and in the sight of the sun” thy shame shall be made known to the whole world.[1]
How the sinner shall be put to shame. Shown by examples and similes. Alas! where shall I then fly to hide my shame? If anyone in the world was ever put to great shame, it was surely the case with the ambassadors of David, who were ill-treated by the Ammonite king Hanon, as we read in the tenth chapter of the Second Book of Kings. He caused their heads to be shorn as if they were slaves, their beards and their garments to be half cut away as if they were fools, and in this shameful guise he had them brought into his court to be made the laughing-stock of his courtiers and ministers; he then had them led through the streets through a great crowd of people who were staring at them. “The men were sadly put to confusion,”[2] says the Scripture of them. To my mind they must have been so ashamed that they hardly knew where to turn their eyes, and they would certainly have preferred to have their heads cut off by the executioner than to be thus treated. Honorable maidens of this city! if one of you, born of a noble family, and whose fair fame has hitherto been unsullied, were convicted of having given birth to an illegitimate child, and publicly pilloried, or according to the custom of the Church, had to stand this morning at the door of the parish church, clad in white, with a candle in her hand, so that all the people should see her, what would you think of that? Would you not rather die than suffer such ignominy? I knew a young woman, writes Father Paul Segneri, who through foolish passion sinned against holy purity, and no sooner did she notice that she could not conceal the fruits of her sin than filled with fear of the shame that threatened her, she ran at once to her lover and begged of him on her knees to help her to make away with herself, as she could not bear the shame of having her crime made known; the man agreed, gave her poison, and sent her soul to hell. Unhappy soul! you chose rather to suffer the eternal torments of hell than to have your sin known in only one town! But what is that, Christians, compared to the confusion of the sinner at the last day? Do you, O ye heavens, understand the exceeding greatness of it? For that very girl and every impenitent sinner, shorn and ragged like the ambassadors of David, shall stand in the pillory surrounded by demons, and that, too, not in the sight of one town, but before all men,
