You who have dealt out disgrace, dirt, delirium tremens, ruin, and the wrath of God, by the measure, to your poor fellow sinner, and upon whose guilty head will fall a double weight of woe—I say unto you, arise! turn to the Lord, and perhaps he will have mercy upon you. Do penance, do penance! and think not to say within your hearts: We have Abraham for our father; we have the Church for our mother—she will watch over us Catholics, and before it is too late, snatch us from the jaws of hell. I say unto you, sinner, you are deceiving yourself with a lie, and your supine indifference proves you to be of that un-happy number described in Holy Writ, who resisted so long to the Divine call, that, hardened in iniquity, God gave them over to believe a lie. Thus, instead of your faith saving you, it will only be a surer cause of your damnation. Oh! you hope in the mercy of God. Poor soul! God, notwithstanding his mercy, permitted you to fall into your present deplorable state. Why shall he not permit you to fall into eternal death, which, howsoever terrible and hopeless, is not so bad, so evil after all, as your spiritual death: for so say the Doctors of Holy Church. "The punishment of sin is less than the guilt."
Between spiritual and eternal death there is but a step—taken every day by one or another in this sinful world—and that is the death of the body; and if it happens to you to-day, without doubt, without remedy or resource, you will find yourself eternally lost; which may God avert from every one of you. Amen.
Sermon VI.
The Love Of God.
"And one of them, a doctor of the law, asked him, tempting him: Master, which is the great commandment of the law? Jesus said to him: Thou shall love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind." —St. Matt, xxii., 35-37.
(From the Gospel for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost.)
This doctor of the law had no good motive in asking his question. He was full of malice, and desired, not to learn any thing good himself, but to entrap our Lord. But God knows how to draw good out of evil. Though the lawyers intention was bad, his question was a good one; the very best question that he could have asked, and the answer to it one of vast importance to us, involving all our interests for eternity. Let us to-day consider well the meaning of the answer given by our Blessed Saviour in the words of the text. In the first place, what does he mean by the love of God? and in the second, what degree of this love must we practise?
What is the love of God, or in what does it consist? Many have a false idea of it. They think it is exactly the same as earthly love, the love of relations or friends. They know what that kind of love is. They exercise it without difficulty. Why? because it is spontaneous; it is a flowing out of the heart, an emotion or feeling. They cannot feel the same love for God as for their friends, and therefore they conclude it is of no use to try to love God. They make a great mistake. God is a pure spirit, not to be seen, heard, or taken notice of by the senses, and therefore, in the very nature of things, He cannot always be loved with that same emotion or feeling that springs up in our hearts, without effort, toward our neighbors and friends of flesh and blood. Indeed God, considered as an infinite being, with all his vast and unlimited perfections, seems in some way separated from us and our thoughts, which makes a difficulty in feeling emotions of love to Him. The essence of the love of God is not in emotion or feeling, but in our reason and will. Faith reveals Him to us, and we acknowledge Him with our reason to be infinitely wise and infinitely good, and worthy of all our love. The true love of God consists, then, in acknowledging Him with our reason to be what He is, and in the will to do that which is pleasing to Him.
The other kind of love—of feeling—may accompany this true love of God or it may not. It is of no consequence whether it does or not. We have no right to expect it, for God will grant it just as far as He sees good for us and no farther. It will come, generally, as the result of habits of virtue, of a long course of action, in imitation of His holy perfections. We must learn to know Him and prize Him in order to feel love for Him.
That this is the true idea of the love of God is clear from the Holy Scriptures. In the Gospel of St. John it is thus described: "For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments." It is not said: The love of God is in a delightful feeling that possesses one without any effort on his part. That would be very pleasant and very easy. No; that is not said. But the meaning of what is said is, that the love of God is in the will and determination to keep his commandments. In another place it is said in plain terms: "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." As much as to say: If your mind and will are directed to me in such a way that you keep my commandments, don't be worried or afraid, you do most truly love me. Now this ought to console any one who really and truly wants to love God, for we see that it lies in his power to do so. He need not go into raptures of fervor. He need not fly in the air in an ecstasy. He need not see visions or work wonders. He need not practise extra ordinary fasting or austerity, or spend whole nights in prayer. He need only have a determination, let him feel well or ill, that he will honestly and sincerely act so as to be agreeable to God, and he loves Him. Let him go on acting in that way and he will soon love Him exceedingly, far more than any thing in this world. Another argument that proves conclusively that this is the true love of God, comes from this very command of our Lord Jesus Christ: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind." The love of God is commanded. Now God commands nothing impossible, nothing, in short, which is very difficult to set about. As he is a God of infinite goodness and love, the bare idea of such a thing is wholly repugnant to right reason and common sense. If He had commanded us to exercise a sensible love—one of feeling—we might justly complain and say: I cannot fulfil it; that is a thing beyond my control. We have to set about a practical love—keeping his commandments, that is a business we can give our mind and attention to, as we would to farming, building, doctoring, or any other business. If a man will set about the business of practically acting according to the will of God, he will add every day to his stock of love and to his merit in heaven. This is a rich mine; it is inexhaustible; out of this mine is drawn the pure gold of charity to God, richer and more abundant than all the mines of California or Australia.