FORTIETH SERMON.
ON THE THOUGHTS OF THE REPROBATE IN HELL.
Subject.
The reprobate shall think in hell during all eternity: first, I might have gained eternal happiness, and have not wished to do so; secondly, now I should wish to be happy, and shall never have the means of becoming so for all eternity.—Preached on the first Sunday in Lent.
Text.
Ecce nunc tempus acceptabile; ecce nunc dies salutis.—II. Cor. vi. 2.
“Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
Introduction.
On last Sunday we meditated on the everlasting fire of hell. I do not doubt that many of you were filled with an unusual dread, and made most earnest resolutions to do everything to escape that fire. And to those I say in the words of St. Paul, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Now, if we wish, we can save ourselves from eternal flames. Have we sinned? Behold, now is the time to do penance and to serve God with zeal; for that is the only means of escaping hell. But if we allow this time of grace to pass by, and go into eternity without having done penance, then all is up with us! Never for all eternity shall we be able to entertain the slightest hope of escaping the torments of hell. Ah, how is it with you now? What are your thoughts on this mutter? If I were to address that question to some reprobate sinner, after he has been sentenced to hell by divine justice and has made his first entry into that place of torments, I could easily guess what his answer would be. Alas! he would say, I am lost, and lost forever; but what tortures me most is the fact that I fiave allowed the acceptable time of salvation to pass by unprofited of. I could have escaped hell; I could have gained the happiness of heaven; but I did not wish it. Now I should willingly escape out of hell, and be in heaven; but it is impossible, and will be eternally impossible. These, my dear brethren, are the two thoughts which, to my mind, cause the reprobate the greatest torture, and if we keep them constantly before our minds, we shall not easily run the risk of being sentenced to hell. To that end I now select them as the subject of this meditation.
Plan of Discourse.
I could have been happy, and did not wish it: a thought full of remorse and bitterness; such shall be the subject of the first and longer part. Now I should willingly be happy, but shall not be able to gain happiness for all eternity: a thought full of despair; as we shall see in the second part. Thus the thoughts of the damned are a hell in the midst of hell. My dear Christians, let us now earnestly wish, while we can, that we may not have to wish fruitlessly hereafter; such shall be the conclusion.
Give us Thy powerful grace to this end, O good God! We ask it of Thee through the intercession of Thy Mother and of our holy guardian angels.
To be miserable by one’s own fault causes bitter remorse. To be poor and miserable through sheer necessity, which one could not foresee or avoid, as is the case, for instance, with a Christian who, without any fault of his, is made a prisoner and slave by Turks; that is indeed a very wretched state; yet the sufferer can console himself with the thought that he could not help his condition, and that what happened to him was permitted by God; therefore he can arm himself with patience. But to be poor and miserable through one’s own fault and mere wantonness, and when it was easy to have avoided falling into that wretched condition and to have attained a more prosperous one, that is a source of bitter remorse in which no consolation is to be found, of a repentance that has no other fruit but self-torture. Do you remember, my dear brethren, how it was with the Egyptians in olden times? Seven fruitful years followed each other in succession, in which the harvest was so abundant that the barns were not able to hold it. Meanwhile the Egyptians saw the great diligence that Joseph employed in buying and collecting corn daily, but not one of them thought of following his example; they preferred to sell their produce for a very low price and thus get rid of it to others. But how was it with them afterwards, when the years of plenty had passed, and were followed by seven years of scarcity? They suffered from hunger and want. “The people cried to Pharao for food.”[1] So great was their distress that they had to give away all their money, their cattle, goods, and lands, and even themselves into perpetual slavery in order to get food. Think now how great must have been the remorse of those people when they remembered the fruitful times in which they were ho Abundantly provided with everything. Oh, then we might have kept our own crops and added to them at a slight cost; would that we had done so; we should not now have to suffer hunger and misery; but we were too careless! Remember the unhappy people who were in the world at the time of the deluge. How bitter their remorse must have been when they saw themselves miserably perishing without any one to help them, and recollected how truly God had warned them beforehand by Noe, as well with words and earnest exhortations as with the blows of the hammer that rang in their ears for a hundred years, while the ark was in course of construction; but they neglected and laughed at all those warnings! Remember the sons-in-law of Lot. How painful their regret must have been when they saw the fire fall from heaven and burn the inhabitants of Sodom, and recollected, while they themselves were being consumed, how Lot had warned them a little before, and begged of them to leave the city with him in order to save their lives; but instead of profiting by his exhortations, they only laughed at and ridiculed them! All these people, when it was too late, were obliged to cry out, We might easily have avoided the danger; but through our own fault and mere wantonness we did not wish to do so!
Such is the case with the damned, for they might have been happy had they wished. But what is the seven years’ famine of Egypt compared to the eternal hunger and thirst of the damned? What is the temporal destruction caused by the deluge compared to eternal ruin? What the devouring fire of Sodom compared to the raging but not consuming flames among the demons? What is the supply of corn that the Egyptians might have had, if they had wished, or the preservation of temporal, mortal life that men might easily have secured, had they so desired, during the flood and the destruction of Sodom, compared to the ineffable joys of heaven, that the reprobates in hell might have had if they had wished? This is the bitter thought, the agonizing remorse that tortures the lost soul on its first entry into hell, and will continue to torment it for all eternity: I was able, but was unwilling! Eternal fire, and everything that is terrible in thee. I could easily have escaped thee, but did not wish! Elect children of God! I might have been with you, but I did not wish! Priceless joys of heaven, it lay in my power to gain you, but I did not wish to have you! God of all happiness! I might have possessed Thee forever, but I did not wish it. I could have done all this, I cannot deny it, for who could have prevented me? Otherwise there must have been something wanting in God, inasmuch as He did not desire my salvation; or else the necessary means were not given me to save my soul; or else the demons and wicked men prevented me; or time and opportunity were wanting me to use the means provided. But none of these impediments stood in my way.
God wished to make them happy. I cannot lay the least blame on my God, who (as my faith taught me during life, and as I now know to be the truth) has always had the earnest wish and desire, as far as in Him lay, to save all mankind, without exception, and therefore to save me also. This, was the end He had in view in making me to His image and likeness, in preference to so many others, infinite in number, whom He left in their nothingness; this is shown by the unheard-of love that forced Him, “for us men and for our salvation,” to come down from heaven, to assume our mortal nature, to live a poor, humble, and contemptible life in the eyes of the world for three and thirty years, to suffer all sorts of discomfort, hunger, thirst, ridicule and mockery, thorns and scourges, even to the painful death of the cross; and all that merely to save us from the hell we had deserved, and to open for us the gates of heaven that were closed by the sin of our first parents. And moreover, besides what is common to me with all men, oh, how rejoiced the Almighty would have been to have had me with Himself in heaven! For in preference to so many millions like me, without any preceding merits of my own, He called me to the Christian and one true Catholic faith in which alone salvation is to be found; and in that He caused me to be born and brought up. Heathens, Turks, Jews, heretics who are with me in hell, not even you have any reproach to make to your Creator on that head; for He wished you too to be saved; you might have come to the true light, and thereby to heaven, had you so wished! Much less reason have I to blame Him for my damnation; for I have had the advantage of you in the frequent graces that God gave me. If many of you had enjoyed from childhood the light that shone on me, you would now rejoice among the chosen children of God; nay, many of you found the way to heaven by a dim, obscure light; while I, a child of the light, who walked in the full noon-day, am now lying in everlasting darkness! “Son,” the Almighty can with reason say to me, in the words of Abraham to the rich glutton, “remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime.”[2] Remember the great graces and illuminations you received from Me during your life. And how could I deny that? How many good inspirations have I not had to deter me from evil and urge me to good? How much interior uneasiness have I not felt when I wished to sin? How much anguish and remorse after the sin was committed? How many years has not the good God borne with me while I was in the state of sin, although He might have hurled me into this pit of hell after the first sin I was guilty of? How lovingly has He not knocked at the door of my heart, and exhorted me as a father to return to His friendship by true repentance? These were all sure signs that God did not wish to condemn me, but to make me eternally happy. Nay, this very fire of hell in which I am now burning, that He so often threatened me with if I provoked His anger, this fire of which I have so often read in books to my great terror, and heard in sermons, this is an infallible proof that God wished to have me in heaven. If I had but considered this as I now know it, I should not ever feel this fire. No, my God! I may not and cannot lay the blame of my damnation on Thee; it is not Thy fault that I am not in heaven. These words of Thine are ever in my ears: “How often would I have gathered together thy children!” and I acknowledge the truth of that oft-repeated assertion of Thine: “How often would I have gathered together thy children…and thou wouldst not.”[3] Yes! I might have done it, as far as Thou art concerned! Why then have I not done it?
They were fully provided with the means of salvation. Have I perhaps failed to find the right way to heaven? Perhaps I was not provided with the means necessary to get there? Ah, no! What was said to the young man in the gospel held good for me, too. “But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”[4] Why have I not kept the commandments? Have I perhaps been ignorant of them? Have they not often been explained to me in the Christian Doctrine and in sermons? and if I was ignorant of anything regarding them, was it not my own fault, since I could and should have known all about them? Can I say that they were too difficult for me to observe? But I should be contradicted by all the elect in heaven, who entered there before my death, amongst whom there are many who were weak and subject to evil inclinations as I was, people of every condition, age, sex, and nation, who have all been obliged to walk the same way of the divine commandments, for there is no other way of arriving at happiness. They were able to do that; why was not I? What a multitude of pious Christians lived with me, who daily gave me the benefit of their good example; who so often put me to shame, when I considered the edifying lives they were leading? They were able to do that; why was not I? And have not I myself been able, during my youth and after having arrived at manhood, to keep myself whole months and years free from grievous sin? Have I not often, for vanity’s sake, to adorn my person, to please some mortal, to satisfy my evil desires, nay, to commit a sin, undergone more discomfort, uneasiness, and difficulty than I have ever experienced in keeping the commandments? And in the midst of a Catholic land, the holy sacraments, that were ready for me at any moment, the table of the Lord, the flesh and blood of my Saviour, the merits of His bitter passion and death, which were at my command daily, the many spiritual books that I might have read, the sermons and exhortations that I heard or might have heard: all these were so many powerful means of grace to enable me to keep the commandments all the easier. And if I had not had even one of them, I still had full permission to pray to and call upon my God. This one means was powerful enough to obtain for me the divine assistance and all the graces I needed, according to God’s own infallible promise. Therefore I cannot say that it was through want of means that I failed to gain heaven, and was condemned to this fire.
Which no man or devil could prevent them from using. Ye demons of hell, who have so often tempted me! wicked men, who have so often seduced and led me into sin! are you perhaps the reason why I was unable to use the means appointed me for gaining eternal happiness? But what am I asking? You would rather have been a help to me to that end, if I had been really desirous of it. For your temptations and allurements gave me occasion and opportunity to increase my merit and glory in heaven, if I had only resisted and overcome them, as I might always have done with the aid of God’s grace that was ready for me at any moment. And what then is the cause of my misery? Why am I not in heaven?
They had opportunity enough of using them. Was opportunity or time wanting to me to use the prescribed means in order to serve God, do good and escape hell? But what beautiful opportunities I have had! All the churches were open to me, inviting me to pray to God, to praise and bless Him. All the confessionals were at my service, exhorting me to enter, and in the spirit of repentance to lay down the burden of my sins. All the bells called to me in the morning to offer the holy Mass to God and to join in the usual devotions. All preachers had prepared themselves on Sundays and holy-days for me as well as for others, to speak to our hearts, to warn us against hell, to exhort us to good, to deter us from sin, to urge us to zeal in the service of God, and to lead us to heaven. Ah, would that I had been diligent in attending to them! What beautiful exhortations and salutary doctrine I might have received from them for the good of my soul! Was I rich and blessed by God with temporal means? That very wealth furnished me with the opportunity of heaping up vast treasures in heaven by generosity to the poor. Was I poor and needy? My very poverty gave me opportunity of practising patience and resignation to the divine will, and thereby making all the surer of gaining great wealth in heaven. Did I abound in joy and consolation? Then I had occasion humbly to thank my God and to serve Him all the more zealously. Was I laden with many crosses and trials? Then I had in my hands a ladder by which I might have mounted, through Christian patience, all the higher in heaven. Even my daily business and occupation, no matter how onerous, did not of itself in the least hinder me in the divine service, but rather helped me therein; for I need only have kept a pure conscience and performed my duties with a good intention for God’s sake; had I done so, while working, studying, dealing with the cares of my state, eating, drinking, or sleeping, I should have been serving my God, doing His will, and earning a great reward in heaven.
And time enough. Ah, what a beautiful time I have had in the twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years that were given me on earth! There was not a moment of them in which, if I had so willed, I might not have gained eternal glory in heaven! If I had made a good use of only the fiftieth part of the time I spent in vanity, idleness, and sin, how rich I should now be in eternity! What a high place I should have among the blessed in heaven! O fool that I am! and how I reproach myself when I think of it! Even in the last moment of my life, when my friends and my increasing weakness announced to me the approach of death, the merciful God was ready, if I had only been willing, to receive me again into His grace and friendship, although for the greater part of my life I had treated Him as my worst enemy; there was still time for me to repent of and blot out my sins, to be reconciled to my enemy, to restore ill-gotten goods, to remove out of the house the proximate occasion of sin; there was still time to detest and confess my sins, to escape hell, and gain heaven! So that tllere was nothing in heaven, on earth, or under the earth that could have come between me and eternal happiness; and I might have been happy! Truly I might have been so, and much easier than many of the elect, who received far fewer graces and benefits from God than I did. I might have saved my soul much easier than many of you penitent sinners, who are now saints in heaven, and whose sins were more numerous and grievous than mine! Ah, if I had only done penance like you!
But they did not wish it. Why then did I not do so? Why am I not in eternal joys like those others? Why am I now in hell? I alone am to blame! The will was wanting to me! This is the cruel memory that now tortures me and that will never cease to torment me for all eternity. The will was wanting; I did not wish to hearken to the voice of God; I closed my eyes to the light; I rejected good inspirations; I disregarded the warnings of my conscience; I refused to profit by the countless means of salvation that were offered me; I made no use of the opportunities I had of doing good. Priests and preachers of God! I avoided your salutary doctrine and exhortations; I refused to go to sermons because I did not wish to be aroused from the sleep of sin, and if I heard them sometimes it was on matters that made no impression on my conscience, or otherwise if they did touch on my vices, I either absented myself because I did not wish to be troubled or made better, or else I treated them as mere fables and priestly fictions. Ah, now I am only too well persuaded of the truth of what God said by your lips about the vanity of the world and other matters that I refused to believe in then. Now, when it is too late, I see that the pains of hell, that you so often described to me in order to inspire me with a salutary fear, are infinitely greater and more intolerable than you pictured them to me. I had not the will when it was so easy for me! I wilfully followed the inspirations of the devil, the allurements of wicked men, the perverse usages and customs of the world. I have wasted my precious time in sin; I have deferred repentance from day to day, nntil no more time was left to me. Wretch that I am! Would that I had done right when I had the chance! Where was my reason? Who blinded and bewitched me to such an extent? Is it possible, is it really the case that I have refused the eternal joys of heaven, although they were offered me? Is it really true that when I might have escaped hell I was unwilling to do so?
Because they preferred worthless things. And why was I so foolish? Why have I refused eternal happiness? Why have I chosen hell us my portion? For the sake of a handful of earthly wealth, which I preferred to the sovereign Good! For the sake of a hrutal lust, which ended almost as soon as it had begun! For the sake of a point of honor, on which I was unwilling to yield! For the sake of some vanity, that I did not wish to renounce to please God, thus gradually depriving myself of His grace and favor! For the sake of a wretched habit of swearing and cursing, that I have not tried to overcome! For the bake of the sins of others, that I have not hindered when I could and should have done so! For the sake of my children, whom I brought up badly and to whom I allowed too much liberty! That is all I have gained by the loss of my eternal happiness! That is all for which I am now burning in the everlasting fire of hell! All this took place many hundred years ago, and lam still lying in this lake of fire. O accursed person! would that I had never laid eyes on her! Accursed pleasure! would that I had never known it! Accursed avarice and pride, would that you had been strangers to me! Ah, if I had only been wise when the time for me to will was there; but now it is impossible for me and shall be so forever! O thought! O memory! O painful recollection! into what depths of despair you drive me! I would wish to be happy, but can never realize my wish for all eternity! Let us, dear Christians, briefly consider these thoughts of the reprobate in the
Second Part.
This very thought fills them with despair; for they would now. Nothing is more apt to make us despair than to be always willing, and never to have the power of carrying out our wishes. Consider the state of two persons who are enamoured of each other, who would willingly be always in each other’s company, but are kept apart by their parents. What torments of longing they suffer night and day; how they sigh and moan and give expression to fruitless desires, knowing all the time that they have not the slightest hope of seeing their wish gratified! What then must be the unspeakable torment of the damned soul in hell who is filled with desire for all eternity, and for all eternity can never attain the object of his desire nor have the slightest hope of attaining it? This is what St. Bernard says: “What more miserable than always to wish for what you can never have, and always to hate what will be always with you?” And such is the state of the lost soul: “for all eternity he will not have what he desires, and yet for all eternity he will have to suffer what he hates.”[5] Who doubts that the lost soul would willingly be happy and be released from hell? On the one hand the clear knowledge of the eternal happiness from which he is excluded, and on the other the actual experience of infinite misery in which he is, must inspire him with the greatest desire of enjoying the one and being delivered from the other. Of eternal happiness I have said on a former occasion that when we mortals enter into eternity our eyes are opened for the first time, and we see clearly what we now behold only darkly by faith and cannot properly appreciate, namely, that the possession of God is our only supreme Good. Then the sinner to his own eternal torment shall be able to say to himself the words of the Prophet Jeremias: “Know thou, and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing for thee to have left the Lord thy God.”[6] With regard to his feeling the unhappy state in which he is, we have only to remember what he has to suffer in that terrible fire, even if there were no other torment in hell, as we have seen in the last meditation. In this fire he is completely immersed and buried; the flames pierce through his eyes and ears; he breathes in fire; his month and nostrils are filled with it; his whole body resembles a glowing iron or coal of fire, and yet it will never be consumed.
But they shall never be able for all eternity. In this unspeakable torment, as we may well believe, he will unceasingly lament, and cry out: ah, would that I were out of this place! But fruitlessly; for he must remain there forever. He will recall the time of his life on earth: O beautiful years that were granted me to gain heaven; will you never return? Beautiful hours that sometimes seemed too long for me, so that I have sought amusement to pass you away; ah, would that I had now even one of you in order to free myself from this intolerable torture! Will yon then never come back to me? Precious moments that I squandered in frivolity! Ah, if you were only offered me now, I should willingly give the whole world, if it were mine, for even one of you! But that happiness can never be mine for all eternity! The angel that St. John saw in the Apocalypse swears to me by the Almighty who created heaven and earth, “that time shall be no longer.”[7] Ah, heavenly Father, lie will exclaim like the rich man crying out to Abraham; Father of mercy! overflowing Fountain of sweetness, at least allow one drop of water, although that is but a small comfort, allow one drop to fall down to cool the intensity of this heat even for a moment! But not even that comfort can I hope to have for all eternity! Jesus Christ, my Saviour! think of the blood Thou hast shed for me: give me a moment’s rest and respite, a slight alleviation of my pains! No; the door is locked; 1 know thee not! Vain wishes and desires, that will never be fulfilled for all eternity! Ah, my God! if I cannot be with Thee, then cast me back into my original nothingness, from which Thou hast drawn me! With one breath of Thy mouth Thou hast called me into being and created me; now 1 only desire another breath which shall reduce me again to nothing! But in vain do I wish for this. They will seek death and not find it for eternity. So that there is nothing but despair, suffering without end, misery without end, Are without end! Accursed will that refused to will aright when thou couldst do so; now thou dost will, but shalt never be able to carry out thy wishes!
Moral lesson: we are now free to do what the damned shall eternally wish in vain to do. My dear brethren, to my mind these remorseful and despairing thoughts shall form the most terrible torment of the damned, You can easily see the lesson we should learn from this meditation. What all the reprobate in hell are eternally wishing for and can never have, that is now in our power. What the damned did not wish for during life, alas! that is the very thing that most men on earth do not wish for, and therefore hell is daily filling with souls—two considerations that we should take deeply to heart. Of the first St. Augustine says: we receive two kinds of lives from the Creator: one here in time, the other in eternity; whether the first is to be happy or miserable rests not with us to decide; God has reserved to Himself the right of arranging all that; as to the happiness or misery of the other, it is now a matter of choice for us, and the Lord has left it to our own free will. Whether I am rich or poor, sick or well, honored or despised, in joy or in sorrow during time, depends not on me, no matter how my inclinations tend; I must wait for the providence of God to settle things for me; but whether I live in joy or misery in eternity, in heaven or in hell, that depends on myself; with the help of God’s grace, I can shape my own destiny in that respect.
Folly of men who in spite of this do not wish to save their souls, and to escape hell. Now, my dear brethren, I ask: is it true, or rather is it possible that, although we can, we do not wish to be happy, and that too eternally? This is what puzzled the man who was rapt up in spirit by the angel into heaven, where the indescribable joys of the elect were shown to him: O my God! he exclaimed, what a happy life! Who can come to this place? Whoever wishes, answered the angel. What! replied the man; whoever wishes? And who would not wish to attain to such happiness? Oh, answered the angel, many, very many, nay, the greater number of men do not wish to have this happiness. Then he brought the man down to hell, where he saw to his great terror and horror the torments suffered by the damned. Alas! he asked again; who comes to this place? and again the angel answered: whoever wishes. What! is it possible for a man to be so foolish as to desire to be hurled into such a frightful den of torments? Yes; most people in the world are guilty of that folly. So it is, my dear brethren. He who wishes shall go to heaven; that is, he who orders his life so as to receive the promised reward from God. And he who wishes shall be hurled into hell; that is, all those who do not avoid sin, or who after having committed sin do not do penance while they have time. Sinner, see the folly of which you are guilty; you do not wish to be happy, and therefore you will not be so; your desire is to go to hell, and therefore hell will be your everlasting dwelling. But is it possible, I ask again, that you are so foolish and senseless? If it were in your power to order your temporal life as you wish, would you not seek to lead a life of the utmost wealth, comfort, joy, and happiness? You who think of nothing else but rest, comfort, pleasure, and self-gratification in every possible way, even in sin and vice? And yet you do not find in those things the happiness you seek in them, and you will never find it; you will never attain what you are so eager to possess. Ah, why then do you not wish and seek to be eternally happy in heaven? for that you can be if you will! But, O madness and folly! this is what you do not wish; this is what you absolutely refuse! You may tell me the contrary a thousand times, and my answer to you will be that you are not in earnest; you do not wish for heaven; you continue on in the old habits of sin; you still keep your ill-gotten goods; you refuse to give up your unlawful love, your hatred and enmity; you are as fond as ever of swearing and cursing, of drunkenness and intemperance, of pride and vanity; yon put oil repentance from day to day; there is no sign of amendment in, you. Therefore you do not wish to be eternally happy, although you have the power of becoming so; you do not wish to go to heaven, and thus your wish is to be lost forever. O blindness and folly! O utter recklessness! Wo to you! One day you will have a far different wish, but for all eternity it will be impossible to fulfil it, and that will be one of your worst torments in hell.
Shown by an example. Hear what occurred in Spain. Father John Ramirez, of our Society, was once giving a mission in a certain town. He was called to hear a sick person’s confession, and she told her sins with such tears of sorrow that the Father gave her absolution, to his own great consolation. Meanwhile the companion of the Father, who had been looking on at a distance, remarked a large, black hand coming up from the side of the bed and seizing the sick person by the throat as if to choke her. When the two returned home, the companion told his superior of what had occurred; the latter examined him minutely, and found his story a probable one, whereupon he sent back Father Ramirez to the house, although it was a dark night, and recommended him gently to persuade the sick woman to make her confession again. The Father went with the same companion, but when they came near the house they heard sounds of lamentation and weeping, and were told that the sick woman had just died, and that she had lost the use of her tongue after confession and could not receive holy Communion. Father Ramirez, greatly troubled at the tidings, went to the church and prayed for the soul of the deceased before the Blessed Sacrament. During his prayer he heard a noise, and turning round he saw before him a person laden with chains and surrounded by fire. Taking courage, he spoke to her and asked her who she was. I am, she answered with a deep sigh, that unhappy woman whose confession you heard yesterday, and for whom you are now praying to God, though in vain. Some years ago I committed a sin against purity that I could never bear to tell in confession; it was a constant source of trouble to my conscience, and I was always afraid of the pains of hell in which I now am; therefore I often made the resolution of confessing it, but shame prevented me always. Moved by your sermon, I was quite determined to get that sin off my mind, but when I opened my mouth, shame again held me back, and for that reason the just God deprived me of speech and life together; thus I am lost forever and your prayers cannot help me. And, asked the Father, what is the greatest torment you have now to suffer? My greatest torment, she replied, consists in this: that I remember how easily 1 might have attained eternal happiness if I had only wished, and had told the sin that was troubling me. She then disappeared, howling. See, O sinner! you who now are not willing, the same thought will be your greatest torment in hell also.
Resolution to have a better will. O God of goodness! grant that none of us here may have such a corrupt and perverse will. I do wish to be eternally happy; my temporal welfare I readily leave to Thy holy will and decree; but I do desire to be happy with Thee in heaven; I positively do not wish to go to hell (ah, God forbid that such should be my fate!). I have indeed lost heaven a thousand times by my sins (Thou knowest, O Lord! how true this is, unfortunately!); a thousand times I have deserved hell; but, O Lord! Thou knowest too that I repent sincerely of my sins and ardently implore Thy mercy and pardon. Therefore I hope that according to Thy promise Thou wilt bring me to Thyself in heaven; and hence while I have the power I will use the means of salvation provided for me. I will keep Thy commandments exactly, avoid sin with Thy help and grace as the greatest of all evils, and fulfil Thy holy will in all things. Away with all joys, goods, honors, and vanities; away with all creatures that might hinder me from keeping this resolution and lead me again into sin! I bid adieu to them now and forever. I will not consider how others and the majority of men live; but how I am bound to live according to Thy holy law. If this will of mine should again begin to vacillate through weakness and inconstancy, then I beg of Thee, Almighty and merciful God, in the prayer of Thy Church, to turn violently my rebellious will to Thee, that I may not be banished to that place of torments, where, although I should have the will, the power would be wanting to me; and that I may, to my eternal iiappiness, go to that place where Thy will and mine shall be one will, that is, heaven. Amen.
Another introduction for the third Sunday of Advent.
Text.
Tu quis es?—John i. 19.
“Who art thou?”
Introduction.
Who art thou? Where art thou? How is it with thee now? What art thou thinking of? If I were to put these questions, etc. Continues as above.
- ↑ Clamavit populus ad Pharaonem, alimenta petens.—Gen. xli. 55.
- ↑ Fili, recordare quia recepisti bona in vita tua.—Luke xvi. 25.
- ↑ Quoties volui congregare filios tuos…et noluisti.—Matt. xxiii. 37.
- ↑ Si autem vis ad vitam ingredi, serva mandate.—Ibid. xix. 17.
- ↑ Quid tam miserum, quam semper velle quod nunquam erit, semper nolle quod semper erit? In æternum non obtinebit, quod vult, et quod non vult, in æternum nihilominus sustinebit.
- ↑ Scito et vide, quia malum et amarum est reliquisse te Domiuum Deum tuum.—Jerem. ii. 19.
- ↑ Quia tempus non erit amplius.—Apoc. x. 6.