It is in vain expected by the sinner who defers repentance to the last moment. And you, O sinner! expect all these powerful graces, without which you cannot save your soul (although you might save it with another grace)? And from whom do you expect them? From an an rv God, whom you have provoked a thousand times, and whose patience you have worn out? When do you expect them? When you have spent your life in all kinds of wickedness; constantly kept your ears shut to God’s inspirations, despised His warnings and threats, trampled so often on the precious blood He shed for you; and after the same God has so repeatedly implored of you during your lifetime to return to Him, and offered you His favor and friendship—offers which you have rejected with scorn? When do you, expect those graces? When you see that you are on the point of leaving the world and entering into eternity? When you are tired of sin, or, to speak more truly, when you are no longer able to sin? When you have no more time left to serve God? Then He has to be ready for you, and give you the greatest and most powerful of all graces that He has ever given to His Saints who are in heaven? What are you dreaming of? Where is your common sense? How can you be so presumptuous as to admit such a hope even in imagination? And if God so deals with you as you expect, on whom shall He pour out the vials of His wrath?
God would rather give him the grace to work miracles. No matter how ungrateful and wicked you have been during your life, I should be more willing to believe that God would give you on your death-bed the grace of prophecy, of healing ther sick people, or even of raising the dead, than that of conversion and final perseverance. And indeed this supposition seems to me the more probable; for even the traitor Judas worked miracles, and a prophet, or one who has miraculous powers, can lead a bad life, and be lost eternally; for, according to Our Lord’s own testimony, many will come at the last day and appeal to the wonderful things they have done: “Have not we prophesied in Thy name, and cast out devils in Thy name, and done many miracles in Thy name?” Nevertheless the just Judge will condemn them all to hell: “And then will I profess unto them: I never knew you: depart from Me, you that work iniquity.”[1] Thus, I say, God is more likely to give you the grace of working miracles than that of true penance, perseverance, and a happy death after a life spent in sin and in obstinate resistance
- ↑ Nonne in nomine tuo prophetavimus, et in nomine tuo dæmonia ejecimus, et in nomine tuo virtutes multas fecimus? Et tunc confitebor illis: quia nunquam novi vos; discedite a me, qui operamini iniquitatem.—Matt. vii. 22, 23.
