terests always; to strive for honors and high places; to tolerate no injury; to return evil for evil, and if one cannot be revenged on one’s adversary, to conceal one’s hatred and anger by an appearance of politeness; to gratify one’s sensuality and love of comfort; to conform to the usages of other men, and to take the world as a guide in all things. This wisdom is imbibed by the young with their mother’s milk; they are trained in it during their youth; they who are skilled therein despise others; they who are ignorant of it look up to those who know it with the most profound and reverent admiration.”[1] Thus far St. Gregory. They imagine that the law of the holy Gospel of Jesus Christ, true humility and modesty, the rude, rough way of penance, which alone can lead to heaven, is not for them, but only for religious in monasteries and deserts.
On the last day the latter shall see their error to their shame, while the former shall be justified to their glory. When shall these clouds of darkness be blown away? When shall the truth be disclosed, to show which side is right? Jesus Christ Himself, accompanied by all His angels, shall descend on that day from heaven, and in the presence of all the nations of the world shall erect the standard of the cross, and then pronounce sentence according to the laws of the Gospel on all those who have rejected those laws. The whole world will then have to confess and acknowledge that God revealed to the simple-minded and lowly, as they were imagined to be, what He kept concealed from the wise and the powerful. Then the foolish children of the world shall see, when too late, the grievous error into which they fell, and humbled and filled with shame and confusion, disgraced and outcast, they will stand there crying out in rage and despair those words of the Book of Wisdom: “Therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice hath not shined unto us, and the sun of understanding hath not risen upon us.”[2] So in spite of all our cleverness, we are now found wanting; we have not known the very fundamental truths of the Christian doctrine; like little children we have not learned even the ABC of it! “We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honor.”[3] Now we foolish ones see in the glory of
- ↑ Hujus mundi sapientia est cor machinationibus tegere sensum verbis velare, quæ falsa sunt vera ostendere, quæ vera sunt falsa demonstrare, etc. Hæc nimirum prudentia usu a juvenibus scitur; hæc a pueris pretio discitur; hanc qui sciunt, cæteros despiciendo superbiunt: hanc qui nesciunt, subjecti et timidi in aliis mirantur.—S. Greg. Hom. 10, c. 16, in c. 12. Job.
- ↑ Ergo erravimus a via veritatis, et justitiæ lumen non luxit nobis, et sol intelligentiæ non est ortus nobis.—Wis. v. 6.
- ↑ Nos insensati, vitam illorum æstimabamus insaniam, et finem illorum sine honore.—Ibid. 4.
