maidens whom you brought to ruin by your flatteries and allure ments? by the young boys and students whom you taught what they should never have learned? My God! what wickedness! Most just Judge, pronounce sentence! This is the reason why we have so often offended Thee! That man was the stumbling-block in our way! He was the cause of our remaining in that odious vice from youth till old age! He is the cause of our eternal damnation! O traitors! murderers of souls! what will you do on that day when such accusations are levelled at you? Ah, your cause is lost; there is no hope for you unless you now do penance, and make good the injury you have done the honor of God and the souls of others.
All the saints shall accuse him. Hitherto hatred and a just desire of revenge have been the accusers in the judgment. Zeal for the divine honor will also cry out against the wicked. That is, all the friends and saints of God, whom we now honor as our patrons and protectors in heaven, will give testimony against them; all the holy apostles and disciples of Christ will complain of the sloth of the sinner in matters of faith, of his irreverence in the house of God, of his many superstitious practices and dealings with the devil, of the unlawful customs he followed that were contrary to the teaching of the Christian religion. All the holy martyrs will complain of the sinner’s love of ease and sensuality, of his shirking the slight labor required to gain an eternal crown, of his refusing to bear a short-lived suffering, a light cross. All the holy penitents and confessors of Christ will accuse the pride and impenitence of the sinner because he refused to humble himself to tell his sins to the priest holding the place of God in the tribunal of penance. All the holy virgins will accuse the impurity of the sinner who would not do violence to his inordinate inclinations for the sake of the everlasting joys of heaven.
And the holy guardian angels. All the holy guardian angels (alas! shall we find accusers even in you to help to our eternal damnation?)—yes, even they will accuse their own charges, and demand their reprobation from the Judge. “Every one of the angels,” says Origen, “shall be present in the judgment to bring forward those who were the objects of his care,”[1] and he shall then make his accusation, stating the number of years he endeavored by his inspirations and warnings to encourage to good the soul entrusted to him,
- ↑ Unus quisque angelorum in judicio aderit, producens illos quibus præfuit.—Orig. Hom. 66. in Num.
