mighty, and present in all places; at any moment He has the power of reducing us to nothing if such is His will. We often refuse to act on that knowledge; otherwise should we, poor, despicable creatures as we are, so often rebel against Him, offend Him so audaciously, and before His very eyes trample His law under foot? God, says our faith, is the sworn Enemy and Chastiser of sin, and His infinite justice will not allow the least transgression to go unpunished, unless it has been fully atoned for. We often refuse to act on that knowledge; otherwise should we dare to offend Him so presumptuously? Do we not falsely imagine that we are free from all punishment when we spend whole weeks, months, and years in sin, calmly and quietly, as if there were no one in heaven or on earth from whom we have anything to fear? We separate the divine mercy and justice from each other, and imagine that justice must always give way before and yield to mercy; as Tertullian says, we look on justice as an idle attribute of God, that never upholds its rights and leaves everything to mercy. God is good, we say; God is patient; God is tolerant of the sinner; He is ready to forgive, and therefore it makes little matter how one lives. Thus, through want of a prop er knowledge of God, His honor is often lessened and despised.
On the last day He will show to the world what He is, and prove His absolute power. Hence there must come a time in which God will avenge His honor and publicly show before the world what He is. And that will be the last day of general judgment, which is therefore called in Holy Writ “the day of the Lord.” “The loftiness of men shall be bowed down,” says the Prophet Isaias, “and the haughtiness of men shall be humbled, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.”[1] The Prophet Osee calls this day a public festival of the Lord, on which God, not rightly known before, shall declare Himself publicly. Then the reprobate as well as the just and elect shall acknowledge His supreme right and absolute power to rule over all the elements, and the living and the dead, who will come forth from their graves at His command. For if, according to the opinion of St. Paul, it is an evident sign of the almighty power of God that He can destroy great things, and again restore what He has destroyed, showing by the first that all creatures have their being from Him, and by the second that He alone can replace them in their former state; on the last day He will give supreme proof of this twofold power in
- ↑ Incurvabitur sublimitas hominum, et humiliabitur altitudo virorum, et elevabitur Dominus solus in die illa.—Is. ii. 17.
