FIFTY-SEVENTH SERMON
ON ZEAL IN THE SODALITY OF ST. SEBASTIAN.
Subject.
Precisely because we seem to be free from the pestilence, and the danger of it, our devotion, respect, confidence, and love for St. Sebastian as our protector should not only maintain their first fervor, but should even increase and grow greater. Preached on the feast of St. Sebastian, Martyr.
Text.
" There shall no evil come to thee, nor shall the scourge come near thy dwelling." (Ps 90:10)
Introduction.
Great and comforting promise! " There shall no evil come to thee, nor shall the scourge come near thy dwelling." What evil? What scourge? " The scourge of temporal punishment," says Eaynerius. And, amongst temporal punishment, is there any greater than the plague and contagious maladies? That these are specially meant by the word " scourge " is evident from the prayer of the Church against pestilence and famine: "That the hearts of men may know that such scourges come from Thy just anger." This scourge will not come to thee; such is the promise of God by the Prophet David. Why? "For He hath given His angels charge over thee, to keep thee." city of Treves, could one assure thee also of this promise that the scourge of pestilence will never approach thee? Truly, for He has commanded His saints to protect thee therefrom. What saints? To say nothing of thy many other patrons, He has specially commended thee to the saint in whose honor we hold this solemnity to-day, whose image is carried about in procession followed by numbers of people the wonderful and holy martyr St. Sebastian. Our well-founded confidence in him induced us long ago to select him as the patron and protector of this city, and that is the end and object of the honor we show him weekly in the sodality dedicated to him. We have with thankful hearts seen our hopes verified for many years now, and the help granted us by that Saint has given a great impulse to our love and devotion to him. I will keep in mind to-day this laudable object of the sodality, firmly believing that I will do all the more service to St. Sebastian the more I endeavor to excite your devotion to him. It might be with some as with sailors, who during a storm at sea pray and cry for mercy, but when the danger is over laugh and joke and think no more of it; in the same way, now that there seems to be no danger of pestilence, some of you might be inclined to grow cold and tepid in your devotion, and neglect the prayers of the sodality. To prevent this is the object of my sermon to-day.
Plan of Discourse.
There shall no evil come to thee, city of Treves, nor shall the scourge of pestilence come near thy dwellings (let us suppose this to be the case; at all events, we have no reason to dread the plague at present; there seems to be no immediate danger of it; and may God keep it far from us!); and since thou art freed from this danger, thou shouldst not only maintain thy devotion, respect, confidence, and love for St. Sebastian in their first fervor, but shouldst rather increase and add to them all the more. Such is the end I aim at in this sermon.
O sovereign God, who art pleased to be honored in Thy saints, grant us by the intercession of Thy holy Mother and of the holy angels such confidence, love, and veneration for Thy serv ant that we may merit to have him fulfil the promise: " There shall come no evil to thee, nor shall the scourge come near thy dwelling"!
The greater the evil that actually afflicts or threatens you, so the more much the greater are the esteem, honor, and love you have for the benefactor who frees you from it, and with all the more care, diligence, and confidence do you have recourse to his help. This is an undoubted truth that is not in need of proof. Consider the state of the sick man who is suffering from some unusual kind of fever. How eagerly he looks forward to the visit of the doctor! He spares neither diligence nor enquiries nor money, nor any other means that may enable him to procure the services of an experienced and skilful physician as soon as possible, if such a one can be had.
What is the plague, my dear brethren? The very name of it shocks both our ears and minds, and is in itself enough to convince us that the plague must be an unusually terrible evil. It is called a scourge, as a sign that it comes from the anger of a chastising God. On one occasion Our Lord took a scourge into His hands during His life on earth; when? on what occasion? It was when, to the great astonishment of the disciples, the other wise most meek Jesus was inflamed with a holy zeal and anger on account of the profanation of the temple, as we read in the second chapter of the Gospel of St. John. Many a time did God threaten His people with the rod of chastisement of which we are now speaking; but it was only when He was grievously incensed, and meant to punish the wicked without mercy. Thus He said to Moses: " How long will this people detract Me? How long will they not believe Me, for all the signs that I have wrought before them?" I can no longer bear with them; things have come to an extremity at last! " I will strike them there fore with pestilence, and will consume them." In the same way He said to the Prophet Ezechiel: "I will send into her pestilence and blood in her streets; and they shall know that I am the Lord." Of all the evils and terrible chastisements that the Lord threatened the Israelites with if they did not give up sin, pestilence was the worst: " I will send the pestilence in the midst of you." As if among all temporal calamities there was none as bad as this.
And indeed such is the case; may God grant that we may never know it by experience! All the other sicknesses and miseries that assail the human body in countless ways are indeed painful and grievous evils, but they are nothing in comparison to this scourge. They attack one part or other of the body; but the plague, once it strikes in, carries off the whole man in a short time; the former bring a few dozen people to the grave in the year in a community; the latter slays in one street hundreds in a day! In the case of ordinary sicknesses, people still frequent each other's company; when the plague comes it puts an end to all business, trade, friendship, and acquaintance; it turns the houses into hospitals, the streets into graveyards, the towns into charnel-houses, the country into a desert. Gates and doors are closed; no one is seen to enter or go out, unless those who drive the dead-cart, full of corpses. Nothing is heard but wailings and lamentations, sighs and moans from those who have still enough life left to make known their misery. All help and assistance are cut off; the father is abandoned by the son, the son by the father, one friend by the other. Each one shuns his neighbor as if he did not know him, through fear of contagion. Many a one would wish to confess his sins even in public, but cannot find a priest to absolve him; often in bolted and barred houses the dead lie in heaps on top of each other, through want of some one to bury them. In a word, it is a calamity in which there is neither counsel, help, comfort, nor remedy.
How great must not have been that calamity that forced from King David those words in which he expressed his wish to be destroyed himself, if by his death he could put an end to the unspeakable misery of his people! And indeed it must have been a sad sight to witness, when in three days seventy thousand of the Israelites were carried off by the plague, as we read in the twenty-fourth chapter of the Second Book of Kings. I will say nothing now of the many cities and countries in Europe which God visited by the plague, and which could give testimony of the misery it caused. Has not our own city of Treves often had sad experience of it? Not to go back to very ancient times, in the year 1313 the plague carried off in this one town not less than 13,000 people; take that number from the present population, and see how many will remain. The famine which result ed from the plague, in consequence of the interruption of all intercourse, brought them to such extremities that mothers were known to have eaten their own dead or living children. In the last century, in the year 1605, the pestilence that had been committing its ravages for three whole years would have carried off all the inhabitants of this city if God had not been at last appeased by the prayers and penance of the people, so that the scourge ceased, as it were, miraculously and at once. To come nearer to our own times, in the year 1636 the plague caused such misery that in the neighboring villages hardly twenty people were left alive out of six hundred; in our college alone not less than fourteen persons in the bloom of youth perished in a short time; and from that we may easily calculate the amount of injury done in the town itself. Through scarcity of provisions in the same year two hundred dogs were eaten as delicacies; cats, mice, and other such animals were sought for as food, and again there was a case of a woman who cut up the fruit of her own womb and ate it. Brower and Masenius describe all this in the history of Treves. But I will say nothing more on such a sad subject.
See, my dear brethren, what a great and calamitous scourge the plague is. Imagine now that it has again come to us, and that it is already in our city (I see that the bare idea of it is enough to make you tremble); but I will not go so far as that; imagine that there is only a report of the neighboring cities and countries being infected with it, so that it is on the way to us; imagine, also, that after all necessary precautions have been taken there is nothing left for us to do but to fly for refuge to our holy patron St. Sebastian, who is well known as a powerful protector in such circumstances, and a mighty helper in time of pestilence so well known, indeed, that it would be a loss of time to wait to prove it, for his fame in this respect has gone far and wide. Rome and all Italy can testify to this; for in the time of Pope Agatho an altar was erected to this holy martyr by divine inspiration, and when his intercession was implored the plague ceased at once. France can testify to this; for it preserves the relics of the Saint with great veneration, and has often experienced the benefit of his help. All Germany can testify to this; for the people have always had great confidence in the intercession of our Saint, and this confidence is increasing daily. I have heard that there are people still living who know that a similar experience fell to the lot of the town of Cochem on the Moselle; and their assertion is proved by the magnificent altar erected to St. Sebastian, and the homage paid to his statue; while the city of Treves unanimously acknowledges before his image that it has often been freed from the plague by him, and therefore is filled with gratitude for past benefits, and confidence with regard to his protection in the future. Finally, the whole Catholic Church spread throughout the world calls on St. Sebastian as a helper and patron in such sad circumstances.
If, I say again, there was nothing else for us to do at the approach of the pestilence than to fly to this Saint for refuge (and when once this evil has gained a footing, there is hardly any remedy against it but the immediate help of heaven), how would you act? what would you wish to do? I certainly would not think it necessary for me to ascend the pulpit and exhort you to this devotion, for the presence or even the dread of the scourge would of itself be sermon enough to induce all of you to appeal for help where help is to be found. And indeed a sermon of the kind is wont to produce greater effect, and to be listened to more attentively; for then the Lord Himself, taking the rod in His hand, speaks to eyes and senses by the general misery. The disciples required no exhortation to call upon Our Lord for help and protection when the waves rose and threatened their ship with destruction, as we read in the Gospel of St. Matthew; the imminent danger of death impelled them at once to waken the sleeping Lord, and cry out to Him: " Lord, save us; we perish." Nor did the people need a preacher at the death of Our Lord to warn them to repent of their cruelty towards Him; the terrible signs they saw, the thick darkness, the rending of the rocks, the trembling of the earth were enough to excite them to contrition: And all the multitude of them that were come together to that sight, and saw the things that were done, returned, striking their breasts. It is not many years ago since we saw what a commotion was excited in many cities of Germany by the mere rumor of the approach of the plague from neighboring countries. What public prayers, fasts, pilgrimages, and processions were then held! And since that time those devotions are still continued in some places. So that without a doubt if such a calamity were again to befall us you would of yourselves, although all preachers were dumb, be moved by the fear of danger to show the utmost devotion and reverence to St. Sebastian as the best means of saving your lives. Could you then find one who would not rejoice to be a member of the sodality dedicated to him? Could one be found then to absent himself from the weekly devotions and meetings? I believe that if their piety would not induce them to come, fear would, as it were, drive them out of their houses to the church as with a whip. Great and small, compelled by the fear of danger, would then come to this church as to a place of refuge, and run to the altar and statue of St. Sebastian as to an ark of safety, begging and praying, vowing and promising, that by his intercession God might deliver them. Is not that so, my dear brethren?
I come at last to the conclusion which I believe I have sufficiently proved already. You acknowledge that it is salutary, just, and necessary to have recourse to St. Sebastian when the evil, that is, the plague is already in our midst, or when it is in our vicinity. You acknowledge that on account of the severity long, of this scourge and the greatness of the evil it is an incomparable and inestimable benefit to be freed from it, and that he deserves your utmost love, reverence, and gratitude who should deliver you if you were attacked by it. I repeat, then, what I said in the beginning, that we who are now free from this evil, and hope to remain free from it, since we have not heard of any such danger threatening us we, if we wish to act prudently and uprightly, should show to St. Sebastian the same, nay, still great er love and respect, and continue the devotions we have commenced, and continue them with greater fervor and confidence. For is it a lesser benefit to obtain that we should remain free from the evil, and not have to fear it, than to be delivered from it after it has actually attacked us? Does he do you less good who restrains the rod that is raised to strike you than he who alleviates your pain after you have received the blow? Is he less your benefactor who is the cause of your remaining in good health than he who, when you are sick and suffering, gives you medicine to cure you? Is he who seizes you by the arm, and prevents you from falling, less to be thanked than he who, after you have fallen, lifts you up and heals the limb you have broken? Is he who prevents you from going to prison to be less regarded than he who, after you have lost your liberty, releases you again? If such be your opinion, you show that you think little the good health and freedom from disease you enjoy. Every one who has the use of sound reason must acknowledge that the preservation from evils and the averting of them is a greater benefit and much more to be prized than the mere freeing us from them after we have been made to feel them, and it would be gross ingratitude to forget in the time of prosperity the benefactor to whom we owe it.
For a similar reason it would be ungrateful in us to grow cold in our devotion, love, and reverence for our holy patron. To erect an altar, and seldom visit it; to be enrolled in a confraternity, and not to appear at the usual meetings, and that because we are not in dread of any approaching calamity, because we have gained the freedom from the evil we feared, because we can enjoy in peace and quiet the fruit of this devotion is not that gross ingratitude? Who does not condemn the culpable forgetfulness of Pharaohs butler, of whom we read in the Book of Genesis; Joseph had interpreted his dream in prison, and removed all apprehension from his mind by telling him that in three days he would be set at liberty, and restored to his former place of honor, to stand at the king's side and hand him the cup. No one could be more rejoiced than the butler, no one more profuse in promising to intercede for his prophetic benefactor, and to obtain his liberation. " But," says the Scripture, two years passed away, and he never even thought of Joseph; "the chief butler, when things prospered with him, forgot his interpreter."
My dear brethren, is it not so sometimes among us men? We attend only to what is present before us, without further thought or reflection, without a particle of gratitude for evident favors we have received, without any effort to fulfil the obligation they impose on us, just like dumb beasts that have to be driven to work by the fear of blows. " Till they receive," says the Wise Man of such people, " they kiss the hands of the lender, and in promises they humble their voice;" but when the time comes to make a return they shrug their shoulders, forget the favor received, or return only half of what they owe. There are some who forget their benefactors altogether. When a man is climbing a ladder he grasps it with both hands; but when the ladder has done its work he throws it into a dark corner, out of sight. While one is taking water from a well he keeps his eyes fixed on it; but when he has enough he goes away and turns his back on the well. So do we, alas! often act towards our benefactors. When necessity is at the door we acknowledge, praise, and honor the helper who comes to our aid; when the time of want is at an end our benefactor and the gratitude, love, and reverence we owe him slip from our memory. Well does the Prophet David say: " Our eyes unto the Lord, our God;" how long? ": until He have mercy on us." When we have received grace and mercy they are again turned away from Him.
My dear brethren and members of this sodality, are we to act in this manner towards our holy benefactor? Shall we turn our servile eyes towards the Lord only when we see the rod in His hand, and are in dread of the stripes? Shall we not rather show our gratitude and uprightness now, since He has kept the scourge so long and so far away from us? Truly, we should otherwise deserve, and should have good reason to fear that it would be with us as St. Cyprian says: " That since we refuse to acknowledge what we owe this Saint for the many benefits we have received from him, we should be compelled to due acknowledgment by punishment." But I firmly hope for better than that from your zealous devotion. Praise and thanks, then, be to the ashes of him who first instituted this advantageous sodality! Praise and blessing to those who in any way try to spread and help it! Praise and blessing to those who by their good example encourage others to join the sodality, and to attend regularly the appointed devotions, so that by their united prayers and fervent zeal they may avert many evils from the whole community, and ensure its prosperity! Since so much depends on it, let us all take part in this laudable custom, and by frequently and devoutly visiting this altar obtain a continuance of favors from our holy benefactor; thereby we shall merit to be saved from the plague, and from all other contagious maladies. For, as de Lyra remarks on the eighth chapter of Genesis, he perpetuates the benefit who is grateful for it. " I will no more curse the earth," said God to Noe, after the deluge; now thou canst be without fear, for a deluge shall never again overwhelm the earth. How did Noe merit this promise? As soon as he left the ark, " Noe built an altar unto the Lord, and taking of all cattle and fowls that were clean, offered holocausts upon the altar." " Thus," says de Lyra, " after the benefit of freedom from the chastisement comes that of security." city of Treves! continue to show thy gratitude to thy benefactor; then thou mayest be sure of the fulfilment of the promise: " There shall no evil come to thee, nor shall the scourge come near thy dwelling." But above all let us attend to what generally engages peoples minds during a plague, namely, to keep from our consciences the plague of the soul sin, the fuel of all evil lest the divine anger should be aroused and punish us by another pestilence of the body. We have had sorrowful times enough; wo to us if this worst of all chastisements should be added to what we have suffered already!
O God of goodness, protect us therefrom! great friend of God, holy St. Sebastian, to whom my humble prayers and those of all present are now directed, take under thy protection this city and land of Treves, which owes so much to thee! If perchance we have grown somewhat cold in our first fervor of gratitude, in our reverence and confidence in thee, we now, before thy altar, renew and increase our devotion to thee. We renew our thanks for the great benefit we owe thee in being so long freed from the plague, a benefit we do not deserve, and for which we can never be sufficiently grateful. With thankful hearts, then, we shall in future attend the holy sacrifice here every Wednesday; and so we hope, by thy intercession and advocacy with God, for the time to come that the evil will not approach us, that the scourge will not come near our dwellings, and that thus we, thy children, shall be able to serve thee and our God in greater peace and with greater cheerfulness. Amen.