter; it tells us that we must use violence in order to get there, and warns us against the broad road that leads to eternal damnation, which nevertheless the greater number of men choose to follow. It gives laws and rules to parents, showing them how carefully they should bring up their children for heaven; to children, telling them how to obey and honor their parents; to masters and mistresses, instructing them as to the manner in which they should lead those under their care to the service of God; to servants, showing how they should be faithful to their masters as to Christ Himself; to wives, warning them that they should seek to please their husbands alone with humility and obedience; to husbands, telling them to love their wives; to all Christians of both sexes, advising them to be modest and humble in dress and demeanor, and so on.
Now, we are all Catholic Christians; we cannot deny the Gospel of Christ; we cannot convict the word of God of falsehood or deceit; but how many are there who are fully persuaded that they are bound to live according to those laws and truths, and to regulate their actions most exactly in conformity with them? Pious servants of God, who are really desirous of salvation, show a ready obedience to those laws and try their best to observe them. But what do the vain children of the world say to them? Oh, they have a far different idea of things! " The sensual man," says St. Paul with reason, "perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand." The proud ridicule those laws and truths; dissolute and sensual men disregard them, and try to fashion a Gospel to suit themselves; they who live according to the corrupt world look on the pious who follow Christ and His law, and despise the world and its customs, as fanatics; they have a secret pity for what they imagine to be simplicity, for humility and modesty: "The simplicity of the just man i? laughed to scorn," says holy Job to his false friends. St. Gregory, commenting on this text, uses the following beautiful words: "The wisdom of this world is to hide by deceit the sentiments of the heart; to speak otherwise than one thinks; to prove true what is false, and false what is true; to turn the mantle with the wind; to agree with every one; to seek one's own interests always; to strive for honors and high places; to tolerate no injury; to return evil for evil, and if one cannot be revenged on one's adversary, to conceal one's hatred and anger by an appearance of politeness; to gratify one's sensuality and love of comfort; to conform to the usages of other men, and to take the world as a guide in all things. This wisdom is imbibed by the young with their mother's milk; they are trained in it during their youth; they who are skilled therein despise others; they who are ignorant of it look up to those who know it with the most profound and reverent admiration. " Thus far St. Gregory. They imagine that the law of the holy Gospel of Jesus Christ, true humility and modesty, the rude, rough way of penance, which alone can lead to heaven, is not for them, but only for religious in monasteries and deserts.
When shall these clouds of darkness be blown away? When shall the truth be disclosed, to show which side is right? Jesus Christ Himself, accompanied by all His angels, shall descend on that day from heaven, and in the presence of all the nations of the world shall erect the standard of the cross, and then pronounce sentence according to the laws of the Gospel on all those who have rejected those laws. The whole world will then have to confess and acknowledge that God revealed to the simple-minded and lowly, as they were imagined to be, what He kept concealed from the wise and the powerful. Then the foolish children of the world shall see, when too late, the grievous error into which they fell, and humbled and filled with shame and con fusion, disgraced and outcast, they will stand there crying out in rage and despair those words of the Book of Wisdom: " Therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice has not shined to us, and the sun of understanding has not risen upon us." So in spite of all our cleverness, we are now found wanting; we have not known the very fundamental truths of the Christian doctrine; like little children we have not learned even the ABC of it! " We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honor." Now we foolish ones see in the glory of the chosen children of God those whom we looked on as simple and stupid, while we have to go with the demons into eternal darkness! Then shall the angels launch forth against the world and its vanities that curse mentioned by St. John in the Apocalypse: "Alas! alas! that great city, which was clothed with fine linen and purple, and scarlet, and was gilt with gold," where nothing was to be seen but luxury and extravagance, is now humbled and completely ruined: " For in one hour she is made desolate. Rejoice over her, you heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has judged your judgment on her." Rejoice! you holy servants of God, who have foretold her misfortunes, and have always despised the deceitful happiness of the world, bewailed her blindness, and given such lively expression to your hatred of her by your warnings and example! Formerly her children refused to believe you; they laughed at your admonitions, despised your teachings, well meant as they were, and ridiculed and persecuted you on account of them; now it is your turn to triumph; your cause is gained; the Judge con firms the sentence you long since pronounced: God has judged your judgment on her." Oh, how the chosen followers of Christ will then exult and triumph because they humbly walked in the narrow way according to the precepts of the Gospel, and by bearing the cross after their divine Master, found, in spite of its weight, rest for their souls, experiencing to their great consolation that the yoke of Christ is sweet and His burden light! How the poor will thank God for having left them in poverty, and taken from them every occasion of pride by calling them to a lowly state of life! How they will exult when they hear the words fulfilled in their regard: blessed are the poor, the humble, the meek, and those who have suffered much persecution and oppression during life!
Pious servants of God! the conclusion is for you. For your advantage, and to justify your virtues that are now hidden, calumniated, and despised, there will be a day of general judgment; rejoice now in this certain hope! Only continue to serve your God; let others judge, criticise, condemn, ridicule, laugh as long as they may; be not disturbed thereat; think to yourselves: I am in this world only for the purpose of saving my soul, and living, not according to the customs and usages of the world, but as the law of God prescribes; I am in the world not to act as I see others doing, but as my Lord and Saviour has taught me by word and example! Let me now be poor, unknown, simple, no, foolish, in the world's estimation: that is nothing to me; the day will come when my innocence, piety, and justice shall be publicly brought to light; that day on which I shall be counted amongst the sheep of Christ, separated from the reprobate goats by the angels, placed in the glory of the elect at the right hand of the Judge; that day on which I shall hear the welcome words: " Come, you blessed of my Father!" Come with Me into the eternal kingdom of heaven. Amen.
Another introduction to the same sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent.
Text.
"And all flesh shall see the salvation of God." (Luke iii. 6. )
Introduction.
All flesh? Yes; all flesh shall see the salvation of God; the souls of all men clothed with their bodies, the elect and the reprobate, shall on that day be summoned by the trumpet before the judgment-seat of God in the valley of Josaphat, and in their Saviour they shall behold their Judge; and although they have all heard their sentence already in the particular judgment immediately after death, they shall again hear the same sentence in the presence of heaven and earth. But why so? That God may avenge His injured honor in the sight of the world, and justify His works that now appear to us incomprehensible, etc. Continues as above.