and to begin to lead a Christian life; but you refused. “You have despised all My counsel, and have neglected my reprehensions.” And what will be the result of this conduct? “I also will laugh at your destruction, and will mock.” When? “When sudden calamity shall fall on you, and destruction, as a tempest, shall be at hand; when tribulation and distress shall come upon you.” “Then I will laugh at and mock you!” “Then shall they call upon Me, and I will not hear: they shall rise in the morning, and shall not find Me.” Overwhelmed by the anguish of death, they will cry out to Me: O my God! have mercy on me! but I will not hear them. They shall ask Me for grace and pardon; I will not hear; I will let them go to destruction, and will laugh at and mock them in their misery. “Because they have hated instruction, and received not the fear of the Lord, nor consented to My counsel.”[1] In the same sense Our Lord says in the gospel of St. John: “I go, and you shall seek Me, and you shall die in your sin.”[2] Mark those words; He does not say: you will persist in your obstinacy till the last moment; you will not ask Me for mercy; you will not have time for repentance. No; “you shall seek Me;” you shall be willing to be received into My friendship; but I say to you: “You shall die in your sin;” you shall not find Me; as you lived, and not otherwise, so you shall die in your sin.
Therefore the sinner’s hope of a death-bed repentance is a vain one. Now, O sinners, use your reason! If it is probable that God will give you the grace of true repentance in your last illness, and that one who has deferred repentance to the hour of death has reasonable ground for hoping that his death will be a happy one, why has God said quite the contrary in the Old as well as in the New Testament? Why has He never uttered the least syllable hinting that He is ready to give you such a grace? Why does He rather threaten in the opposite sense? “I will laugh; I will mock; I will not hear; you shall die in your sin,” although you call upon Me; you shall not find Me, although you seek Me. Are you not yet afraid? Then hear it again: “You shall seek Me, and you shall die in your sin.” Do you still believe there is no danger? no need to live piously if you wish to die happily?
- ↑ Despexistis omne consilium meum, et increpationes meas neglexistis: ego quoque in interitu vestro ridebo, et subsannabo. Cum irruerit repentina calamitas, et interitus quasi tempestas ingruerit; quando venerit super vos tribulatio et angustia; tune invocabunt me, et non exaudiam; mane consurgent, et non invenient me. Eo quod exosam habuerint disciplinam, et timorem Domini non susceperint nee acquieverint consilio meo.—Prov. i. 25-30.
- ↑ Vado, et quæretis me, et in peccato vestro moriemini.—John viii. 21.
