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from the infirmity itself. "He asked for the
health of the body, and the Lord gave him the health of the soul; because, like a good physician,
he wished to take away the root of the evil." In Matth. 9. Sin is the root of every evil, as we
find in St. Bernardine of Sienna. Hence the Lord after having healed him, warned him against sin in
these words: Go
thy way, and sin no more, lest something worse befall thee. John 5:14. Ecclesiasticus said the
same before our Lord: My son, in thy sickness cleanse thy heart from sin, and then give
place to the physician. Ecclus. 38:9. You must first apply to the physician of the soul in order
that he may free you from your sins, and then to the physician of the body that he may cure you of
your disease.
In a word, the cause of all our chastisements is sin; and still more than sin, our obstinacy in it,
as St. Basil says. We have offended God, and are, notwithstanding, unwilling to do penance. When
God calls by the voice of his punishment, he desires that he should be heard; if he be not, he
shall be compelled by ourselves to curse us: But if thou wilt not hear the voice of the Lord thy
God. all these curses shall come upon thee; cursed shalt thou be in the city, cursed in
the field Deut. 28:15. When we offend God, we provoke all creatures to punish us. St.
Anselm says that in the same manner as a servant, when he offends his master, draws down upon him
the wrath, not only of his master, but of the whole family; so we, when we offend God, excite
against us the anger of all creatures. And St. Gregory says that we have more especially
irritated against us those creatures which we have made use of against our Creator. God's mercy
holds in those creatures that they may not afflict us, but when he sees that we make no account of
his threats, and continue to live on in our
former way, he will then make use of those

creatures to take vengeance on us for the in
juries we have done him: He will arm the creature for the revenge of His enemies. And the whole
world shall fight with Him against the unwise. Wisd. 5:18. "There is no creature," says St. John
Chrysostom, "which
will not feel anger when it sees its Lord in
anger."
If then, my brethren, we do not appease God by our conversion, we never shall be free from
chastisement. What folly, says St. Gregory, could be more extreme than to imagine that God should
cease to chastise before we should have ceased to offend? Many now come to the church, and hear the
sermon, but go away without confession:, or change of life. If we do not remove the cause of the
scourge, how can we expect to be delivered from the scourge itself. Such is the reflection of St.
Jerome. We continue to irritate God, and then wonder that God should continue to chastise us.
"Impure as we are," says Salvian, "we wonder why we should be so miserable." Do we think that God
is appeased by the mere circumstance of our appearing at church without repenting of our sins,
without restoring the property or character of our neighbor, without avoiding those occasions of
sin which keep us at a distance from God? Ah, let us not mock the Lord! And now do not mock, lest
your bonds be tied strait. Is. 28:22. Do not mock God, says the prophet, lest those bonds which
are securing you for hell be tied strait. Cornelius a Lapide, in commenting on the above passage of
Isaias, says that when the fox is caught in the snare, its efforts to disengage itself only serve
to entangle it the more. "So also will it happen to sinners who, while mocking at God's threats and
punishments, become more and more involved in them. " My brethren, let us have done; let us no more
irritate God, the chastisement is near at
hand: For I have heard of the Lord the God of