The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Day 45
Forty-fifth Day
Summary of Christian morality: What is its true end? — Matt. vii. 12, 20.
'WHATSOEVER you would that men should do to you, do you also to them.’ There can be nothing simpler than this principle: — nothing more far-reaching in practice; for all human society is included in it. Nature itself teaches us the rule. But Christ places it higher than nature by adding: ‘ For this is the law and the prophets.’ It is the summary of their contents — the abridgment of all justice; and the root of the principle lies in the command: — ‘ thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’[1]
'Do violence’ to yourself. The work of salvation is not to be undertaken in a spirit of softness. ' Narrow is the gate’ of mortification, poverty, and penance. ‘Broad is the way’ of liberty and licence. There is the large number, and there the small number: — endless matter for meditation — inexhaustible source of comfort to the humble.
'Even so every good tree yieldeth good fruit, and the bad tree yieldeth bad fruit.’ Hence, a good repentance must be distinguished from a bad one.
Strange state of a rational being: — that, failing to bring forth good fruit, he should be fit only to be burnt!
'By their fruits you shall know them’ — the good trees — and not by their leaves: that is, by their deeds, not their words. The fig-tree that Our Lord cursed had leaves; but because it bore no fruit Christ made it wither up: — ' May no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever.’[2] As a punishment for being barren, it is made yet more so. If we bring not forth fruit in due season, and when the Master looks for it, a time comes when we are unable to produce it at all.
A wise confessor should require fruit, and not merely leaves, from his penitent. He must not be satisfied either with what appears to be a good tree covered with foliage, or with blossoms wherein the fruit is beginning to set. He must obtain true, perfectly-formed fruits, or he will have reason to doubt the sincerity of the repentance.