The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Day 42
Forty-second Day
We are to call upon God with repeated and importunate cries — Luke xviii. 4, 5, 7.
THE importunity that we are told to use towards God consists in that urgent form of prayer just described: — never fainting.
Think of that cry of the elect that rises night and day before God! We must firmly believe that our own unjust deeds — our scandals — all we do that disedifies the Saints and makes them suffer, calls down vengeance upon us by day and by night; and that we can only appease this cry bya continual cry of repentance. Have mercy, O God, have mercy! This is what we must cry, night and day: — this is what our needs are incessantly calling out.
Remember the sad state of that judge who said: "I fear not God, nor regard man.’ When all restraint is gone, there is no more hope. So long as there is some check upon us: — so long as, though not fearing God, we are at least slightly restrained by the fear of man: — there is yet hope, and our passions are subject to some kind of moderation.