Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 5
Fourth Sunday of Advent.
Motives to Repentance.
"Preaching . . . penance unto the remission of sins." — Luke iii. 3.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : I. Jewish day of wailing. II. Parallel. III. Penitential motives.
I. Nearness of death : 1. Uncertainty of life. 2. Especially
for sinners. 3. Awful risk. II. Miseries of sin : x. Remorse. 2. Devil's lure. 3. The hour of death.
III. Final impenitence: 1. To-morrow. 2. Length of days. 3. God's justice.
Per.: 1. Baltassar. 2. Briton and Boer. 3. Forgiveness for all.
SERMON.
Repentance unto the remission of sins. Brethren, on every anniversary of their conquest by the Romans, the Jews of Palestine are wont to drape themselves in mourning garb, and marching to sad and solemn music through Jerusalem's streets they bewail with tears and lamentations their nation's downfall, their ruined homes, and the departed glories of their Temple. Be not scandalized, O sinful Chris- tians, if to-day I urge that you join in spirit their ranks and help to swell their woeful chorus. For by sin you have, like the Jews, crucified the Saviour; you have, like them, incurred the wrath of God. God's kingdom within you has been overthrown. In your Father's house there are indeed many mansions, but those designed for you have been razed to the ground. That temple of God, your soul, has been so unfitted for the indwelling of the Spirit, that you have lost at once God's temple and the temple's God. In sin and its woeful results you have out-Jewed the Jews; endeavor now to outdo them in repentance. But rend not your garments; rather rend your hearts, grieving in spirit and in truth. The Jewish day of wailing, in modern times at least, is but the exhibition of the trappings and the suits of woe, but you should have within you that which passeth show, a sin-consuming remorse of soul, a fiery baptism of penance unto the remission of your sins. Let the motives to repentance I suggest be as fagots on that fire, and a breath to fan them into flame, that the dross of sin in your souls may be purged and burned away.
Brethren, to the healthful man few things are harder to realize than the nearness of death. God made you to walk upright, your eyes removed as far as possible from the ground, lest being reminded too frequently of your earthiness, you should find life unendurable. But this, like others of God's mercies, you, reckless sinner, abuse to your own destruction. Yet think a moment and you can, you must acknowledge your danger from death's nearness. God in Scripture, the Church in her liturgy, and Nature with a thousand tongues, proclaim that man is dust and shall return to dust. Yet will such warning make no deeper or more lasting impression on your soul than do the Lenten ashes on your forehead? Damocles, they say, though crowned as king and seated at a royal banquet, failed to enjoy himself because above his head there hung suspended by a single hair a naked sword, — and you — will you revel in forbidden pleasures within the very swing of death's fierce scythe? Afloat in a frail bark on the sea of life, you cannot but feel that but an inch divides you from the ocean of eternity, and can you, notwithstanding winds and waves, still sleep the sleep of sin? Jonas voyaging to Tharsis in defiance of God, and Jesus on the sea of Galilee — each slept amid the storm, but neither Jonas' despair nor the conscious sanctity of Christ can be the secret of your unconcern. Your indifference is founded on the hope that the fates have allotted you length of days. Ah! remember that the thread of life that Clotho spins and Lachesis directs must pass between the busy shears of Atropos. To John in Patmos death appeared as a sickly knight on a jaded horse, but that vision of death is that of a saint desiring to be dissolved and be with God. To sinners such as you, death is an invincible warrior on a flying steed, armed with a spear to slay the weak, and arrows to kill from afar the unsuspecting strong. Aye, and on his heel is a spur that you yourselves have buckled there to hasten his approach — the spur of sin. " For," says Scripture, " by sin death comes into the world, and the sting of death is sin." No flourish of trumpets heralds his onset, but down he swoops suddenly, like the Assyrians on Israel, like a wolf on the fold. " For the sinner," Scripture says, " the grave doth yawn thrice wider than for other men, and hell doth enlarge its mouth." In history, sacred and profane, you will find that the world's greatest sinners have almost invariably died sudden and unprovided deaths, whereas, according to the selfsame history, the strongest brake on death's chariot-wheel is self-denying virtue. For the virtuous are trees of precious wood which the grim woodsman, Death, will, before felling, allow to season and develop; but the wicked are as worthless timber which may at any time be cut down and used as firewood. And oh! remember that as the tree leans, so shall it fall — as a man lives, so shall he die. The salvation of a habitual sinner demands of God the exercise of more miraculous power than would suffice to cause the leaning oak to straighten up and lean and fall the other way. To expect such a miracle from God is blasphemous unto perdition. St. Jerome says that of one hundred thousand men invariably bad, scarce one finds mercy before God. Will you then imitate the hundred thousand, and take your chance of being the favored one? What, risk your soul! You may risk all the world beside, your goods and chattels you may, to weather the gale, cast overboard and afterwards recover, but not your soul, for that once lost is lost forever. What will the whole world profit you, if you lose your soul? And if the acquisition of a world even would not justify your risking the danger of continuance in deadly sin, what shall we say of a vile momentary pleasure, a handful of filthy lucre or an inhuman revenge? To risk your soul for such worse than trifles is like fishing for frogs with a golden hook, or braving a tempestuous voyage for a cargo of manure. Tell me not that though you sin to-day you will repent to-morrow; for you there may be no tomorrow. Take example from the Ninivites who, when they heard from Jonas that after forty days destruction was to come upon them for their sins, donned immediately sackcloth and ashes and so averted the wrath of God. You, no doubt, would have deferred repentance until the evening of the fortieth day. Repent you now, now, more promptly even than the Ninivites. No forty days of grace are promised you. You know not the day nor the hour of the Lord's coming; of your death you know not the day nor the hour.
Brethren, as a motive urging to repentance not less potent than the nearness of death, is the host of miseries resulting from a life of sin. I speak not here of bodily infirmities, though they, too, count for much, but far more painful are the tortures of a guilty conscience. Between the birth of life and the birth of death there is a striking contrast. A woman in labor when delivered forgets her anguish, rejoicing that a man is born into the world, but the soul begetting sin, though it feel a momentary pleasure, is presently convulsed in an agony of remorse. " Sin," says Scripture, " sin when completed begetteth death," and death is such a hideous monster that the soul that brings it into being faints with horror at the sight. There is no keener torment than remorse. The nearer the dentist's probe approaches the nerve, the more it hurts, because the nerve communicates directly with the brain, and the brain with the soul. How exquisite the pain would be did the probe directly touch the soul, as actually occurs when man awakens to a consciousness of guilt. Thus it happens that sinners crowd into a moment sufferings that savor of the torments of the damned. Thenceforth they know no peace. Each whispering breeze of paradise alarms Adam; Cain is startled at the stirring of a leaf; the erstwhile valiant David dreads the subaltern Urias, and Judas, alarmed at a shadow of suspicion, goes and hangs himself. True, you may have sinned and yet not suffered so; you may know sinners that are even happy. Ah! the devil is a skilful bird-catcher. He catches one and feeds him well and teaches him to sing and seemingly enjoy captivity, but why? To lure others into the snare and so deprive them of their freedom and mayhap their lives. But if you, being caught, are making merry in a life of sin, believe me, there will come a time — your dying hour — when conscience will awake. Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, and ate and drank and went his way rejoicing, but when in the final adjustment of their affairs he found his father had blessed his brother Jacob and made him heir, he roared like a lion for very anguish. Face to face with death you will — you must — realize your pitiful bar gain, whereby to gratify your animal appetites you forfeited your heavenly heritage. Like tigers long pent up, the pains of conscience will then spring upon you. Your life, which seemed before as calm and clear as a mountain lake, will then be lashed to fury by the storm that is to rend apart your soul and body, and all the sinful refuse that lay hidden will be cast up at your feet. The guilty prisoner is never so agitated as on the eve of trial. Your presumptuous habit of relying on God's mercy will not avail you then, for the hope of the virtuous is as the sun of their lives which reaches its zenith at their death, but the sinner's hope, though strong through life, gradually declines and disappears at the moment of his greatest need. Peter's salutary sorrow will not be yours, unless you bitterly weep whenever, as now, the Saviour glances toward you; but if His frequent appeals to you are all in vain, be sure your final state will be a Judas-like despair.
Brethren, if neither the nearness of death nor the misery of a sinful life can drive you to repentance, remember this, that the result of deferring your conversion will be an inability to repent at all. God said to Pharao: " Let My people go," and when he would not, God sent the plagues on Egypt. When grievously oppressed by each, Pharao would send for Moses and bid him remove the scourge on promise of freedom for his people, but when Moses would say: " When, when, set me a time," Pharao would always answer: " To-morrow." Set me a time, ye sinners, set me a time now. You know not if there be a morrow, but of this you may be certain, that the longer you delay like Pharao the harder will your heart become, till finally you are engulfed in the sea of your own iniquities. You live a vulture's life, yet you hope for a swan's death — a spotless being slowly floating down to the ocean of eternity chanting the while sweet melody. Young as you are and strong, you have no guarantee of time sufficient for such a metamorphosis, for our physical powers are like the strings of a violin — there is more danger of their snapping suddenly under the tension of youth than when relaxed with old age. But even granting that you live for years and years, will your ruling passion be overcome more easily then than now? Ah! a mountain rill is at its source quite easily crossed, but follow it down into the plain and see how broad and deep it grows. So, too, your sin; the farther, the lower you follow it, the more impassable grows the barrier between you and your God. Or will your nature be more pliant after years of sin, making conversion easier then than now? Ah! the twig is easily bent and made to grow this way or that, but engines and ropes and chains would scarce suffice to right the leaning oak. And if perchance with infinite labor the tree be made to lean from left to right, think you it will retain its new position, or will it not rather swing, back directly the tension is relaxed? So, too, a tardy conversion prompted by necessity is labor in vain, productive of no stable results, a sham, a lie. But God the just, you say, the merciful, will spare me for the little good I have done. On the contrary. His justice and His mercy both demand that He abandon you at death's door as you in life abandoned Him. The salvation of the entire human race is God's first great concern; individual interests are secondary. Would it then be just or merciful to equalize at death the saint and sinner, to disgust the good with a system of salvation that allows the sinner's darkened lifeday to close with a sunburst of glory; to encourage the wicked to continue in their sin confident of God's favor at the last? Why, Christ Himself has sworn He will deny before His Father in heaven all such as have habitually denied Him before men on earth. Hence the saying that as a man lives so he dies. " They," says Scripture, " they that are converted in the evening shall suffer hunger like dogs." You treat God like a dog, for to turn to Him only in the evening of your existence is like feeding a dog with the refuse of a feast. What wonder then if at your death God fail to grant you a morsel of repentance, however much you hunger for it and entreat. But a humble and a contrite heart, you say, the merciful Lord will never despise. True, but the measure of grace He will accord you, though enough to sanctify the average man, will not suffice to save a soul with such a past as yours. Your ruling passion, be it drink, or lust, or hate, or what not, will be strong in death, because death being the crisis in the battle between the powers of light and darkness, the devil, like a skilful general, will marshal all his forces for the final struggle. That is what Christ means when, addressing such as you, He says: " Unless you do penance you shall all likewise perish, for in the hour of your need you shall seek Me and you shall not find Me, but you shall die in your sins."
Brethren, King Baltassar made a feast and sacrilegiously ate and drank from the vessels stolen from God's Temple, and all the while a hostile army hammered at his gates. Beware alike his folly and his wickedness. Beware lest while you pollute with sin your soul and body, death's hand be knocking at your door, or the invisible hand of God be tracing on the wall your everlasting doom. You know you are not happy in your sin. Give it up. You know repentance will be harder the longer it is delayed. Give your sin up now. You know neglect of warnings or repeated falls lead to final impenitence. Turn to Jesus once for all and never take your eyes from Him again. Ah! see the mangled Saviour toiling with His cross up Calvary! Will He pity you, poor sinner, bruised and torn by the world, the devil and the flesh? A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind. Two soldiers, a Briton and a Boer, lay side by side in a hospital — two shattered wrecks from the battlefield. Silently they gazed, each at the other, with hate at first, then wonder, then with sorrow, and when on food being brought the Briton passed it to his enemy, those great rough men broke down and cried like children. Ah! the heart of Jesus is not less human than were theirs, nor less prompt to sympathize. He has experienced our every wound and misery. He knows our weaknesses, and will meet a prompt repentance with a prompt forgiveness. Turn then to Him, thou Peter, though thou hast denied Him thrice, turn to Him weeping bitterly. Turn to Him, thou Magdalen, and learn to love Him much and much will be forgiven. Arise, thou prodigal! no more of husks or swinish company, but arise and return to your Father. Doubt you how He will receive you? Ah! see His arms stretched out ready to embrace you; behold His bosom whereon to lay your weary head with tears of joy and thankfulness; hear His angels rejoicing because you who were lost are found, you who were dead are come to life again. " Come to Me," He says, " come to Me all ye that labor with temptation and I will fortify you with sin-resisting grace; come to Me all ye that are heavy-laden with sin and I will refresh you with forgiveness; come to Me and you shall find peace for your souls."