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sins during the past,
and the Lord has borne
With me. I may, therefore, hope that he will deal mercifully with me for the
future. God says, do
not speak so: Say not I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me? for
the Most High is a
patient rewarder. Ecclus. 5:4. Do not say so, for God bears with you
now, but he will not always
bear with you. He endures to a certain extent, and then pays off all. Now,
therefore, stand up,
that I may plead in judgment against you concerning all the kindness of the Lord
1 Kings 7:7,
said Samuel to the Hebrews. Oh how powerfully does not the abuse of the divine
mercies assist in
procuring the damnation of the ungrateful! Gather them together as 'sheep
for a sacrifice, and
prepare them for the day of slaughter. Jer. 12:3. In the end the
herd of those who will not be
converted shall be victims of divine justice, and the Lord will condemn them to
eternal death,
on the day of slaughter, when the day of his vengeance shall have
arrived (and we have reason
always to be in dread, as long as we are not resolved to abandon sin, lest that
day should be
already near). God is not mocked, for what things a man shall sow, these
also shall he reap.
Gal. 6:7 Sinners expect to mock God by confessing at Easter, or two or
three times a year, and
then returning to their vomit, and hoping after that to obtain salvation. "He is
a mocker, not a
penitent," says St. Isidor, "who continues to do that for which he is penitent;
" but God is not
mocked.
What salvation? what salvation do you
expect? For what things a man shall sow, them also shall he reap.
What things do you sow?
blasphemy, revenge, theft , impurity: what then do you hope for? He who sows in
sin can
hope to reap nothing but chastisements and hell. For he that soweth in his
flesh,
continues the same apostle, of his flesh also shall reap corruption.
Continue, impure wretch!
continue to live sunk in the mire of your impurity, your impurities will be
converted
into pitch within your bowels. "A day
shall come," says St. Peter Damian, "a day shall come, or rather a night, when
your lust shall be
turned into pitch to feed an eternal flame within your bowels."
St. John Chrysostom says that some pretend not to see; they see the
chastisements,
and pretend not to see them. And then others, St. Ambrose says, have no fear of
punishment
until they see it has overtaken them. To all these it will happen as it did to
mankind at the
time of the deluge. The patriarch Noah foretold and announced to them the
punishments which God had prepared for their sins; but the sinners would not
believe him,
and notwithstanding that the ark was building before their eyes, they did not
change their lives, but went on sinning until the punishment was upon them,
until they were
smothered in the deluge. And they knew not till the flood came and took
them all away.
Matt. 24:39. The same happened to the great Babylon, in the
Apocalypse, who said: I
sit a queen, and I shall not see grief Apoc. 18:7 She persevered
in her impurity in the hope
of not being punished, but the chastisement at length came as had been
predicted!
Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death and mourning, and
famine, and she shall
be burnt with fire.
Brother, who knows whether this is not the last call which God may give you? Our
Lord says that a
certain owner of a vineyard, finding a fig tree for the third year without
fruit, said: Behold,
for these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none;
cut it down
therefore, why cumbereth it the ground?- Luke 13:7. Then the dresser of
the vine replied: Lord, let
it alone this year also and if happily it bear fruit but if not,
then, after that, thou
shalt cut it down. Let us enter into ourselves, my brethren; for years
has God been visiting our
souls, and
has found no other fruit therein than thorns
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