canst make me clean,” and the merciful Saviour at once granted his request: “And Jesus, stretching forth His hand, touched him, saying: I will. Be thou made clean. And forthwith his leprosy was cleansed.”[1] Why did He send those ten lepers to the priests? To show that He does not always wish to dispense His graces and gifts immediately, but that in order to receive them we must do our part of the work. “And it came to pass, as they went they were made clean.” My dear brethren, God might of Himself alone free us from our past sins, but He does not do so in the present arrangements of His providence, since we must contribute our share too; namely, repenting of our sins and confessing them to the priest. God could of Himself alone make us eternally happy, but He does not wish to do so, since we have to work with Him, and by diligently practising virtue gain heaven as a reward. Yet that is a circumstance that should cause us to rejoice, for thus by our own efforts we may ascend higher in heaven, and by our work here on earth make our future glory there all the greater. This consideration should encourage us to practise good works daily and without giving way to weariness, for we can say to ourselves: heaven, everlasting joy and glory, could any labor or trouble be too much for me to possess and increase you! To the end that we may have thoughts of the kind always ready to arise in our minds, we shall make the glory of heaven the subject of this and the following instructions, not considering that glory as it is in itself, but a matter which you probably have not yet heard treated in a sermon, how it can be constantly and indeed easily increased during this life if we only wish to do so. We take the first point to-day.
Plan of Discourse.
That we can always add to our future glory in heaven, and what a great advantage that is; the first point. In what consists this increase of the glory of one blessed soul above another; the second point.
Jesus Christ, King of glory, who didst come down from heaven on this earth to make us heirs of Thy glory, fill our hearts with the desire of the joys Thou hast prepared for us, that we may daily labor in Thy service with unwearied zeal, and thus mount higher and higher in heaven! This we beg of Thee
- ↑ Domine, si vis, potes me mundare. Extendens Jesus manum, tetigit eum, dicens: volo. Mundare. Et confestim mundata est lepra ejus.—Matt. viii. 2, 3.
