Sermon II.
Brethren: Know that it is now the hour
for us to rise from sleep.
—Romans xiii. 11.
To-day, my dear brethren, is the New Year's Day of the Catholic Church. Today she begins again that round of seasons and festivals which will never cease to be repeated till that day comes of which this season of Advent reminds us—that day in which, as St. Peter tells us, "the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it shall be burnt up"; that day when He who died for us on the cross shall come to judge the living and the dead.
The church begins her year with Advent, because this season represents principally, not that last coming of our Lord of which I have just spoken, but rather that time which went before his first coming—that long period of several thousand years, answering to the four weeks of this season, with which the world's history began, and in which it was waiting for the promise of redemption to be fulfilled. But there is another very good reason for each one of us to begin our own new year now, and it is one of the reasons why the second advent of Christ is presented to our minds by the church, as well as his first, at this time.
It is that we may now make that serious examination of our past life, and those firm resolutions for the future, that we can best make at the beginning of a new year, when we feel most strongly that one more of those short cycles by which our life is measured has gone for ever beyond our reach, and brought us so much nearer not only to the day of general judgment, but also to that more imminent one in which each one of us shall stand alone before the throne of God to give an account of the use which we have made of these precious years which he has given us, and which are passing so rapidly away.
This new year's day of the church is a time, then, above all others in which we should make those resolutions without which we cannot be saved.
It is said that hell is paved with good intentions; it may with equal truth be said that heaven is paved with good resolutions. What is the difference between the two? An intention is a purpose the carrying out of which is put off till some other time; a resolution is one which is carried out now. So, as the putting off of our good purposes is the sure way to lose our souls, the carrying them out at once is the means absolutely necessary to salvation and certain to secure it.
No one ever saved his soul without some time or other making a resolution to keep the law of God, and going to work at once to carry it out, and persevering in it to the end of life, Such a resolution has got to be made at some time, and now is the time to make it.