THIRTY-FIFTH SERMON
ON THE EXAMINATION OF THE SINNER IN JUDGMENT.
Subject.
1. Each of us shall be examined in the judgment; oh, what answer shall many be able to make? 2. The question and answer shall be given in the presence of all mankind; oh, how shall the sinner be able to bear the shame and confusion of that? Preached on the fourth Sunday after Epiphany.
Text.
"But the men wondered, saying: What manner of man is this?" (Matt. viii. 27.)
Introduction.
The same question shall one day be put to us: What manner of man is this? Where does he belong to? To heaven or to hell? Woe to us, my dear brethren, if the answer we give is not a favorable one for our salvation! The examination of man in the judgment is the subject of today's meditation, which shall consist of two points.
Plan of Discourse.
Each one of us shall be examined in the judgment; oh, what answer shall many be able to make ? The first point. The question and answer shall be given before the whole world; oh, how shall the sinner be able to bear the confusion and shame of that. The second point. Sinners, repent of and confess your sins! Just Christians, be always on your guard against sin !
Such shall be the conclusion, and the end and aim of the whole meditation; help us thereto, Mother of mercy, and you, holy guardian angels !
Difficult is the answer when the question deals with intricate matters, many in number, different in their nature, extending over a considerable time, and easily forgotten. A rich merchant who traffics in all kinds of goods by sea and land, who keeps a number of men employed, partly at home from morning till night in receiving and sending off his wares, and partly in other towns in buying and selling, if he were asked to give an account of his business for one year, and to state what, where, how much, at what price, on what day and hour, with what profit or loss he has sold; what, how much, where, from whom he has bought; how much money he has put by every day; how much he has expended; how much he has to pay; how much is owing to him: what answer could he make? Oh, he would exclaim, do not ask me such a question! How could I remember all those things? If I look over my books, comparing one with another, and count all my money, a task that would require many months, then perhaps I might be able to say in a general way whether I am richer or poorer; but it is utterly impossible to enter minutely into such matters.
My dear brethren, in what shall the question consist that we shall each have to answer when we appear before the tribunal of divine justice? Will it merely regard what has been done for the space of a year in our households? No, indeed ! To put the matter in a few words, we shall be asked about everything that we have done, said, thought, arid omitted during our whole lives, in all places and circumstances, counting from the first dawn of reason to the last moment in which the soul left the body. " The books were opened," says the Apocalypse, "and the dead were judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works; " l all the secrets of men's hearts and conscience? shall then be displayed in a most vivid light. " Give an account of your stewardship," shall be said to each one, as was said to the steward in the Gospel. Come here, mortal! give an ac count of all that has occurred in your household during the time of your life. Account for the thoughts that were in your mind ! Thought is free, we generally say; no worldly jurisdiction has any control over it, not even the Church herself, unless one reveals his thoughts to her. You alone, Judge of the living and the dead, have reserved this right to Yourself! "The Lord is the weigher of spirits." In Your scales are weighed not only the works but the most secret, hidden, and unknown spirits, the thoughts I had from my early childhood until the present moment, and which I cannot remember myself because their number is almost infinite. All are written down most exactly in Your great account-book, and one day You wilt read them out for me, and call upon me to answer for them. " Inquisition shall be made into the thoughts of the ungodly." my God! what filth shall then come forth from the hearts of many who now show no mark of it on their foreheads! All the envious, hateful, angry, vindictive, suspicious, rash-judging thoughts you entertained against your neighbor; all the vain, self-conceited, ambitious thoughts with which you flattered yourself: your beauty, or your skill; all the unclean thoughts, desires, and longings that you kept in your mind about unmarried or married persons, about relatives or persons consecrated to God, in some of which you have secretly taken pleasure, while in others you have wished to commit the sinful act; all the complacency you have had in former sins, or in future lustful gratifications that you imagined in occasions and temptations that were likely to befall you; all the desires you had that others should have an unlawful passion for you; all the impure emotions you experienced in wilfully looking at another person; in assisting at an immodest play; in looking at an unchaste picture, etc.: all these things you will have to answer for in order, and confess when, how often, and how long you were guilty of them.
"Give an account: " answer for all the words that you have heard and said during your life; how many imprecations and curs es; how many words of abuse and invective, of sarcasm and contention you have spoken against others; how often you have injured Christian charity and your neighbor's reputation by talking, fault-finding, tale-bearing, and detraction; how often you have disturbed the peace between friend and relations, brothers and sisters, husband and wife, by carrying stories back ward and forward; how often you have indulged in or wilfully listened to impure conversation, or sullied your own purity and that of others by indecent allusions, double-meaning expressions and similes, and unchaste songs and writings; how often you have taught others to sin, and instructed the innocent in things they should never have learned; how often you have taken false and unnecessary oaths, or made false promises; how often you have dishonored the Almighty God and His saints by unbecoming words or blasphemy; how often you have told injurious, deliberate, or jocose lies; how often you have boasted of yourself or of your sins in the company of others; no, how often you have spoken idly and to no purpose. Alas! exclaims St. Bernard, considering this point; alas! what account shall we be able to give for our idle words, and what shall we be able to say about the sinful words we have uttered? Yet Our Lord tells us in the Gospel of St. Matthew: " But I say to you, that every idle word that men shall speak they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you shalt be justified, and by your words you shalt be condemned."
" Give an account; " answer for all the actions of your whole And done, life; what evil have you committed alone, with others, in secret, publicly, in youth, in manhood and age, up to the last moment of your life? What evil have you done at home, in that room, in that garden, on that walk, in that street, in that hidden corner? What injustice, impurity, intemperance have you been guilty of against yourself, against your neighbor, against God and His commandments, with eyes, ears, mouth, hands, feet? Ah, how will you be able to account for all these things? But one day you will have to do it. Give an account of all the sins you have caused others to commit or given occasion to by advice, command, approval, toleration, flattery, allurement, deceit, bad example, indecency in behavior, manner, dress, conversation. How many are there now who think of these things when they prepare for confession? Since my last confession, they say, I have done this or that, and nothing more; but not a word of the harm they have done the souls of others. On that day, how ever, all this shall be made the subject of a most strict interrogation. Many a one shall look on himself as quite free from all foul sins, and he shall be so in reality; and nevertheless in that strict judgment he shall find himself examined and found guilty of the most abominable actions. But how can that be? my God! the accused will say, during my whole life I have never done such things! Yes, shall be the reply to him; you have not done them yourself, but you gave others occasion and opportunity to do them. How then? By your vanity and foppery; by your insatiable eagerness to find out and follow new fashions in dress, scandalous though they were, in order to please the eyes of strangers. You have often made an assignation dressed in that manner even in church, there to erect one church against another, one altar against another. The head of the family shall be found, as far as his own conduct is concerned, upright and just before God and the world in all his dealings, in buying and selling, careful in speech, diligent in hearing Mass, edifying, modest, and recollected in church; and yet he will be convicted of many blasphemies, false oaths, excessive drinking, and other similar crimes. But how? Why? I have never even known the names of those vices! Answer: those vices were well known and freely committed by your servants, domestics, and even by your children, because you did not take due care of them, nor look after them day and night, as you should have done, nor kept a watchful eye on your children's training, seeing whether any wrong-doing was going on in the house; because you did not inflict punishment for faults committed, and tolerated everything; therefore in all those things you are guilty. A high official or minister of a great man may be most just and upright in his own conduct; a judge may be most anxious to keep the strict balance of justice, and not to allow himself to be biassed by gold, or promises, or hopes, or fears, and yet he may find himself convicted of many grievous sins and faults by his strict Judge. These will make themselves known to him, and cry out to him, as St. Bernard says, in a terrible voice: " We are your works; we shall follow you to the tribunal of the Almighty," Ah, my God, how can these things be put down to me! When, where, and how have I become guilty of them? Answer: your servants, the domestics under your care and authority have forced bribes and presents from those whom they presented to you in audience; the cases entrusted to you were put off till the contending parties were impoverished and tired out, and obliged to put a stop to all law proceedings, so that he who had right on his side was compelled to suffer the loss of his case; you are to be blamed for all this, and it will all be put down to you because you have not been more careful, and have neglected the duties and obligations of your state; for you might easily have prevented all these evils. Give an account of what you have done wrong through culpable ignorance. Here and there you had a reasonable doubt as to the lawfulness of what you were about to do, but self-love, human respect, and other motives made you deaf to the doubt, so that you proceeded to act without taking any advice. You seldom heard instructions on the Christian doctrine, or attended sermons in which you might have been taught many duties of your state of life that you have not fulfilled through culpable ignorance. In all states there are certain sins that one either does not know or does not wish to know; one is apt to adopt erroneous maxims and to look on certain customs as lawful, or at all events as not sinful, and to conform to them because they are in vogue and are practised without scruple by the greater number of men of the world, although they are quite opposed to the maxims of the Gospel and the doctrine and ex ample of Christ. Oh ! how many ignorances of that kind shall we not find in the great account-book, and how deeply they shall be scored therein!
Give an account; answer for all that you have omitted during your life, that you could and should have done. It is not enough to abstain from what God has forbidden; one is also obliged to do what He has commanded, and will be questioned about the one as well as about the other. For instance, the Judge will not condemn you for having robbed your neighbor and stolen his property, but He will condemn you for not having helped the poor according to your means: " I was hungry and you gave Me not to eat: I was thirsty and you gave Me not to drink." He will not condemn you for having taken away your neighbor's reputation, but He will condemn you for having encouraged uncharitable remarks by your silence or your approval, and for not having stopped them when you might have done so. He will not condemn you for having given scandal to your domestics in many things, but He will condemn you for having tolerated faults in them, and for not having punished them for those faults. There are many parents whom He will not condemn for having brought up their children to vanity and luxury, and given them bad example in that respect, but He will condemn many be cause they have not brought up their children to virtue, and kept them from evil; for not having procured religious instruction for them in due time; for not having watched over them carefully; for having allowed them to run about the streets in all sorts of company, as is unfortunately the case with some, who thus grow up like heathens and gypsies. There are many superiors whom He will not condemn for having oppressed their subjects by unjust burdens, but He will condemn many for not having, as they were in duty bound to do, examined into the vices and bad habits of their subjects, or when they have known of such vices, for having tolerated and not at once prohibited and abolished them.
Give an account; answer for all the years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, moments that you have lived on earth. Every year has three hundred and sixty-five days; every day twenty-four hours; count the minutes if you can. Now you have lived for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years; how have you employed all the minutes? For your eternal salvation, for which alone they were given to you? or for your eternal damnation? How much time have you spent uselessly in play, amusements, and other triflings? Give an account and answer; in what manner, to what purpose have you during all that time employed the natural goods bestowed on you by God: your health and bodily stature, your understanding and memory, and other gifts, and how much have you gained with them? How have you used the goods of fortune? To what purpose have you employed your money and wealth, your high position and authority? How have you used the gifts of grace? What profit have you derived from the use of the sacraments, from the good inspirations, the clear knowledge you had of divine things, the many opportunities of doing good that were given to you in preference to others, the many sermons you heard or might have heard if your slothfulness had not prevented you, the many examples of pious Christians who walked before you on the path of virtue?
Give an account; answer even for all the good works you have done in the course of your life. Of what kind were they? "When I shall take a time," says the Lord, " I will judge justices." Now bring forward your good works, your prayers, fasting, alms giving, hearing of Mass, confessions, Communions, mortifications, works of mercy and charity, the daily duties of your state of life. Perhaps you have a great heap of them; but answer and say whether they were always performed in a proper manner, with due devotion and zeal as becomes a Christian? Oh, how many of them you will find to have proceeded from a bad source: from hypocrisy, vainglory, and self-complacency! How many were performed without the good intention, without being directed to God, out of human respect, through a natural taste, or self-love, or for convenience sake, and by chance? How many were with out all zeal and devotion, attention, and reverence: tepid, cold, distracted, performed negligently? If all these faulty good works that deserve punishment rather than reward are separated from the remainder of your justices, alas! how many shall then remain? Then indeed you would seem to me like the unhappy Urias, who imagined that a great favor had been granted him when he received a letter from his king; but the poor man did not know that the letter contained the sentence of death for him. judgments of God! ho\v terrible you are; for we shall have to answer not only for our sins, but also for our good works and virtuous actions! I sometimes flatter myself now that I am heaping up merits; I imagine that I am carrying about with me letters of credit for eternity when I count up my good works; but perhaps for all I know there may be amongst them letters like that of Urias, which will increase my responsibility, as the good works are not performed for the proper end. Lord! if thou art so strict in judging justices, what shall become of me, a poor sinner?
Now I know how well-grounded is the fear of Your servant Job, and I must acknowledge with him: " Indeed I know it is so, and that man cannot be justified compared with God. If he will contend with Him, he cannot answer Him one for a thousand." The holy Abbot Elias, a great ascetic, and much given to the practice of mortification, considering the strict judgment that awaited him at the end of his life, cried out filled with dread: " Three things I fear: the exit of the soul from the body, that terrible, momentary spring from time to eternity; the severity of the judgment, the strict examination of my whole life; and finally, the Judge's sentence that shall be pronounced according to the requirements of justice, without any regard for mercy, and it shall be irrevocable for all eternity." Ah, my God! holy men have experienced that fear in spite of the austerity of their lives; and we are so little concerned that we live in utter carelessness, and waste our years in vanity, dissoluteness, and luxury! Rosweid relates in his Lives of the Ancient Fathers that a celebrated hermit who kept the thought of the strict account he would have to render in the judgment always before his mind, once hearing a young ecclesiastic laugh while engaged in some innocent recreation, opened his eyes wide in amazement, and reproved the young man in these few but pithy words: We shall have to give an account of ourselves to the God of heaven and earth, and yet you laugh! I mention this anecdote, not meaning that we should always spend our time in sadness, in scruples of conscience, and give way to pusillanimity. No; my only object is that we should not altogether forget this eternal truth, but sometimes recall it to our minds; it is quite certain that we shall have to give an account of our whole lives to the Lord of heaven and earth, and yet you dare to amuse and enjoy your self with the vain children of the world! And you, my tongue, dare to utter injurious words against this great Lord ! And you, my mind, do not hesitate to pollute yourself with foul thoughts, and to take a wilful pleasure in sinful desires! Ah, think of this and weigh it well: we must render an account one day to the Lord of heaven and earth! my God, what shall I do? " What shall I do?" exclaimed the steward in the Gospel, when his lord called him to account. " To dig I am not able, to beg I am ashamed;" I will make friends for myself, "that when I shall be removed from the stewardship, they may receive me in to their houses." Ah, that resolution shall come too late for me on the day of judgment, for then there shall be no time left to amend my faults. Therefore I will do it now since I still have time! I will blot out my wicked works by true repentance, and this very day I will begin to multiply my good works by serving God zealously, so that when the Judge shall ask me concerning the former I may be able to say to Him: I have already atoned to You and paid You for them; and that with regard to the latter I may say with truth: I have done them as well as I knew how, and now I expect my reward. My dear brethren, if the mere question put to the accused on the day of judgment shall be so difficult to answer even for the just, how will the sinner be able to bear the shame and confusion that shall fall to his lot? For how and where shall this examination take place? Before the whole world. Oh, what a disgrace! as we shall see in the
Second Part.
Now, my dear brethren, I bring you in thought into an amphitheatre infinitely greater and vaster than any that the Romans and heathens ever saw here in Treves. Imagine that you see above in the clouds Jesus Christ, the Judge of the living world. and the dead, seated on a throne of awful majesty, surrounded by countless armies of angels, as the Prophet foretold: "Thou sands of thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him." Beside Him stands Mary the Queen of angels; all the apostles, patriarchs, prophets, and martyrs are seated around in choirs as assessors; below are legions of devils, who as executioners of divine justice await the sentence of the Judge, panting like blood-hounds meanwhile with eagerness. On the right hand are the just in their brightness and glory; on the left the wicked all in confusion, like goats driven together in a disorderly flock. In the midst of these on the public stage is brought forward the sinner to hear and answer for all his wicked actions. What do you think will be his feelings on the occasion? There have been ambassadors and orators admitted to an audience of the Roman emperor seated in pomp on his throne, and the sight of his majesty struck them dumb, so that they were unable to utter a word, although they did not appear as suppliants, much less as criminals. How then will it be with the poor sinner, who in the presence of all in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, must hear the record of his crimes read out?
In their presence, says the Lord by the Prophet Nahum, " I will discover your shame, and will show your nakedness to the nations, and your shame to kingdoms. And I will cast abominations upon you, and will disgrace you, and will make an example of you." Shall then, Lord, all that I have thought, spoken, and done be made manifest there? Yes; I will discover it all. Even what I have done in the dark night, in hidden corners, and tried to keep from the knowledge of everyone? I will discover it; all shall be made manifest. Even those sins that filled me with shame when I was committing them alone? Even those that I should die with shame to be barely suspected of? Even those that I would not reveal to my dearest friend to escape death? Shall all those be made manifest? Yes! I will discover them all to the whole world; they shall be seen written on your forehead with all their circumstances; the place, the time, the number, the intention you had when committing them. " You didst it secretly," said the Lord to David by His prophet, of the adultery he had committed, and the same shall be said to all sinners; you have secretly caused Urias to be murdered, and taken Bethsabee to wife that no one might suspect your guilt; " but I will do this thing in the sight of all Israel, and in the sight of the sun " your shame shall be made known to the whole world.
Alas! where shall I then fly to hide my shame? If anyone in the world was ever put to great shame, it was surely the case with the ambassadors of David, who were ill-treated by the Ammonite king Hanon, as we read in the tenth chapter of the Second Book of Kings. He caused their heads to be shorn as if they were slaves, their beards and their garments to be half cut away as if they were fools, and in this shameful guise he had them brought into his court to be made the laughing-stock of his courtiers and ministers; he then had them led through the streets through a great crowd of people who were staring at them. " The men were sadly put to confusion," says the Scripture of them. To my mind they must have been so ashamed that they hardly knew where to turn their eyes, and they would certainly have preferred to have their heads cut off by the executioner than to be thus treated. Honorable maidens of this city! if one of you, born of a noble family, and whose fair fame has hitherto been unsullied, were convicted of having given birth to an illegitimate child, and publicly pilloried, or according to the custom of the Church, had to stand this morning at the door of the parish church, clad in white, with a candle in her hand, so that all the people should see her, what would you think of that? Would you not rather die than suffer such ignominy? I knew a young woman, writes Father Paul Segneri, who through foolish passion sinned against holy purity, and no sooner did she notice that she could not conceal the fruits of her sin than filled with fear of the shame that threatened her, she ran at once to her lover and begged of him on her knees to help her to make away with herself, as she could not bear the shame of having her crime made known; the man agreed, gave her poison, and sent her soul to hell. Unhappy soul! you chose rather to suffer the eternal torments of hell than to have your sin known in only one town! But what is that, Christians, compared to the confusion of the sinner at the last day? Do yon, you heavens, under stand the exceeding greatness of it? For that very girl and every impenitent sinner, shorn and ragged like the ambassadors of David, shall stand in the pillory surrounded by demons, and that, too, not in the sight of one town, but before all men, angels, and devils, and all their most secret crimes shall be made public.
terrible day of confusion and despair! Think, although it is a small matter compared to the other instances we have considered, of the feelings of one who has to tell a shameful sin in confession. The confessional then seems to him nothing but a rack to torture him; his blood stagnates; his heart beats violently; his color changes; he stammers and can hardly get out the words. I have, the tongue falters, and he is covered with a cold perspiration. But why does he get into such a state? What is he afraid of? Ah, I need not ask; he has a single sin to disclose to his father confessor, and that is quite enough to fill him with shame and anguish. my God! if the disclosure of a sin in the privacy of the confessional can cause such shame, how will it be when all sins shall be made known to the whole world? If it frightens one to tell his sins to a priest who is dumb; to a priest who often does not know him nor has ever seen him; to a priest who listens to him with all charity and friendliness; speaks to him gently, and rejoices that a lost sheep has returned to the fold of Christ; to a priest who will give him absolution from his sins: how will it be if those sins have to be made known to the whole world, before heaven and earth, not that they may be pardoned, but that the sinner may be sentenced to eternal damnation?
Let us continue this reasoning a little longer, my dear brethren. Suppose that an angel, to whom all our thoughts are known, stood here in my place in this pulpit. (Let each one now think of the sin of which he is most ashamed.) The angel begins to call out the name of every one in a clear voice; that man has done so-and-so at such a time; that woman has lived in such a manner; that gentleman whom you see there has committed adultery in that house with that person; that wife has been unfaithful; that young woman has impure desires and has sullied her chastity; that servant has robbed his master; that maid her mistress; that priest is leading a dissolute life; and so on, calling out all the sins each one is guilty of: what would many a one do in such a case? How they would hide under the benches in shame and try to conceal themselves! How quickly would they who know themselves to be guilty try to get away, and run out of the church lest it should come to their turn to have their names called out! dear angel! cease; be still! otherwise I should be among the first to run off. But, my dear brethren, where are we then? Is not this only one town in the wide world, and only one church in that town? There are indeed many of us here together, but what is that compared to the population of the whole city of Treves? What is it compared to the population of the whole world at this present moment? What is it com pared to the vast hosts of angels, devils, and men who ever lived, are living, and shall live on earth till the last day? my God! I think, if I cannot bear to have my shame disclosed before a handful of people who cannot condemn me on account of my sins, how shall I bear it on the last day before heaven and earth? How shall all sinners bear to have their vices made known to all their friends, relations, acquaintances, and to strangers as well? The husband shall then know the vices of his wife; the wife those of her husband; parents shall find out the hidden crimes of their children, and children those of their parents; I and all men shall know what you have done wrong; you and all men shall know the abominations of which I have been guilty. See, they will say; who would have thought it of that person who seemed to be so good and pious? How different he seems now to what we imagined him to be! Now we know what those people are! Ah, it was the fear of this shame that suggested to holy Job that terrible wish: " Who will grant me this, that You mayest protect me in hell, and hide me till Your wrath pass, so that no human eye may see me? It is the dread of this shame that will force the wicked to cry out to the lifeless stones to cover them: " Then shall they begin to say to the mountains: fall upon us! and to the hills: cover us!" Ye demons, hurry us off at once to hell that we may escape such intolerable shame!
Oh, how foolish we are to seek so diligently to hide our wickedness, and to sin so recklessly when we have the opportunity of doing so, in the dark, or in a room where no one can see us! For everything shall be made known in the minutest detail to the whole world by the all-knowing God Himself. Go on, then, you wicked deceiver! continue to hide your abominations through shame as long as you may, to conceal sins in confession, and to palliate and excuse them! What good will that be to you? Will you be able to do that on the last day, when the great account-book shall be opened? Ah, I beg of you for God's sake have more common sense; think of what you are doing! Open your mouth and disclose your sins candidly in a much more merciful tribunal: in the holy sacrament of penance, and repent of your wickedness! Hear what St. John Chrysostom says: Your sins are written in the great account-book; your tears are like the sponge, and with them you can wash all the black record away, so that the book will be found clear and stainless. desirable penance, says St. Bernard, and good the judgment that will withdraw and hide me from the strict justice of God! according to the words of St. Paul: " But if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged." But we, my dear brethren, and this is the chief part of this meditation, shall henceforth have a still greater horror of all sin, and shall fear nothing more than to offend God deliberately, lest that intolerable shame should fall to our lot on the last day; and now we shall practise the works of Christian humility, justice, and mercy, that we may then be exalted to eternal honor and glory. Amen.
Another introduction to the same sermon for the second Sunday of Advent.
Text.
"He said to Him: Art Thou He that art to come?" (Matt. xi. 3.)
Introduction.
What answer does Christ make to this question? Nothing more than to say: "Go and relate to John what you have heard and seen;" from My works he shall soon know who I am. My dear brethren, the same question shall one day be put to us by the elect, when the angel shall sound the trumpet to call the dead from their graves before the tribunal of the Al mighty. Art you he that art to come with us on the right hand, or is your place on the left among the demons? Art you to rejoice with us forever in heaven, or to burn with the reprobate in hell? Alas for us if our works do not give us a favorable answer, etc. Continues as above.