THIRTY-SEVENTH SERMON
ON THE CONVICTION OF THE CRIMINAL IN THE JUDGMENT.
Subject.
The sinner in the judgment shall be convicted: 1. That he lived a bad life; therefore he shall not be able to deny that. 2. That he might have lived a better one; therefore he shall not be able to offer any excuse. Preached on the sixth Sunday after Epiphany.
Text.
" I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world." (Matt. xiii. 35.)
Introduction.
So shall it be; there is nothing so hidden in the hearts and consciences of men from the beginning of the world that Our Lord shall not bring to light and speak out openly on that day when He shall come to judge the living and the dead. And not only shall the Judge do that; there shall also be many accusers to demand justice on the sinner, as we have seen from the Scriptures and the holy Fathers in our last meditation. What will you do then, sinner? Will you be able to deny your wickedness, or to excuse it against so many witnesses? Will you perhaps appeal to others? But where the accusers are so numerous no appeal can help. But do you still wish for other witnesses? Then if so, you will find enough of them to convict you as clearly as the noon-day sun of the crimes you shall be charged with: as I now intend to show.
Plan of Discourse.
The criminal convicted by witnesses in the judgment. Such is the whole subject. He will be convicted of having led a bad life, and therefore no denial will help him: the first part. He will be convicted of having been able to lead a better life, and therefore no excuse will help him: the second part. The object is the same as that of the last meditation.
Help us thereto, Virgin Mother, and you,, holy guardian angels.
I cannot represent to myself better the sinner convicted of having led a vicious and criminal life than by considering the case of the apostle Peter in the court of the high-priest warming himself with the servants at the fire. How he must have been embarrassed! A servant-maid who attended the door was the first to attack him: "Thou also wast with Jesus the Galilean. But he denied before them all, saying: I know not what you say." A little later the servants came to him and said: " Art not you also one of His disciples?" But Peter kept fast to his denial: "He denied it and said: I am not:" I know not the man, nor what you are speaking of. At last one came to him saying: " Did not I see you in the garden with Him? " a There Peter was caught, and as it so happened the cock crew and he escaped.
Sinner! there you have a picture of what shall one day happen to you; but with the difference, that you will not, like Peter, be on that day able to seek safety in flight. You will then be publicly accused of all your crimes, not merely before a few servants, but in the presence of all in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; and your accusers shall surround you in countless numbers, as we have seen in our last meditation. Are you not the man, they will say, the wretch who did, said, or thought this or that contrary to the law of the great God ? Try now if you can to deny the charge; say: I am not; I know not what you are speaking of; I am innocent; and see if your efforts at deceit will be as successful then as they oftentimes are now when you hide your wickedness from the knowledge of men.
Those countless witnesses will cry out against you: "Did not I see thee?" Was I not present while you were actually committing the sin? Such shall be the evidence of all your companions and co-operators in sin, and they shall testify to the crimes you committed with others. Did not I see thee? Were we not together in that house, that room, that garden, that deserted street, that hidden corner, on that day, that night when we did that wicked act together? Did not I see you, proud man? Can I not prove that you wished to be more thought of than all others of your condition? Have you not come to me to get my help, and bribed me to procure that appointment for you, for which you had neither capacity nor merit, and to which you wished to be raised through sheer ambition? Did not I see you, avaricious man, unjust man? Have we not worked together, and studied all sorts of tricks by which we might deceive others and get possession of what we had no right to? Have you not given stolen goods to me to sell them for you? Do you recognize your own handwriting? Here are the usurious contracts we made; the papers referring to that lawsuit against that poor person, which we protracted unnecessarily for such a long time, being bribed to do so by the opposite party, until all hope of obtaining justice vanished, and the case was abandoned? Did not I see you, impure man? Was I not witness of the abominations you committed? I am the person whom you sought to lead astray by your flatteries and caresses; here are the letters you sent me; here the presents you made me. I am the one with whom you committed adultery, whom you robbed of my maidenly honor, whom you kept for so many years in unlawful intimacy, and with whom you committed so many sins. Did not I see you, drunkard? How often have we not spent the whole night drinking in your house, in mine, in that other place, and robbed ourselves of reason by our excesses? How often have we not gloried in making others drink more than they could bear? How often have we not made ourselves incapable of performing properly the duties of our state? How often have we not neglected our households and ill-treated our wives and children, consuming what should have gone to their support? Did not I see you, vindictive man? Did we not agree to insult publicly with gross abuse this or that person, whom you did not like? Have you not in my presence often abused and threatened him? How often have you not cursed him and wished him all kinds of evil?
According to St. John Chrysostom, the lifeless creatures that the sinner abused to offend God shall testify against him; they will accuse him of those sins that he committed in solitude by outward action. "On that day," says the holy Doctor, "the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon, the day and night, and the whole world shall stand against us to convict us of our sins."
Did not I see thee? the sun will say; have you not used my light to carry out your wicked purpose. Did you not often, like the bats and owls, shun my light, and wait for the darkness in order to steal into that house of ill-fame to satisfy your brutal lusts? Did not I see thee? the moon will say. Have I not been obliged to give you my light in order to show you the way to the place where you went for the purpose of indulging your passions? Did not I see thee? the earth will say. How long have I not been wearied with bearing your accursed wickedness, while you were sullying me with abominable crimes? Did not I see thee? the other elements will say: the fire that allowed itself to be damped and extinguished that it might not oppose any obstacle to the heat of your passions; the water that bore you even while you were committing thefts and acts of injustice; the air that you poisoned with your oaths and curses. Did not I see thee? the gold and silver in your coffers will say. Have you not shut me up, while poor people were famishing with hunger? " Your gold and silver is cankered," says the apostle St. James, " and the rust of them shall be for a testimony against you.": Did not I see thee? your clothes will say, which were eaten by the moths, or shut up in your wardrobe when you might have covered your poor brothers or sisters with them. The corn you heaped up in your granaries will give testimony that you preferred to allow it to rot away in the time of scarcity, in unfruitful seasons, rather than sell it to poor citizens and peasants at a low price. Even the stones in the walls shall cry out against you, says the Prophet Habacuc: " The stone shall cry out of the wall; and the timber that is between the joints of the building shall answer." Did not I see thee? shall exclaim the stones and walls of the churches. Have we not often seen you come here with a bad intention? The stones of the streets, of that drinking-house, of that place of ill-fame, of the building in which you dwelt, the walls of your room, the doors that you bolted, the windows that you shut, the curtains that you drew around your bed; all these shall cry out: did not I see thee? Have we not been witnesses of your actions?
I shudder with fear when I hear a St. Jerome in the wilderness giving expression to the terror that possessed him in these words: " As often as I thought of the day of judgment I feared even my very cell, as a witness of my thoughts." It seemed as if the stones and rocks were crying out tome: this and that thought you have had in your imagination! Alas! such a holy hermit, living among the wild beasts, was afraid to look at his poor cell, which could give testimony only of the austere life he led, which saw how he fasted daily, tore his flesh with scourges, and beat his breast with a stone; and he feared his cell as a future witness of thoughts that were suggested to him only in the form of temptations and altogether against his will! Alas, wicked Christians! how then should we not tremble when we see the houses, rooms, gardens which have served for nothing else but sin, intemperance, vanity, impurity, uncharity! What will those things be able to say to us? "I have labored in my groaning; every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears," such are the sighs that I hear from the penitent David. But, David, what distresses you so much? or why shouldst you make your bed the scene of so much grief? Ah, he would answer, it was a witness of my adultery, and will one day cry out against me on that account; therefore it must also be a witness of the tears of repentance I shed every night! My tables, if you were ever forced to behold intemperance on my part during the time that I had forgotten my God, now you will be able to point to the ashes that I mixed with my bread, and to the tears that I mingled with my drink: "I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping." Ah, unlucky houses, rooms, and beds, if you will be able to point to our sins, but not to our repentance, what shall become of us? Thus all creatures shall appear as witnesses against us on that great day to give testimony of our crimes. " The whole world shall stand against us to accuse us of our sins."
But why should I fear such witnesses? There is not the least need of them; my case is lost already without them if I leave this world in the state of mortal sin. I myself shall be my own accuser; I shall convict myself of my sins and vices, not only of those that I have committed with others, not only of those that I have committed in act and secretly, but also of those that no man, no creature whatever could possibly know anything of except myself, namely, of the inward sinful thoughts of my heart. My own conscience shall be a witness against me: "Their con science bearing witness to them," says St. Paul, "and their thoughts between themselves accusing, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men." This is the book of which the Catholic Church sings in the Mass of the dead. The book shall be produced in which all is written from which the world shall be judged. " The book spoken of," says St. Augustine, " is a certain divine force and intelligence which shall cause every one to recall to mind and remember with a wonderful quickness all his works, whether they are good or evil." This is that truthful and infallible book that shall be opened before the eyes of all men, and cry out in a loud voice: " Did not I see thee?" Did I not behold everything you have thought, said, or done, and see when, how, and where you did it? Have I not always experienced a pang of anguish whenever you acted contrary to the will of God and His commandments? From this conscience, says St. Bernard, all your sins shall spring for ward like dogs let loose from the leash, and they shall seize you by the throat and cry out upon you as their author. Terrible it is to read what the Sacred Scriptures say of Sennacherib; after his whole army had been destroyed by the angel, he returned in shame and confusion, " and his sons that came out of his bowels slew him with the sword." Wicked Christian! what sort of children have you brought into the world during your life? Do you not know them? Come without first having done penance into the valley of Josaphat, when the angel's trumpet shall call you thither, and then you shall see how they will rage and storm against you. The children of your head, your proud thoughts in which you extolled yourself and lowered others; the children of your heart, those wicked thoughts and unlawful desires, that hatred and vindictiveness; the children of your eyes, those unchaste looks; the children of your tongue, that hateful, abominable conversation; the children of your hands, those acts of injustice, those impure touches, these shall all cry out against you: you have committed us! we are your works! Unhappy sinner! what excuse shall you make? Wherever you turn you are betrayed by other men, by all creatures, by yourself. There is no use in denial; you are fully convicted of having led a god less life. Nor is there any chance of making an available excuse, for it shall also be clearly proved that you might have lived much better and holier, as we shall see in the
Second Part.
In nothing is our understanding quicker and more apt than in palliating and excusing our own faults and sins; it is most easy for us to find some way of either lessening or cloaking our own wickedness. Sometimes we put the blame on the Almighty, saying that it is He who gave us such strong inclinations for evil; sometimes we accuse our own weakness and frailty; sometimes others with whom we have to deal in the duties of our state, and in whose company we find daily occasions of sin; sometimes we blame our own ignorance or want of deliberation, and say: I knew no better; I did not think this or that was forbidden under pain of mortal sin. With these and similar excuses we try to persuade ourselves while here on earth that our sins are not so very grievous, and that God does not look on them as very wicked.
But bring those lame excuses with you on the judgment-day and see how they will serve to defend and protect you. Say to God: Lord, I am the work of Your hands; as You has made me, so I am; the violent inclination and proclivity to anger that I experience every day; the impatience, avarice, impurity, and sensuality that I am subject to; the aversion I have to the cross, and to everything that is hard and bitter; the law of sin that always fights in my members against Your holy law these things I have not given myself; I have received them from nature. What else then couldst You have expected from a poor, weak mortal, such as You has created me, but faults and sins? What! will you make the Almighty the Author and Cause of your wickedness? Bring witnesses here! Your own conscience will convict you of a lie. Is it true that you came forth from the hands of your Creator with those violent passions? Were you always so wicked and inclined to evil? even before good for tune or the esteem of men turned your head? even before that senseless love hardened your heart? even before you learned to know the world properly? Were you like that forty, thirty, twenty years ago, and even in your first youth, in your early innocence? Can you not remember that you were then more inclined for devotion and the fear of the Lord, and that you were afraid of the very name of mortal sin? Why have you not been able to continue in those good dispositions, and to restrain and mortify, while still weak and almost dormant, the evil inclinations that afterwards showed themselves?
A noble gentleman, as Father Cataneus relates, who had reached a ripe old age found amongst his papers some debates and poems that he had written while a student in the lower classes. Curiosity urged him in his old age to see what his mind was able to bring forth in its youthful vigor. He found on a sheet of paper a rule of life that he had written out in his youth, and had kept exactly while a student; namely, confession and Communion every fortnight; sodality sermon every Sunday and holy-day; the examen of conscience on bended knees every night before retiring to rest; the daily recital of the rosary and office of the Blessed Virgin; thrice-repeated mortification of the eyes and tongue daily, and fasting every Saturday in honor of the Mother of God; the tenth part of the pocket money sent by his parents to be given to the poor. The gentleman read and re read the paper with astonishment; he knew his own handwriting, and recollected too that he had observed that rule for many years. Then, filled with shame and confusion, he began to sigh and to say to himself: ah, beautiful life! where art you now? How you have changed with time! How different my life is now from what I led then! Confession and Communion every fortnight! Alas for the confession and Communion of the present! Once a year at Easter is enough for me now, and then I go more through human respect or some vain motive than with the earnest intention of amending my life. A sermon every Sunday and holy-day! Poor sermons! I hardly hear one in the year! The examen of conscience every night! I never think of such a thing now; my soul is like a wilderness of sin; I hardly bend my knee to God in His church when I go to hear holy Mass! Daily prayer and frequent mortification! Poor prayer! poor mortification ! poor fasting ! I give my mouth, my eyes, my ears, and other senses all the gratification they demand. Almsgiving! All my money is spent on sin, and I am not now able to give the poor what belongs to them of right. Oh, what a life I led then! And, alas! what sort of a life am I now leading? Will not this very sheet of paper written by my own hand rise up against me on the judgment-day and demand my eternal damnation? If there were no devil to accuse me, no witnesses to appear against me, no Judge to condemn me, I must be myself my own devil, witness, and judge, for my conscience will show me this paper, and clearly convince me that I might have led a holy life all this time, since I was able to do it for so long. Such were the sighs of this man, accompanied with bitter tears of repentance. Well for him that he thought of himself in time, and amended his life!
My dear brethren, let each one look into his own conscience, for it will be a book full of matter on the last day. There is hardly one of us who cannot remember having served God for some time or other during his life; no one who has not had some experience of the sweet repose of a good conscience; no one who has not tasted the consolation and joy of being free from all guilt and loving God above all things. Perhaps many a one when comparing his present with his past life will, like that gentle man, be compelled to sigh forth with shame: ah, beautiful life! where art thou? How modest and retiring I was then; how vain and haughty I am now! How pious and devout I was then; how tepid and slothful in the divine service now! How chaste and pure then; how dissolute and unclean now! What shall I say when my conscience gives testimony of me before the tribunal of God? Shall I allege in excuse that my evil inclinations and corrupt nature did not allow me to live in better fashion? Ah, the innocence of my early years shall convict me of a lie, and prove beyond doubt that I might have lived better if I had only chosen to do so.
Shall I appeal to the weakness and frailty that in the midst of so many dangers and opportunities of evil did not suffer me to offer resistance to temptation? Oh, a countless multitude of witnesses shall be there to put me and all sinners to shame in that case! It seems to me that I hear all the chosen saints of God crying out with one voice in the words of the Prophet Job: " My strength is not the strength of stones, nor is my flesh of brass. " What! Do you think we are made of granite, or of brass, or iron, like the statues you see of us? Our bones and relics that you honor on the altars show clearly enough that we were not angels, but men, weak and frail like you, who had flesh and bodies like you. And that there were not wanting to us temptations and occasions of sin is evident from the number of great sinners who fell shamefully, but are now in our number because they repented sincerely, kept from sin ever after, and became great saints. Look at the countless multitudes of every age and sex; the young boys, tender virgins, weak widows, who in spite of the severest temptations and of many crosses and trials remained chaste, patient, resigned to the divine will, and lived in a pious and holy manner. Could you not have done the same? If you know your own weakness and frailty, why did you rush so wantonly into the dangerous occasions of sin? Why did you not guard your senses more carefully? Why did you not constantly and in all places humbly beg of God to protect you as we did? No; away with your lame excuses! You could and should have led a better life!
And what answer shall I then make? Shall I throw the blame of my sins on my state of life, on my daily occupations, as most worldly people do, according to St. John Chrysostom? To excuse their sins and slothful lives some appeal to an unhappy marriage, others to the number of children and household cares they have to attend to, others to the difficulties and dangers of their occupations, others to the labor they have to undergo, others to the exigencies of their employment, to the duties of their high office, to their riches, to their poverty, to the customs of the world which they have to conform to, as they must live like those around them. Christians! what is the meaning of all that? Is it then true that you have not been able to lead good lives nor to work out your salvation? But listen again to the countless multitude of witnesses who cry out against you from amongst the number of those who are on the right hand of the Judge married and single, superiors and inferiors, courtiers, warriors, rich, poor, people of every condition and sex and station in life, as St. John says in the Apocalypse: "I saw a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues: standing before the throne." All these will say to you: we have lived under the same conditions, in the same domestic circumstances, in the same office and employment, amidst the same worldly fashions and customs, yet we became holy, and are now eternally happy. Could not you have done as we did? We have lived in the world, in daily intercourse with worldly people, but we shunned the vain customs and laws of the world; why have you always adored them and taken them as the guide of your actions, although the Christian law was placed before your eyes as well as before ours, and the warning of the Apostle was for your good as well as for ours: "Be not con formed to this world. We have attended to the duties of our state, and have performed them with a good intention for God's sake, and been careful not to offend God for any man's sake; that according to our ideas was to live in a holy, Christian, and pious manner; why could you not have done the same?
Ah, what is to be done then? Shall I say: I knew no better at the time; I did not reflect on what I was doing? But that might avail a heathen, a Turk, a Jew, a wild barbarian brought up in savagery, who never heard a word of the Christian Gospel, of the commandments of God, of the holy sacraments. But you and I, Catholic Christian, who are born and bred in the full light and with every opportunity of doing good, how could we put forward such an excuse? But what am I saying? Even many heathens, who followed the mere light of reason and lived better than many a Christian, shall testify against us.
There will appear against us from amongst the Koman nobility the heathen youth Spurina, who seeing that his great beauty was an occasion of unchaste desires to many, deliberately took a knife and cut and slashed his face so that it was completely disfigured. What will you answer, asks St. Ambrose, who relates this incident: what will you answer, vain Christian who, not con tent with the natural comeliness given you by God, seek to in crease it by all imaginable luxury in dress, and thus equipped show yourself in public? There will appear against us the heathen matron Lucretia, who not being able to defend herself from the violence of a king, took a dagger and stabbed herself to the heart, preferring death to the shame of having lost her purity. What will you answer, unchaste Christian, who allow so many liberties to be taken with you, and seek out opportunities of exposing your virginal or conjugal chastity to danger? There will appear against us the heathen philosopher Anaxagoras, with many others like him, who in order to be more at liberty to attend to his studies and to cultivate the moral virtues, freely renounced all his property. What answer will you make, avaricious Christian, you who spare no effort to amass money, while you neglect your soul? you who refuse to restore the ill-gotten goods you have in your possession, and thus lose your chance of heaven? There will appear against us the hero Phocion, renowned among the Greeks, who being betrayed to death by envious people, was asked before he drank the poison what last command he had to leave his son; he answered: he must forget all the injuries done his father, and return his enemies good for evil. What answer will you make, vindictive Christian, who cannot bear the least insult, and who often repay good with evil? There will appear against us the heathen warrior Manlius Torquatus, who put his only son to death for having disobeyed his orders regarding a battle, although he was victorious. What answer will you make, Christian parents, who allow your sons and daughters to grow up in all freedom from restraint, in vanity and wantonness ? That is what Our Lord prophesied: The men of Ninive shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it." O sinners! what answer will you make if you do not repent of your manifold sins? There is no hope for you; none at all! No denial or excuse will be of any avail. You are convicted of having lived bad lives; you are convicted of having been able to live better. And you still go on adding sin to sin, increasing every day the number of witnesses to your eternal damnation? Ah, how I bewail your present blindness and your future everlasting misfortune!
My dear brethren, you will say perhaps that the subject of our past meditations was chosen only with a view to frighten and terrify you. And you are perfectly right. Would to God that all who need to be frightened were filled with terror by it! I should congratulate myself and thank God from my heart, but in the way which St. Paul speaks of: " I am glad: not because you were made sorrowful, but because you were made sorrowful to penance." I do not rejoice at the grief caused you by my Epistle, but because that grief has urged you to do penance. Even so should I rejoice if some of you were terrified and dismayed by the meditation on the last judgment; not by a mere passing fear, but by a fear to penance; a fear that would make you regret your past sins and never again offend God. It is an undoubted truth of our faith that we shall all appear be fore the tribunal of God, there to give an account of our actions; what will it help us to thrust that truth out of our minds? Shall we have less reason to fear or to expect judgment? We must and should often think of such truths in order to keep straight in the midst of so many dangers and occasions of sin, Therefore it is that we so often fall into sin; therefore it is that we sometimes lead a vain life quite opposed to the law of the Gospel, and keep our minds fixed on transitory things while we seldom think of salutary truths. Not without cause does the Holy Ghost warn us by the wise Ecclesiasticus: " Eemember your last end," man! and think of it often, " and you shalt never sin." Let each one recall this to mind when he feels an inclination to sin; let him say to himself: would I do this if I heard the last trumpet calling out: arise, you dead, and come to judgment? Should I wish to have this revealed to heaven and earth? Let each one think: the life I now lead and the manner of it, is it in accordance with my Christian profession, and with the sworn promise I made to God in Baptism to renounce the vain world and its idle, silly customs, the flesh and its lusts, the devil and all his works? that there may be no one to accuse him at the last day. Otherwise, if your answer to this question is not favorable, then abandon the life you are leading and em brace another. Say to yourself: on this life, and I know not how long it will last, depends my future judgment, the position I shall hold in it, whether I shall be on the right side with the angels, or on the left with the devils; therefore I will spend this short, uncertain time in the service of my God alone, so that the meditation of the last judgment, instead of terrifying me, shall inspire me with a consoling hope, and when the great day comes I may enter with the sheep of Christ into eternal joys! Such shall be the resolution of us all. Amen.
Another introduction to the same sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent.
Text.
"A voice of one crying in the wilderness." (Luke iii. 4.)
Introduction.
The valley of Josaphat, in which we shall all be assembled before the judgment-seat of God, may well be called a terrible wilderness. The voices crying out therein shall be manifold, and they shall exclaim against the sinner and accuse him, as we have seen in the last sermon, etc. Continues as above.
How the saints in heaven shall be our judges: see the following sixth part.