Who saved us from the awful peril? It was Jesus Christ, Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Babe of Bethlehem. In the morning it will be Christmas day. The church will bid you come to the crib. Will you still persist in rejecting the Saviour? You know who he is. You know he is God. You know he is full of love and full of power—full of love for your souls, full of power to rescue you from the danger in which you stood. Come to him then, and no matter how black or how many your sins may be, you will know that "he shall save his people from their sins." Brethren, I doubt not that many of you mourn the loss of some dear ones. Within the last few years some one has gone from the fireside, some sweet voice has been stilled for ever. Perhaps a father or a tender, beloved mother has gone home to rest with God—gone in the peace of Christ to their reward. 'Tis Christmas Eve in heaven to-day, and oh! don't you think they are waiting for you—praying for you that you may be there with them? Don't disappoint them. Don't let them wait in vain. Flee from sin, the danger that threatens to separate you from them for ever. Do not disappoint Jesus and Mary and Joseph. Do not spend this holy time in sin. Don't go back into the danger. Keep Christmas like a Christian. Then, brethren, in the morning, the bright morning of eternity, the Christmas morning of heaven, we shall see His glory. We shall be united to Jesus and our dear ones who have gone before. We shall hear them and the white-winged angels who circle around the throne, singing aloud: "Glory be to Jesus Christ the Babe of Bethlehem, for he hath saved his people from their sins!"
Rev. Algernon A. Brown.
Sermon XI.
Preaching the baptism of penance
for the remission of sins.
—St. Luke iii. 3.
St. John Baptist certainly seems, from what we read about him in the Gospels, to have been quite a stern and uncompromising preacher. He did not come with a coach and four to take people to heaven. He had but one message for every one, high and low, rich and poor; and that message was: "Repent of your sins; do penance for them, and bring forth fruits worthy of penance. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; get rid of your bad habits, and put good ones in their place. If you have wronged any one, make restitution for it; and, moreover, practise charity even to those whom you have not wronged. These things you must do; there is no other way possible in which you can flee from the wrath to come."
This was St. John's doctrine, everybody must acknowledge. But some people seem to think that our Lord, when he came, offered salvation to sinners on somewhat easier terms than these. This, however, is a great mistake. There never has been, is not, and never will be any way for a sinner to be saved except by doing penance. Our Saviour did, indeed, by his coming make salvation easier; but how was it that he did so? It was not by offering it on any other terms than these, but by making it easier for men to comply with these terms. He did not free us from the obligation of doing penance, but gave us more abundant grace that we might be better able to do penance. That is plain enough to every one who will stop and think.
And yet some Christians seem to imagine that it is enough to be a Catholic, to be quite sure of one's salvation. Practically, at least, they hold the heresy which the devil brought in at the time of the so-called Reformation, and which before that time hardly any one had dared to put in words—that a man may be justified by faith without good works. They say to themselves the very thing which St. John warned the Jews not to say: "We have Abraham for our father." They say to themselves: "We are Catholics; we are children of the holy church; all we have to do is to remain so (and, thank God! we have not the least idea of being anything else), and then to receive the rites of our church when we come to die, and we will be as sure of going to heaven as a child which has just been baptized."
But, my friends, this is a fatal delusion. Depend upon it, the devil is glad when he sees men or women with this notion in their heads, for he has got good hopes of having them with him in hell. He knows well what such people do not seem to know: that it is not enough to be a Catholic, but that one must also be a good Catholic, if he is to be saved. He knows as well as St. John that penance is necessary now, as it always has been; but he takes good care not to preach what he knows.
And what is penance? Is it a mere confession that we are sinners? No, by no means. If it were, every one would be a penitent who was not a fool, for every one who has common sense must acknowledge that he has sinned. Nor is it a mere acknowledgment that sin is a bad thing, and a wish that we had not committed it, and that God had given us more grace that we might not have done so. No, it is a real and hearty sorrow for it, with a conviction that we might have avoided it, and that the fault was not with God, who gave us plenty of grace to avoid it, but with ourselves, who did not make use of the grace which he gave. And following from this, as a matter of course, is a firm conviction that we can avoid it for the future, and a firm determination to do so. And following from this, also as a matter of course, is a real change in our lives, a real giving up of sin. That is the only certain mark of a true repentance and of a good confession—that a man stops committing mortal sin. The priest may indeed give absolution to one who continues to fall; but it is with the gravest fears that the sentence which he pronounces is not confirmed by Him who alone has power to forgive.