The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Day 14
Fourteenth Day
Reconciliation. — Matt. v. 23-26
WE come now to a further beautiful and grand commandment, which makes us understand how God loves peace, when He orders us, as He does, to be reconciled with our brother before we approach the altar. He will not receive any offering that is made by a heart full of resentment or by hands inclined to vengeance.
We ought very specially to notice this saying: 'If thou remember that thy brother hath anything against thee.’ It is not only when you have given him cause for displeasure, but if he has merely taken ill something you have done, that you must try to come to friendly terms with him; and this, lest you should perhaps come to hate him if you found that he hated you. The first gift that we must offer to God is a heart free from all coldness and all unkindness towards our fellow-men. And we should not even wait for the Day of Communion. The actual day of oblation, when we shall be assisting together — or even alone — at the Holy Sacrifice, ought to be preceded by reconciliation.
But we must carry the love of peace yet farther, for St Paul says, ' Let not the sun go down upon your anger.’ [1] The darkness would increase our vexation, our anger would return as we woke, and become more bitter. Dark and melancholy passions — amongst which are hate, revenge, and jealousy — grow stronger in the night hours, just as wounds and some kinds of diseases do.
In quarrels, law-suits, and every kind of dissension, we ' deliver ’ one another to ' the officer,’ because we mutually offend each other: — therefore we have reason to fear lest we be cast into that ' prison ’ whence we shall not go out 'till we re-pay the last farthing,’ [2] according to the strictest justice. We should therefore come to some voluntary agreement, rather than appeal to a verdict which will serve to increase our bitterness. This is a point to be seriously considered.
St Augustine says that this ' adversary ’ with whom we are ' to be at agreement betimes,’ whilst we are 'in the way with him,’ is the Truth, which condemns us in this life; and which in the next delivers us to the executioner, who will compel us to pay this last farthing. That is, who will send us to dwell eternally in that frightful prison, since we can never then make satisfaction for our crimes.