If, then, you would be saved, keep before your mind all the time your habitual sins. Be on your guard against them continually, just as a man going on slippery ice is all the time careful how he places his feet. Repeat your resolutions frequently; make them practical and definite. Say to yourself, "Next time I am provoked I will keep down that profane word; next time such an object comes before my eyes I will turn them away; next time such a thought occurs I will instantly repel it." Be on the lookout for danger, as a sailor is for rocks or icebergs in his course. Pray, of course, earnestly and frequently, but watch as well as pray. If you do you will save your soul; if you do not you will lose it.
Sermon XC.
There shall be joy in heaven
upon one sinner that doth penance,
more than upon ninety-nine just
who need not penance.
—St. Luke xv. 7.
I do not think, my brethren, that there is any parable in the Gospel which comes more home to your own experience than these which you have just heard about the lost sheep and groat. I am sure you have all of you lost something at some time or other; and I am sure, too, that, even though it was not very valuable, you began to think it was when it was lost, and hunted for it high and low. It seemed to you that you cared more for it than for any other article of your property, and that you did not mind much what became of your other things as long as that was missing.
That, of course, was not really the case. For, although you seemed to give all your thoughts and energy in searching for the lost article, you cared just as much all the time for what you meanwhile left at home or unnoticed. And if, while you were hunting up one thing, another should get lost, you would start out after that with just as much anxiety as you did for the other.
So our Lord spends his time, not only now and then but always, chiefly in hunting after what he has lost, and lets what he has got shift a good deal for itself. Always, I say; for he has always lost something. He keeps losing things all the time. The sheep keep straying away from his fold continually. As soon as one is brought back another has gone, and he has to set out in pursuit of it. And meanwhile the sheep in the fold do not seem to get as much care and attention as they think they deserve for their obedience and general good behavior.
Now, this is an important thing for the sheep to understand, both for those who have not strayed away and for those who have. Those who are faithful must be contented with his absence, and those who are not should thank him and reward him for his labor for them.
Those who need no penance—that is, those who remain habitually in the state of grace—are apt to say: "Why is it that religion does not give me more happiness? Why is it that I have so little devotion and that God seems so far away?" Well, the reason is because he is away. He is off hunting for sinners. He is giving them his chief attention and his choicest graces because they need them. The just can get along with the sacraments, which are always open to them, and with the other ordinary means of salvation.