In the magi it finds a docile and sincere heart: in the priests, a heart mean, deceitful, cowardly, and dissembling: in Herod, a corrupted and hardened heart. Consequently, it forms worshippers in the magi, dissemblers in the priests, and in Herod a persecutor. Now, my brethern, such is still at present among us the lot of truth: it is a celestial light which is shown to us, says St. Augustine; but few receive it, many hide and dim it, and a still greater number contemn and persecute it: it shows itself to all, but how many indocile souls who reject it! How many mean and cowardly souls who dissemble it! How many black and hardened hearts who oppress and persecute it! Let us collect these three marked characters in our Gospel, which are to instruct us in all our duties relative to truth: truth received, truth dissembled, truth persecuted. Holy Spirit, Spirit of Truth, destroy in us the spirit of the world, that spirit of error, of dissimulation, of hatred against the truth; and in this holy place, destined to form ministers, who are to announce it even in the extremities of the earth, render us worthy of loving the truth, of manifesting it to those who know it not, and of suffering all for its sake.
Part I. — I call truth that eternal rule, that internal light incessantly present within us, which, in every action, points out to us what we ought, and what we ought not to do; which enlightens our doubts, judges our judgments; which inwardly condemns or approves us, according as our behaviour is agreeable or contrary to its light; and which, in certain moments more splendid and bright, more evidently points out to us the way in which we ought to walk, and is figured to us by that miraculous light which on this day, conducts the magi to Jesus Christ.
Now, I say, that the first use which we ought to make of truth, being for ourselves, the church, on this day, proposes to us, in the conduct of the magi, a model of those dispositions which alone can render the knowledge of truth beneficial and salutary to us. There are few souls, however they may be plunged in the senses and in the passions, whose eyes are not at times opened upon the vanity of the interests they pursue, upon the grandeur of the hopes which they sacrifice, and upon the ignominy of the life which they lead. But, alas! their eyes are opened to the light, only to be closed again in an instant; and the sole fruit which they reap, from the truth which is visible to, and enlightens them, is that of adding to the misfortune of having hitherto been ignorant of it, the guilt of having afterward known it in vain.
Some confine themselves to vain reasonings upon the light which strikes them, and turn truth into a subject of controversy and vain philosophy: others, with minds yet unsettled, wish, it would appear, to know it; but they seek it not in an effectual way, because they would, at bottom, be heartily sorry to have found it: lastly, others, more tractable, allow themselves to be wrought upon by its evidence, but, discouraged by the difficulties and the self-denials which it presents to them, they receive it not with that delight
