4.— On the Word of God.
"The seed is the word of God."
ACCORDING to St. Augustine, the Divine Word falls on a weak and sensitive element, and it becomes a sacrament. This word also falls on impure hearts, and it makes them chaste; on the wicked, and makes them saints. It finds them in sin, and it converts them to God.
As in the most wonderful of our Sacraments, those words, Hoc est Corpus Meum, are transubstantiations of bread into the Body and of wine into the Blood of the Son of God, because they are not the words of the priest, but the words of Jesus Christ, offered up nevertheless by the priest; so in like manner preachers make use of moral but wondrous transubstantiations, and change old sinners into new servants of God.
What miraculous wonders has not this Word produced! It falls on the heart of an% adulterous David, and it makes him a royal penitent. It falls on the heart of a Magdalen; it finds her a worshipper of sin, and it makes her a model of penance. It falls on Matthew, and from a public usurer, it makes him an Evangelist. You see a soul enter the Church — a soul enamoured of the world and full of vanity — it enters into the Church; it pays but little attention to the Word of God, and immediately a penetrating light pierces the heart, which shows the bad state in which it is. From
