Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

[Stone]

INSTRUCTION ON THE NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST.
From Fr. Leonard Goffine's Explanations of the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays, Holydays, and Festivals throughout the Ecclesiastical Year 36th edition, 1880

IMPLORE God for help and protection against all temptations both visible and invisible, and say with the priest at the Introit: Behold, God is my helper, and the Lord is the protector of my soul: turn back the evils upon my enemies, and cut them off in thy truth, O Lord, my protector. (Ps. liii.) Save me, O God, by thy name, and deliver me in thy strength.

PRAYER OE THE CHURCH. Let the ears of Thy mercy, O Lord, be open to the prayers of Thy suppliants: and that Thou mayest grant them their desires, make them to ask such things as please Thee. Thro'.

EPISTLE, (i Cor. x. 6—13.) Brethren, Let us not covet evil things, as they also coveted. Neither become ye idolaters, as some of them: as it is written: The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and there fell in one clay three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and perished by the serpents. Neither do you murmur, as some of them murmured, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them in figure, and they are written for our correction , upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. Let no temptation take hold on you, but such as is human: and God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will make also with temptation issue that you may be able to bear it.


Can we sin by thought and desire?

Yes, if we desire evil and forbidden things, or voluntarily think of them with pleasure, for God prohibits not only evil deeds, but evil thoughts and desires in regard to our neighbor's wife or goods. (Exod. xx. 17.) Christ says, (Matt. v. 28.) that he who looks upon a woman with evil desire, has already committed adultery. But wicked thoughts and imagination are sinful only when a person consents to, or entertains them deliberately. They become however an occasion of gaining merit, if we earnestly strive against them. For this reason God sometimes permits even the just to be tempted by them.


What is meant by tempting God?

Demanding presumptuously a mark or sign of divine omnipotence, goodness, or justice. This sin is committed when without cause we desire that articles of faith should be demonstrated and confirmed by a new miracle; when we throw ourselves needlessly into danger of body or soul expecting God to deliver us; when in dangerous illness the ordinary and natural remedies are rejected, and God's immediate assistance expected.


Is it a great sin to murmur against God?

That it is such may be learned from the punishment which God inflicted on the murmuring Israelites; for besides Kore, Dathan, and Abiron whom the earth devoured, many thousands of them were consumed by fire; and yet these had not murmured against God directly, but only against Moses and Aaron whom God had placed over them as their leaders. From this it is seen that God looks upon murmuring against spiritual and civil authority, instituted by Him, as murmuring against Himself. Hence Moses said to the Israelites: Your murmuring is not against us, but against the Lord. (Exod. xvi. 8.)


ASPIRATION. Purify my heart, I beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evil thoughts and desires. Let it never enter my mind to tempt Thee, or to be dissatisfied with Thy fatherly dispensations. Suffer me not to be tempted beyond my strength, but grant me so much fortitude, that I may overcome all temptations, and even derive benefit from them for my soul's salvation.


GOSPEL. (Luke xix. 41 — 47.) At that time, when Jesus drew near Jerusalem, seeing the city, he wept over it, saying: If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy) day, the things that are to thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee: and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation. And entering into the temple, he began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought, saying to them: It is written, My house is the house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves. And he was teaching daily in the temple.


Why did our Saviour weep over the city of Jerusalem?

Because of the ingratitude and obduracy of its inhabitants who would not receive Him as their Redeemer, and who through impenitence were hastening to destruction.


When was the time of visitation?

The period in which God sent them one prophet after another who urged them to penance, and whom they persecuted, stoned, and killed. (Matt, xxiii. 34.) It was especially the time of Christ's ministry, when He so often announced His salutary doctrine in the temple of Jerusalem, confirmed it by miracles, proving Himself to be the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, but was despised and rejected by this hardened and impenitent city.


Who are prefigured by this hardened and impenitent city?

The hard-hearted, unrepenting sinners who will not recognize the time of God's visitation, in which He urges them by the mouth of His preachers, confessors, and superiors, and by inward inspiration to reform their lives and seek the salvation of their soul, but who give no ear to these admonitions, and defer conversion to the end of their lives. Their end will be like to that of this impious city; then
the enemy, that is, the evil spirit, will surround their soul, tempt, terrify, and drag it into the abyss of ruin. Oh, how foolish it is to squander so lightly the time of grace, the days of salvation! Oh, how would the damned do penance, could they but return to earth! Oh, how industriously would they employ the time to save their soul! Use then, my dear Christian, the time of grace which God designs for you, and which, when it is run out or carelessly thrown away, will not be lengthened for a moment.


Will God conceal from the wicked that which serves for their salvation?

No; but while they are running after the pleasures of this life, as St. Gregory says, they see not the misfortunes treading in their footsteps, and as consideration of the future makes them uncomfortable in the midst of their worldly pleasures, they remove the terrible thought far from them, and thus run with eyes blindfolded in the midst of their pleasure into eternal flames. Not God, but they themselves hide the knowledge of all that is for their peace, and thus they perish.


ASPIRATION. I beseech Thee, O Lord, who didst weep over the city of Jerusalem, because it knew not the time of its visitation, to enligthen my heart, that I may know and profit by the season of grace.

✠ ✠ ✠

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITY AND TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM

Has our divine Saviour's prophecy concerning the city of Jerusalem been fulfilled?

YES, and in the most terrible manner. The Jews, oppressed by the Romans, their cruel masters, revolted, killed many of their enemies, and drove them out of Jerusalem. Knowing well that this would not be permitted to pass unavenged, the Jews armed themselves for a desperate resistance. The Emperor Nero sent a powerful army under the command of Vespasian against the city of Jerusalem, which first captured the smaller fortresses of Judea, and then laid siege to the city. The want and misery of the inhabitants had already reached the highest pitch; for within the city ambitious men had caused conflicts; factions had been formed, daily fighting each other, and reddening the streets with blood, while the angry Romans stormed outside.

Then a short time of respite was granted to the unfortunate Jews. The Emperor Nero was murdered at Rome in the year of our Lord 68; his successor Galba soon died, and the soldiers placed their beloved commander Vespasian upon the imperial throne. He then left Jerusalem with his army, but in the year 70, sent his son Titus with a new army to Judea, with order to capture the city at any price, and to punish its inhabitants.

It was the time of Easter, and a multitude of Jews had assembled from all provinces of the land, when Titus appeared with his army before the gates of Jerusalem, and surrounded the city. The supply of food was soon exhausted famine and pestilence came upon the city and raged terribly, The leader of the savage revolutionists, John of Gischala, caused the houses to be searched, and the remaining food to be torn from the starving, or to be forced from them by terrible tortures. To save themselves from this outrageous tyrant, the Jews took the leader of a band of robbers, named Simon, with his whole gang into the city. John and Simon with their followers now sought to annihilate each other. John took possession of the temple. Simon besieged him; blood was streaming in the temple and in the streets. Only when the battle-din of the Romans was heard from without, did the hostile factions unite, go to meet the enemy, and resist his attack. As the famine increased, many Jews secretly left the city to seek for herbs.

But Titus captured them with his cavalry, and crucified those who were armed. Nearly five hundred men, and sometimes more, were every day crucified in sight of the city, so that there could not be found enough of crosses and places of execution; but even this terrible sight did not move the Jews to submission. Incited by their leaders to frenzy, they obstinately resisted, and Titus finding it impossible to take the city by storm, concluded to surround it by walls in order to starve the inhabitants. In three days his soldiers built a wall of about ten miles in circumference, and thus the Saviour's prediction was fulfilled: Thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side. The famine in this unfortunate city now reached its most terrific height; the wretched inhabitants searched the very gutters for food, and ate the most disgusting things. A woman, ravenous from hunger, strangled her own child, roasted it, and ate half of it; the leaders smelling the horrible meal, forced a way into the house, and by terrible threats compelled the woman to show them what she had eaten; she reached them the remaining part of the roasted child, saying: "Eat it, it is my child; I presume you are not more dainty than a woman, or more tender than a mother." Stricken with horror they rushed from the house. Death now carried away thousands daily, the streets and the houses were full of corpses. From the fourteenth of April when the siege commenced, to the first of July, there were counted one hundred and fifty-eight thousand dead bodies; six hundred thousand others were thrown over the walls into the trenches to save the city from infection. All who could flee, fled; some reached the camp of the Romans in safety; Titus spared the helpless, but all who fell into his hands armed, were crucified. Flight offered no better security. The Roman soldiers had learned that many Jews had swallowed gold to secure it from the avarice of the robbers, and therefore the stomachs of many were cut open. Two thousand such corpses were found one morning i n the camp of the Romans. The attempts of Titus to prevent this cruelty were unavailing. Finally, when misery had reached its height, Titus succeeded in carrying the fort, Antonia, and with his army forced a passage as far as the temple which had been held by John of Gischala with his famous band.

Desirous of saving the temple, Titus offered the revolutionists free passage from it, but his proposition was rejected, and the most violent contest then raged; the Romans trying to enter the temple, and being continually repulsed, at last, one of the soldiers seized a firebrand, and threw it into one of the rooms attached to the temple. The flames in an instant caught the whole of the inner temple, and totally consumed it, so that this prediction of our Lord was also fulfilled. The Romans butchered all the inhabitants whom they met, and Titus having razed the ruins of the temple and city, ploughed it over, to indicate that this city was never to be rebuilt. During the siege one million one hundred thousand Jews lost their lives; ninety-seven thousand were sold as slaves, and the rest of the people dispersed over the whole earth. Thus God punished the impenitent city and nation, over whose wretchedness the Saviour wept so bitterly, and thus was fulfilled the prediction made by Him long before.


What do we learn from this?

That as this prediction so also all other threats and promises of the Saviour will be fulfilled. The destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, the dispersion of the Jews, are historical facts which cannot be denied, and testify through all centuries to the truth of our Lord's word: Heaven and earth shall pass but my words shall not pass. (Matt. xxiv. 35.)

USEFUL LESSONS CONCERNING DEATH-BED REPENTANCE

Can a sinner rely upon his being converted at the end of his life?

BY no means, for this would be a sin against the mercy of God which is much the same as the sin against the Holy Ghost. "God," says St. Augustine, "generally so punishes such negligent sinners, that in the end they forget themselves, as in health they forgot Him." He says: They have turned their back to me, and not their face: and in the time of their affliction they will say: Arise, and deliver us! Where are the gods whom thou hast made thee? Let them arise and deliver thee in the time of thy affliction. (Jer. ii. 27 — 28.) And although we have a consoling- example in the case of the penitent thief, yet this, as St. Augustine says, is only one, that the sinner may not despair: and it is only one, so that the sinner may have no excuse for his temerity in putting off his repentance unto the end.


What may we hope of those who are converted at the close of life?

Everything that is good if they be truly converted, but this is a very rare thing, as St. Augustine says: "It cannot be asserted with any security, that he who repents at the end has forgiveness;" and St. Jerome writes: "Scarcely one out of thousands whose life was impious, will truly repent at death and obtain forgiveness of sin;" and St. Vincent Ferrer says, "For a man who has lived an impious life to die a good death is a greater miracle than the raising of the dead to life." We need not be surprised at this, for repentance at the end of life is extorted by the fear of death and the coming judgment. St. Augustine says, that it is not he who abandons sin, but sin abandons him, for he would not cease to offend God, if life were granted him. What can we expect from such a conversion?



When should we repent?

While we are in health, in possession of our senses and strength, for according to the words of St. Augustine, the repentance of the sick is a sickly repentance. As experience proves, man while ill is so tormented and bewildered by the pains of sickness and the fear of death, by remorse of conscience, and the temptations of the devil as well as by anxiety for those whom he leaves, that he can scarcely collect his thoughts, much less fit himself for true repentance. Since it is so hard for many to do penance while they are in health, and have nothing to prevent them from elevating their mind to God, how much more difficult will it be for them, when the body is weakened and tortured by the pains of sickness. It has been made known by many persons when convalescent, that they retained not the slightest recollection of anything which occurred during their illness, and although they confessed and received the last Sacraments, they did not remember it. If then you have committed a grievous sin, do not delay to be reconciled as soon as possible by contrition and a sacramental confession. Do not put off repentance from day to day, for thereby conversion becomes more difficult, so much so that without extraordinary grace from God, you cannot repent. God does not give His grace to the presumptuous scoffer.

[Stone]

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger  (1841-1875)

The lamentation over Jerusalem’s woes is, in the Western Church, the subject of today’s Gospel; and it gave its name to this ninth Sunday after Pentecost, at least among the Latins. We have already observed that it is easy to find, even in the Liturgy as it now stands, traces of how the early Church was all attention to the approaching fulfillment of the prophecies against Jerusalem, that ungrateful City, upon which our Jesus heaped his earliest favors. The last limit put by mercy upon justice has, at length, been passed. Our Lord, speaking of the ruin of Sion and its Temple, had foretold that the generation that was listening to his words should not pass until what he announced should be be fulfilled. The almost forty years accorded to Juda, that he might avert the divine wrath, have had no other effect than to harden the people of deicides in their determination of not accepting Christ as the Messiah. As a torrent which, having been long pent back, rushes all along the fiercer when the embankment breaks, vengeance at length burst on the ancient Israel; it was in the year 70 that was executed the sentence himself had passed, when delivering up his King and God to the Gentiles, he cried out: His blood be upon us and upon our children!

Even as early as the year 67, Rome irritated by the senseless insolence of the Jews, had deputed Flavius Vespasian to avenge the insult. The fact of this new General being scarcely known was, in reality, the strongest reason for Nero’s approving of his nomination: but to the hitherto obscure family of this soldier, God reserved the empire, as a reward for the service done to divine justice by this Flavius and his son Titus. Later on, Titus will see and acknowledge it—that it is not Rome, but God himself, who conducts the war and commands the legions. Moses, ages before, had seen the nation, whose tongue Israel could not understand, rushing, like an eagle, upon his chosen people and punishing them for their sins. But no sooner has the Roman eagle reached the land where he is to work the vengeance, than he finds himself visibly checked by a superior power; and his spirit of rapine is held back, or urged on, just precisely as the prophets of the Lord of hosts had spoken it was to be. The piercing eye of that eagle, as eager to obey as it was to fight, almost seemed to be scrutinizing the Scriptures. It was actually there that he found the order of the day for the terrible years of the campaign.

As an illustration of this, we may mention what happened in the year 66. The army of Syria, under the leadership of Cestius Gallus, had encamped under the walls of Jerusalem. Our Lord intended this to be nothing more, in His plan, than a warning to his faithful ones, which he had promised them when foretelling the events that were to happen. He had said: When ye shall hear of wars, and seditions, and rumors of wars, be not terrified; these things must first come to pass; but the end is not yet presently. But, when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed about with an army, then know, that the desolation thereof is at hand. The Jews had been, for years, angering Rome by their revolts; but she bore with it all, if not patiently, contemptuously; but when, in one of these seditions, Roman blood had been spilled, then she was provoked, and sent her legions. Her army, however, had first of all to furnish Jesus’ disciples with a sign; he had promised them that this sign should consist in her compassing of Jerusalem, then withdrawing for a time; this would give the Christians an opportunity of quitting the accursed city. The Roman proconsul had his troops stationed so near to Jerusalem that it seemed as though he had but to give the word of command, and the war would be over; instead of that, he gave the strange order to retreat, and throw up the victory which he might have for the wishing it. Cestius Gallus seemed to men to have lost his senses; but no, he was following, without being aware of it, the commands of heaven: Jesus had promised an escape to his loved ones; he fulfilled his promise by this unwitting instrument.

Vespasian himself had scarcely started for Judea, when he met with one of those divine adjournments which all the Roman tactics were several times powerless to resist; the hour marked for them to act had not come, so they must wait, however reluctantly. The pre-ordained counsel of the Most High decreed that before all these things which men were to bring about—before the already broken scepter of the ancient alliance should have entirely disappeared in the flames enkindled by the Jews themselves—the establishment of the New Testament was to be solidly set up among the Gentiles, and be solemnly confirmed by the blood of the Apostles, its witnesses. It was on the 29th of June, in the year 67, that Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom in the City of Rome; that Rome was thus made the Mother-Church, and the reign of the Messiah, whom Israel rejected, was promulgated to the whole world, and with an evidence which only the voluntarily blind could resist. Though Vespasian had opened the campaign against Judea in the spring of that year 67, yet he had to wait for the glorious confession of these two Princes of the Apostles; that triumph secured, the impatient legions might rush to victory as soon as they pleased. For forty-seven long days, they had been kept, by some power, staring at the citadel of Jotapata, which it was so easy for them to take, and which would make them masters of Galilee; the 29th of June had had its apostolic triumph in Rome. Vespasian was then at liberty to do what he so long wished to do, and on that 29th of June, he did it—he took Jotapata.

Forty-thousand dead, strewed on the steeps of the hills, and heaped up as high as the walls, showed the Romans what desperate resistance they were to expect from Jewish fanaticism. Of all the male defenders or inhabitants of Jotapata, only two survived; one of these was Josephus, a chief leader in the Jewish forces, and historian of these cruel wars. The women and children were spared. But some short time later on, another fortress, Gamala, was attacked; it overhung a chasm. When one half of the besieged had been slain, and it was evident that further resistance was impossible, the survivors, assembling together the women and children, threw them and themselves down the rock, and five-thousand was their number. When the legions stood looking around, at the close of that day’s work, they could see but a desert and death.

In every part of the unhappy Galilee, blood was flowing in torrents, and the flames of burning villages lighted up the horizon. It was hard to recognize this as the land where Jesus had spent the years of his childhood; or as the scene of his first miracles, and of those teachings of His, which were ever borrowing some exquisite parable or other from the sight of the pretty hills and fertile vales of that then favored country. The arm of God was now pressing with all its weight on this land of Zabulon and Nephtali, on which, first, so brightly shone the light of salvation, as we sang on Christmas Night. So again this time, it was the first to be visited by God. But these were unhappy times; and the visit was no longer that of the divine Orient opening out to the world the paths of peace. He was hid behind the tempest, and darted the fiery arrows of destruction on the ungrateful country that had refused to welcome him in the weakness of human flesh, which nothing but his mercy had led him to assume. They cried out, on the day of my vengeance, (says this rejected King of Israel), but there was none to save them; they cried to me their Lord, but I heard them not: and I will break them as small as dust, and scatter them before the wind; I will bring them to nought, like the dirt in the streets.

Terrible lesson, all this! The Church learned it, and never forgot it:—the lesson that no blessing, no past holiness, is, of itself, a guarantee that the place thus favored will not afterwards draw down on itself desecration and destruction! She saw, and trembled as she saw, these events of the first age of her history. She beheld violence and every sort of crime profaning the paths that had been trodden by the feet of her adorable Master, and the hills where he had passed whole nights in prayer and praise to his Eternal Father. She one day witnessed even the pure waters of the Lake of Genesareth fearfully polluted; those waters that had so oft reflected the features of her divine Spouse, as when he walked on their glassy surface, or sat in Peter’s barque superintending those mystery-meaning fishings of his Apostles. The event we here allude to was that of six thousand Jewish insurgents—hemmed in between God’s wrath and their Roman pursuers—reddening with their blood this Sea of Tiberias, where once Jesus had spoken to the storm and quelled it: their livid carcasses were thrown back by the waves on the shore where our Lord had uttered woe to the cities that had witnessed his miracles, and yet were not converted.

And souls, too, on whom God heaps his choicest favors, inviting them thereby to a closer union with himself—they too have a lesson to learn from all this. Woe to them if, through indifference or sloth, they neglect to correspond with their graces! Woe to them, if they imitate the cities on the Lake of Galilee, by greedily accepting the honor done them, but never producing the fruits of holiness which should follow such signal and frequent gifts of heaven. The Prophet Amos couples these forgetful careless souls with the cities which our Lord had treated with such partiality, and which yet remained apathetic and worldly; and he tells us what this slighted Benefactor will say to both: You only have I known of all the families of the earth! therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities! Shall two walk together, except they be agreed?

As to Israel, the highly favored above all people, but who would not agree with the Jesus that so loved him—he was visited with chastisements exactly corresponding to his crimes. In the spring of the year 68, an officer under Vespasian scoured the left banks of the Jordan, driving the terrified Israelites before him. They fled in thousands towards Jericho, where they hoped to find refuge; but the river had so flooded the country round the city that entrance was impossible; the wretched fugitives were overtaken and slain by the Roman troops which came up. The Ark of the Covenant had once opened there a miraculous passage to the Tribes of Israel; but even had it been there now, how was it to protect such unworthy descendants of the Patriarchs?—descendants, that is, who broke the Covenant made by God with the sons of Jacob? A frightful massacre, a merciless mowing down of human beings, followed; and at what a place! the very place where, forty years before, St. John the Baptist had seen the axe laid to the root of the tree, and foretold the wrath to come upon this brood of vipers, who called themselves children of Abraham, and would not do penance. A countless multitude drowned themselves in the Jordan; that is, they found death in the very stream to which our Savior had imparted sanctification by his own being baptized in it, and which was endued by Him with the power to give life to the world. But Israel had chosen the kingdom of the prince of this world, in preference to that of the divine giver of life. The number of those who perished in that holy stream was so great that the heap of their dead bodies made it impossible vessels to sail in the river; and this fearful obstacle continued until such time as the current had swept the corpses down to the Dead Sea, and scattered far into that dismal lake of malediction that hideous jetsam of the Synagogue. Had not our lord said that Sodom’s guilt was less than theirs?

Rome and her legions were masters, in the north, of Galilee and Samaria; in the East and West, of the banks of the Jordan and of the Mediterranean coast; and the conquest of Idumæa completed the circle of iron and fire that was to shut Jerusalem in. Roman garrisons held Emmaus, Jericho, and all the fortified positions round the Jewish capital. Having, as God’s instrument, chastised so many other ungrateful cities, Vespasian was preparing to lay siege to the most guilty of all, when Nero’s fall, and the events which followed it, drew the attention, both of himself and the whole world, from Judea.

The last years of the tyrant had witnessed frequent “earthquakes in divers places,” and “plagues,” and “signs in the heavens;” but when he died, there came risings of nation against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. The entire West was in arms; and the East herself was attracted towards Rome by the immense political commotion of the year 69. From the heights of Atlas to the Euxine Sea, and from the Humber to the Nile, provinces and people were each striving for the mastery. Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian—each proclaimed Emperor by their respective armies—sent their rival legions from Britain and the Rhine, from Illyria and the Danube; they met at Bedriac for mutual slaughter. In one thing alone they that survived were unanimous: friends or foes, all must lay Italy waste. Rome was taken by the Romans; while on the undefended frontiers, appeared Suavians, Sarmatians, and Dacians. The Capitol and Jupiter’s temple in flames excited the Gauls to declare their independence, and Velleda to stir up Germany to revolt. The old world was gradually disappearing beneath the universal anarchy and war.

Circumstances, then, suddenly seemed favorable to Jerusalem; they gave her a fresh invitation to atone for her crimes. But as we shall see when commenting this Sunday’s Gospel, she made no other use of them than to multiply her sins, and treat herself with greater cruelty than the Romans would have done.

In the Mass of this Sunday, which is their Ninth of Saint Matthew, the Greeks read the episode of Jesus’ walking upon the waters.

Mass

Israel had made himself the enemy to the Church; and God, as he had warned him, punishes and disperses his children. The Church takes occasion, from the fulfillment of the divine judgments, to profess the humble confidence she has in her Spouse’s aid.

Introit
Ecce Deus adjuvat me, et Dominus susceptor est animæ meæ: averte mala inimicis meis, et in veritate tua disperde illos, protector meus, Domine.
Behold! God is my helper and the Lord is the support of my soul: turn out the evils upon mine enemies, and cut them off in thy truth, O Lord, my protector.

Ps. Deus in nomine tuo salvum me fac: et in virtute tua libera me. Gloria Patri. Ecce.
Ps. O God, in thy name save me: and, in thy strength, deliver me. Glory, &c. Behold.


The Jews cry to heaven, and the ears of God are deaf to their supplications, because they asked for what was displeasing to him. In her Collect, the Church prays that it may never be thus with her children.

Collect
Pateant aures misericordiæ tuæ, Domine, precibus supplicantium: et ut petentibus desiderata concedas, fac eos, quæ tibi sunt placita, postulare. Per Dominum.
May the ears of thy mercy, O Lord, be opened to the prayers of thy suppliants: and, that thou mayest grant to thy petitioners the things they desire, make them to ask those that are agreeable to thee. Through, etc.

The other Collects, as in the Fourth Sunday After Pentecost.


Epistle
Lesson of the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians. 1 Ch. x.

Brethren: Let us not covet evil things as they also coveted. Neither become ye idolaters, as some of them, as it is written: The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and there fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ: as some of them tempted, and perished by the serpents. Neither do you murmur: as some of them murmured, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them in figure: and they are written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. Let no temptation take hold on you, but such as is human. And God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able: but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be able to bear it.

I have great sadness, cries out the Apostle of the Gentiles, as he thought of the malediction was about to fall on the Jews: Continual sorrow have I in my heart; for I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh; who are Israelites, to whom belongeth the adoption of children,—and the glory,—and the covenant,—and the giving of the Law,—and the service (the worship of God, prescribed by himself)—and the promises; whose are the Fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever! But now, they are gone astray by their own fault; they see nothing; they understand nothing. The royal banquet of the Scriptures, on which their Fathers feasted, is now turned by them into an occasion of error; they have made those Scriptures a snare for their own destruction; darkness covers their understanding, and chastisement for all future ages is their own making.

Gentiles! you that have been substituted for those broken branches, and are grafted on the stem of the Covenant! learn a lesson from their fall. God, who has shown you so much and so great gratuity of mercy, and that at the very time he was inflicting upon them the chastisements they so richly merited—no, this good God will not allow his loving designs upon you to be frustrated against your own will. If you are faithful to the call of his grace, he will be faithful to you, and preserve you from temptations which you could not resist; or he will so watch the combat that his divine help will make your soul rise superior to the trial; and thus in every temptation you will find not defeat, but the merit of a victory, all the more glorious, as it seemed so much above the power of human strength to bear. And yet, never forget that the same causes which brought about the destruction of the Jews would also lead you to ruin. They fell because of their unbelief; you, who once had no faith, and yet God showed mercy to you—it is by faith that you now are what you are. Be not, therefore, high-minded with self-complacency; but remember how that God, who broke off the natural branches from the glorious tree will not spare you, if you cease to be faithful; and while you do well to admire his mercy, you do not wisely if you forget his inexorable justice.

Well, therefore, does our Mother the Church instruct us in today’s Epistle as to the lamentable antecedents of the Jewish deicides; she tells us of that list of sins and chastisements which gradually led on to the final crime and total ruin of the apostate nation. We who live in what the Church calls the “evening of the world” have this great advantage—that we can profit by what the past ages have experienced. The Holy Spirit had no other end in view when he would have the history of the ancient people written. He would have the future ages there learn lessons of salvation: by the various episodes of that history, which form so many groups of prophetic events, he would show us the economy of God’s providence, in his government of the world and his Church. Founded, as she has been, by her Divine Spouse, in immutable truth, and maintained by the Holy Ghost in unfailing and ever increasing holiness, the Church has nothing to fear of that which happened to the Synagogue—we mean, of that total wreck which the Liturgy brings forward for our consideration today: no, the ruin of the Jews is a prophetic image of the destruction of the world (which will have rejected the Church)—not of the Church herself, who will then ascend to her Lord, perfected, as she will then be, in love and holiness, by the trials endured in those latter days. But the assurance of salvation, granted to the Bride of the Son of God, does not extend to her children, taken either individually or collectively, that is, men and nations. On each one of us, it is incumbent that we meditate on the sad fate which befell Jerusalem; as also on what happened, ages before, to those ancestors of the Jewish people—that scarce one of those who were living when Moses led them out of Egypt, lived to enter into the Promised Land.

And yet, as the Apostle argues, they were all journeying in the path of life, protected by the mysterious cloud, beneath which Divine Wisdom shaded them by day, and served them as a pillar of fire by night. Led on by Moses—who was a type of the future divine Head of the Christian people—they had all passed through the sea. All of them thus baptized in that symbolic cloud and in those saving waters which had engulfed their foes, just as the water of the Christian font destroys the sins of them that are washed in it—all of them were fed by the same spiritual food, and all drank at the same holy source which issued from the rock, which was Christ. Yet were there very few, out of all those thousands, with whom God was pleased. But how much more grievous would the sins of Christians be, who are blessed with the resplendent and solid realities of the Law of Grace, than were the evil desires and idolatry and fornication and murmurings of the Israelites, who had but the figures and foreshadowings of our privileges?

The fervent expression of praise, given to our good God in the words which now follow, is a solace to our hearts, which are grieved at the sight of the ingratitude of the Jewish people and the chastisements that ingratitude drew down upon them. How sad soever may be the day, the Church never neglects her tribute of praise to the divine Majesty; for no event can happen here below, that can make the Bride forget the infinite perfections of her Spouse, or keep her from extolling his magnificence. We have all this in the Gradual. The Alleluia-Verse is plaintive and suppliant; it well suits today’s recollections.

Gradual
Domine, Deus noster, quam admirabile est nomen tuum in universa terra!
O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is thy name over the whole earth!

℣. Quoniam elevata est magnificenta tua super cœlos.
℣. For thy majesty is above the heavens.

Alleluia, alleluia.
Alleluia, alleluia.

℣. Eripe me de inimicis meis, Deus meus: et ab insurgentibus in me libera me. Alleluia.
℣. Rescue me, O my God, from mine enemies: and, from them that rise up against me, deliver me. Alleluia.


Gospel
Sequel of the holy Gospel according to Luke. Ch. xix.

At that time: When he drew near Jerusalem, seeing the city, he wept over it, saying: If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side, And beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee: and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone: because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation. And entering into the temple, he began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought. Saying to them: It is written: My house is the house of prayer. But you have made it a den of thieves. And he was teaching daily in the temple.

The passage just read to us from the holy Gospel takes us back to the day of our Lord’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem. This triumph, which God the Father willed should be offered to his Son before the commencement of his Passion, was not, as we well know, anything of a recognition of the Messiah made by the Synagogue. Neither the meek gentle manners of this King, who came to the daughter of Sion seated on an ass; nor his merciful severity upon the profaners of the Temple; nor his farewell teachings in his Father’s House—could open the eyes of men who were determined to keep them shut against the light of salvation and peace. Not even the tears of the Son of Man, then, could stay God’s vengeance; there is a time for justice, and the Jews were resolved it should come to them.

How loudly had not the Prophets spoken to them, in God’s name! Woe to the provoking and redeemed City! She hath not hearkened to the voice of her God. Her princes are in the midst of her as roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves; her prophets are senseless,—men without faith; her priests have defiled the sanctuary; they have acted unjustly against the law (they have violated it). Crush the City as in a mortar! Go through the City, and strike! let not your eye spare, nor be ye moved to pity! Utterly destroy old and young, maidens, children, and women—yea, destroy all that are not marked upon their foreheads with thau! And begin ye at my sanctuary; slay the priests, and the ancients; defile the House (my Temple), and fill its courts with the bodies of the slain!

Alas! precedence in chastisement was richly due to those princes of the people who had had precedence in crime; it was due to those priests and ancients who had decreed the death of the Just One, and driven the multitude to cry out: Crucify Him! Jealous of the miracles of the Man-God, they said in their perfidious hypocrisy: If we let him alone (doing all these miracles), all men will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away our City and nation. God has turned their impious diplomacy against them. But as far as they themselves are concerned, they will have their way—not one of them will see the Romans; for before the arrival of the legions, John of Gischala, and Simon the son of Gioras will have annihilated this deicidal aristocracy, hated both of heaven and earth. When, after the war is over, Titus shall enter into Rome, these two brigand-chiefs and prime-movers of the war, shall adorn his triumph; they shall be the substitutes of the nobles of Juda before the conqueror’s chariot. Two bandits, representatives of Jerusalem, in the streets of Rome, her rival! what a divine retaliation for the two thieves, which the Synagogue gave as an escort to its King on the Dolorous Way, and made them his crucified fellows on Calvary!—But let us resume the sequel of events, and give them as briefly as the subject permits.

After the rupture with Rome, and the retreat of Cestius Gallus, the government of Jerusalem had been entrusted to the high priest Ananus, brother-in-law to Caiphas, and last of the five sons of the high priest Annas, who succeeded each other in the office of high priest. By a visible dispensation of God’s justice, the family, the guiltiest of all in the crime of the Crucifixion, found itself at the head of the nation when the fatal hour came: it was impossible with this to mistake the meaning of God’s vengeance upon his people. Independently of the enormous crime, whose responsibility rested on his race, Ananus had a personal sin to atone for—the death of St. James the Less, who had been martyred, by his orders, in the year 62. Rationalist or Saducee like his kin, he deplored the war, and would have been glad to have seen peace restored; but he could not shirk the obligation his office obliged him to, of organizing the defense. Ruler most unworthy, yet ruler he was; and therefore, as the Prophet Isaias expresses it, this whole ruin was under his hand—it was all under his management—necessarily, it would, when it came, fall on him and crush him.

It was not long before the fanatics, who had instigated the rebellion, and got the name of “Zealots,” became dissatisfied with the way in which Ananus was managing affairs: so they revolted against him, and put to death the most illustrious men of the City. Re-enforced by all the enthusiasts of other towns, and by the highway robbers who were daily flocking to Jerusalem, they made themselves masters of the Temple. Out of hatred for the ancient priestly families, they changed the order of offering sacrifice. They put the office of high priest on a peasant, who happened to be a descendant of Aaron’s family, but was so unfit for the dignity that he did not even know what was meant by a priest.

About this same time, the wreck of the Galilean bands, headed by John of Gischala, occasioned the first defeats, and excited the people to exasperation; they made common cause with the rebels, and increased their fury against all whom they suspected of an inclination to treat with Rome. The Zealots were hard pressed by the troops of Ananus, and had already been forced back into the inner Temple; on the advice of John of Gischala, they called the wild Idumean herdsmen to come to their aid. These fierce auxiliaries came on Jerusalem in the thick of a storm that was raging during the night; they found the watchmen asleep, and put them to death. The very earth, says Josephus, had shook at their approach; and on the evening before their arrival, had been heard to moan. Up to the morning, admidst violent wind and rain and lightning, howling themselves as if to add to the din of the tempest, amidst the shouts of the wounded, and the screams of women—they pitilessly murdered everyone they met. When at length daylight appeared, it revealed the horrors of the previous night; eight thousand five hundred dead bodies were lying on the ground, and the blood was running in streams all round the Temple. The corpse of Ananus, after being insulted, stripped, trodden on, was given as food to the dogs. The following days, twelve thousand men, in the vigor of health and picked out of the most distinguished families, were also put to death by the Idumeans, either by torture or by other means. As soon as they had left, the Zealots became masters of the City, and were guilty of cruelties even greater than those exercised by the Idumeans. All those whose independent character or influence or noble birth excited suspicions, were at once massacred, nor were their friends or relatives allowed to bury or mourn over them. The lower classes, the poor and the unknown, were the only ones to escape with their lives.

The justice of God overtook the princes of Juda. Their blood, mingled with the dust—their unburied bodies lying as dung upon the streets—would all this remind Sion of those prophecies which had foretold these days of tribulation and anguish, these days of bitterness for the mighty and the strong? The Christians of Jerusalem, who were then sheltering beyond the Jordan, would remember, if no one else did, the inspired words which their Bishop, St. James, had written eight years before, to the twelve tribes who were dispersed throughout the world: Go to! now, ye rich men! weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you! Your riches are putrified; your treasure is a store of wrath. Ye have feasted; but your feasts have but nourished you for the day of slaughter. Ye have condemned, and put to death the just one, and he resisteth you not … But the coming of the Lord draweth near. It was truly the Lord who was avenging his own cause; and Vespasian was well aware of it, when he thus answered those who urged him to take advantage of all these troubles, and attack the city: “God is a better general than I: let us leave him to deliver up the Jews to the Romans without any trouble on our side, and give us victory without our incurring any risk.”

Jerusalem was then but in the beginning of her woes and her civil strifes. The ambitious character of John of Gischala did not allow him to be long at peace with the Zealots. He separated himself from them; and to the Galileans, who supported his cause, he gave permission to do whatsoever they pleased. To pillage and murder were added the frightful excesses of that half idolatrous race which, in the days of the Assyrian Kings, had been substituted for the tribes of Israel; it had borrowed from Judaism little better than a mass of superstition, which it mingled with the customs and vices of its predecessors. Then was the daughter of Sion compelled to witness and endure the abominations, wherewith the Prophets of the Most High had threatened her. Humbled and indignant, the unhappy City would fain have shaken off the yoke.

In those days, a celebrated brigand was laying Idumea waste; towns and villages were destroyed, houses were pulled down or burnt; and according to the prophecy of Abdias, he was ransacking Edom through and through, right to the very core. His name was Simon, son of Gioras, what with slaves, criminals, outlaws, and malcontents of every party, he had got together upwards of twenty thousand well-armed men, not counting another forty thousand who followed him. This was the strange Messiah, on whom Jerusalem cast her eyes for help in her trouble! A deputation, headed by a high priest, waited on this son of Gioras, begging him to accept the sovereignty. He deigned to consent to their wishes! Proud and haughty, says Josephus, he graciously allowed Sion to offer him her suppliant homage. He was led into the city of David, amidst the enthusiastic acclamations of the people, who hailed as their protector and savior Simon the murderer, Simon the brigand! O Jesus, Son of David and Son of God, how art thou not avenged by all this! They wished it to be; they themselves had passed the sentence: Not Him, but Barabbas! The choice of the children was in keeping with the preference entertained by their fathers. Bar Gioras—worthy descendant of Barabbas—once he was master of the City, treated alike both them that had invited him and them that he had been invited to reduce to order—that is, he treated them all as enemies. Day and night was the massacre kept up by his savage horde, until every man of worth or credit in Jerusalem was made away with.

Meanwhile, the Galileans, driven back from Sion and the lower town by the newcomers, had retreated to the Temple, of which they occupied the first enclosure. The Zealots had grown more than ever discontented with John of Gischala, and made the inner Temple their fortified place of refuge. They were less numerous than the other two parties, but their position was far preferable, for it was on the very summit of the holy mount. Then, too, they had provisions in abundance, seeing that all the first fruits and offerings made to the Temple were under their absolute control. They passed their time in feasting and drunken revellings. Little cared they for the stones hurled by the Galilean catapults; nor were they in the least troubled at finding that these huge missiles struck the priests when at the altar, thus mingling the blood of the sacrificers with that of the victims, and stewing the sacred courts with the bodies of dead or dying. Sacrilege and drunkenness—such was the end of those descendants of the austere Pharisees! Here again, Jesus—their crucified victim—was avenged.

While the abomination of desolation, foretold by Daniel, was standing in the Holy Place, John of Gischala saw that the Zealots were too stupefied by their feastings to cause him any further alarm; he fell on the City like a bird of prey, there to find the necessary provisions; and out of hatred for Simon, he destroyed by fire all he could not carry away. Simon, instead of quenching the fire, extended it in extended it in every part where John was likely to pass; hoping, by this means, to deprive the Galileans of all further victualling. Immense stores of corn and other provisions had been amassed by the Jewish leaders, as a necessary resource in case of a future siege: but all were now destroyed by these two men, who were greater enemies to their country than the Romans themselves. Thus was spent the year 69; a year of respite which Rome—torn as she was by factions of her own—was compelled to allow, and which might have been of such incalculable benefit to the Jews.

With the exception of armed troops, there were no other inhabitants in Jerusalem but women and old men. The Passover of 70 was drawing near, and it produced a sort of truce among the several parties. The city began to be again crowded, and with a population far exceeding the ordinary number. The Romans had pillaged the Jewish provinces; Sion had been even more cruelly treated, and by her own children: and yet, in this year 70, there assembled, within this city of final vengeance, as though it were the whole nation, and that from every quarter of the globe. It had been the same at the time of our Jesus’ crucifixion—the whole Jewish people seemed as though it insisted on witnessing the consummation of the deicide; when over, the Apostles besought them to confess their having been accomplices in the crime of Calvary, but the preaching was fruitless; then there had been the terrific lesson of recent events—and that too was unable to open their eyes. As it was in the days of that Pasch, so salutary to mankind but so fatal to Juda; and, as it was at the subsequent Pentecost, so now, there were Jews congregated out of every nation under heaven, not indeed to hear an Apostle preaching to them to do penance, but to undergo that which Moses had foretold, and St. Peter had recalled to their memory—the extermination of all such as should refuse to hearken to the Messiah of the Lord.

As the Man-God had said, the terrible day came suddenly, and as a snare, upon this immense assemblage of people. The empire was in the hands of Vespasian; the prosperous fortune of Rome was reestablished on the whole of the frontiers; and Titus had just reached Cæsarea with orders to put an end to the eastern question. He sent word to the legions, then in Judea, to effect, from the respective points they occupied, a joint concentration towards the capital. When the tenth legion marched from Jericho and was seen encamped on Mount Olivet—that is, on the very place where Jesus wept as he looked on Jerusalem, and foretold the siege which was to be its ruin—the unexpected arrival of the Romans alarmed the pilgrims, and made them busy themselves with preparations for a battle, rather than for the solemnization of the Pasch. The several parties agreed to forget, at least for a day, their own animosities, and unite all their forces together; they made two desperate sallies, for the purpose of dislodging the enemy from the Mount; but each time they were repelled.

The Pasch which is about to be celebrated is, as ever, and now more than ever, the passover of the Lord; but the Lord is no longer leading the sons of Jacob to their deliverance by it. Juda has made himself the enemy of the Lamb, whose blood should be the sign of the redeemed of the Pasch. While the blood of this divine Lamb is enriching the whole earth—while the light of the vanquisher of death is illumining the whole world—Juda is there, obstinately keeping to his figures and shadows. More stiff-necked than the Egyptian, and more guilty than Pharaoh, he would, if he could, hold the true Israel in the trammels of his own slavish law, just as he once vainly tried to make the true Son of God an everlasting prisoner in the Tomb. As to Jesus, he has, years ago, set himself free; and now, more terrible than he was in Mesraïm, he is passing over, as the avenger both of himself and his Church. The Pasch,—the feast of feasts, whose memory is every Sunday brought back to us—is now about to receive its final completion. On the Tuesday of our Easter, we were saying: “How terrible will be the Passage of the Lord over Jerusalem, when the sword of the Roman Legions shall destroy a whole people!”

Woe to thee, O Ariel! Ariel, the city which David took—the City where God had his Temple and Altar—Thy years are passed; thy solemnities are at an end! Take away from me the tumult of thy songs! Psalms, in thy mouth have lost all their meaning. I will not hear the canticles of thy harp. The song of lamentation is heard in Israel, for house is fallen. In every street there shall be wailing; and in all places, they shall say: Woe! Woe!

This prophetic cry of Woe,—this most gloomy foreboding that all the threats uttered in Scripture against Jerusalem are on the point of being fulfilled—was forced upon the inhabitants’ ears. Ever since the feast of Tabernacles of the year 62, an unknown peasant—the husbandman, as the prophet Amos called him, a man skillful in lamentation—has been ceaselessly pacing the streets of the wretched City, crying out day and night: “A voice from the East, a voice from the West, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the Holy House, a voice against bridegrooms and the brides, a voice against all this people!” Tried, questioned, scourged even till his flesh was torn to pieces and his bones laid bare—nothing could prevent him from continuing his most unwelcome work. On the festival days above all, this precursor of the vengeance of the Son of Man, redoubled the energy of his plaintive enthusiasm, which gave a superhuman emphasis to his cry of Woe. To every word of kindness or reproach, to every act of charity or cruelty, he gave neither thanks nor plaints, but went on with the same ditty and words: “Woe! Woe! to Jerusalem!” And thus he continued for seven years and five months, without his voice being altered by weakness or hoarseness. During the early days of the siege he was seen by the Romans running to and fro along the walls, shouting: “Woe to the City! Woe to the people! Woe to the Holy House!” At length he added: “Woe! woe to me!” Immediately a stone thrown from one of the engines smote him, and he died on the spot.

Jerusalem has drunk the cup of madness, and nothing seems to impress her; she is drunk with the cup of God’s wrath; yea, she has drained it to the dregs. What a terrific day, this last celebration of the Jewish Pasch! The historian Josephus tells us what it is—sacrilegious, bloody, and noisy with the shouts, which even the enemy could hear, of the strife of the dissentient factions, for all are revived. Taking advantage of the gates being opened to the pilgrims, some Galileans, disguised, get into the inner Temple where, throwing aside their cloaks and displaying their weapons, they attack the crowd that stands around the altar. They beat and murder; then, trampling on the dying and the dead, they drive the people outside the courts. Meanwhile, the Zealots who were taken unawares, rushed, in dismay, into the subterranean caverns of the Temple. What a Pasch! What a Feast! worthy, indeed, of God’s hatred and rejection. Unhappy feasters, that have come from the ends of the world to this solemnity! how is it that they forget to apply the words of the prophet? Woe to them that desire the day of the Lord! To what end is it for you? This day of the Lord is darkness and not light. You shall be as a man who, fleeing from the face of a lion, and a bear should meet him; or, as one that entering into the houses and, when he leaneth with his hand upon the wall, a serpent should bite him. Terrible prophecy! how strangely is it not verified: the Romans are yonder in their camps; Simon is in the City; John of Gischala is in the Temple, its sole master!

As in the days of Jeremias, so now: the sword and famine—it is hard to say which is the busier to make this multitude its prey; for, owing to the previous depredations, famine had made itself felt from the beginning of the siege. Each day adds to its intensity, and urges on the savage instincts of the armed ruffians to attack all who are not of their party. It is not hatred only that now fills Sion with murder; to rob, or to get something to keep one from starvation, these are additional motives to make such men grudge each other’s existence. Under plea that they were conspirators, Simon and John had the rich summoned to their respective tribunals; and then, adding insult to injustice, these two wretches who, in the intervals between fighting against the Romans, are carrying on their own deadly feud—these two judges, having first seized the property of their victims, send them to the second bar, under pretense that they wished to show each other a mutual kindly feeling; giving the one who has nothing to steal, the option of condemning to death. It is scarcely forty years ago that in these very streets—through which the Jewish aristocracy is being ignominiously dragged from Simon to John, and from John to Simon—there was another Victim who, amidst the approving ridicule of the leaders of the nation, was made the pledge of a mock reconciliation, and with a fool’s uniform put on Him, was sent back from Herod to Pilate, there to await judgment!

While these tyrants were thus living on the public distress, there were hundreds of starved creatures, whom hunger drove to go forth by night into the fields, and there try to find some wild herbs. If they fell into the hands of the Romans, these, unwilling to be burdened with such prisoners, had them crucified within sight of the walls. Five hundred and upwards were thus captured each day; and oh! what a fearful detail, but how loud in its significance!—all this was done, with Calvary opposite! and, as Josephus tells us, there was not room enough to plant the crosses, nor wood enough for making them.

Titus had flattered himself that the taking of Jerusalem would be an affair of a few days. He, of course, disregarded the prophecies which declared that the deicide City was to be compassed round with a trench; and preferred to use negotiations and a series of assaults, rather than be detained by the tedious operation of a blockade. But he was, of course, mistaken; his messengers received, in answer to their parleys of peace, nothing but insults and arrows; and as to assaults, all the bravery of his legions was powerless against the fortresses where the factions were protected. Two months thus passed away in useless attempts; all that the Romans had possession of was the lower town, which the Jewish contesting parties had already reduced to ruins; but Sion and Moriah—these still held up their heads in defiance against the determined invaders. There was nothing, then, to do but make up their minds to defer Rome and her pleasures to some later season, and encircle Jerusalem with that terrible trench, which the Gospel had said must be cast about her. The literal following out of the plan traced by God got the better of Titus’ impatience. He set his legions to the work; they must change their manual labor, and instead of bows and arrows, they must handle pickaxe and spade. To have seen them at work, one would have said they were thinking of Jesus’ words, for they were fulfilling them as though they were the most devoted of his servants; Josephus would have it that they were animated by a divine influence. In the brief space of three days, they completed an earth-wall measuring a little over five miles around—a work which would ordinarily have occupied several months. God had thus spoken by the prophet Isaias: I will make a trench about Ariel; and it shall be in sorrow and mourning; and it shall be to me as ariel. I will make a circle round about thee (O Jerusalem), and will cast up a rampart against thee, and raise up bulwarks to besiege thee. Truly, Jerusalem was thus made as an Ariel to Jehovah, that is, one immense altar of countless victims.

The famine, by this time, was intensely increased, for every exit into the fields was now closed against the unfortunate creatures who, until then, had been able to eke out their miserable existence by picking up, at the risk of their lives, a few seeds or roots. A bushel of wheat was sold for a talent (about a year’s wages). Those who could afford it, gave their costliest treasures for a morsel of bread; but as to those who had nothing to give, they must drag the sewers, in the hope of finding food. The vilest rubbish was devoured with avidity. Filth too foul to have a name was hidden as though it were a treasure, for which husband quarrelled with his wife, and mothers grudged it their children. The factions had, thus far, laughed at the people’s starvation; but they soon began themselves to feel the gnawings of famine; and then they furiously attacked those who were reported as having something to eat. If a man were sinking, he was said to be feigning the weakness of death in order to prevent search being made for his victuals; if he had just strength enough to walk a few steps, it was taken as an indication that he had some hidden eatables about him. All were savagely tortured to make them own the imputed crime of having something yet to live on. Like famished dogs—it is the expression used both by the historian and the Psalmist—they ran wildly through the city, knocking down the doors of the suspected, ferreting in every nook and hole, and returning two or three times within the hour. A savory smell was, one day, perceived coming from a house, which had been thus frequently visited; this was more than enough for a further search. In they rushed; a woman was there; they threaten her with death unless she at once declares where is her feast: “It is my son,” she replied; “there are the remnants!” This woman was Mary, daughter of Eleazar; once rich and of a noble family, she, maddened by hunger, had murdered her infant child, and had fed on his flesh.

All these horrors failed to subdue the ferocious obstinacy of John of Gischala and Simon son of Gioras. In spite, however, of their precautions and their cruelties towards those who were suspected of meditating an escape, there were, every day, scores who, by throwing themselves down the walls, were able to reach the Roman camp. Deeply moved at the sight of so much misery, Titus received them kindly, and gave them their liberty. But, adds Josephus, “God had condemned the whole of this people, and turned the very means of safety into occasion of destruction.” Many of these poor fugitives were so exhausted, on reaching the camp, that they died on taking the food which had been too long denied them. A still greater number fell victims to the Arabs and Syrians, who followed the Roman army; for, a report having been circulated, that some of the Jews had swallowed their gold before leaving Jerusalem, in order the more effectually to hide it, these wild auxiliaries, strangers to the discipline of the legions, and born enemies of the Jewish people, ensnared the unfortunate fugitives, and cut them into pieces, hoping to find what would satisfy their monstrous avarice. During one single night, there were two thousand found lying thus embowelled. How all this forces us to think of the death of Judas, and of the punishment of his deicidal betrayal! And, had not all this people imitated that traitorous apostle? He, the Iscariot, had delivered up the Son of Man to the chief priests and leaders of the Jews; the Jews delivered Him up to the Gentiles; and the Prophet Zecharias makes them all share in the responsibility of that famous barter, wherewith began the sacred Passion of our sweet Jesus.

In the City, the ravages of the famine were beyond all imagination. Josephus speaking of them, uses, without being aware of it, the very expression of our Redeemer: “In no time, did any other city ever suffer such miseries.” In the space of a few months there were counted six hundred thousand dead; and to these, burial of one sort or another was given; as to the rest, they could not be numbered, for the survivors had not the strength needed for burying them, and they were left to rot in the houses or streets.

Meanwhile, on the 12th of July, a greater trial than all this befell Jerusalem and the whole Jewish people: for want of victims, and continual sacrifice was taken away, as in the days of Antiochus; but this time, it was forever. It was the end—the openly declared end of Mosaism and its worship, to be henceforth replaced, and without dispute, by the Sacrifice of the law of love—the end, with but the brief interval of a siege and a war, which had then no other object to achieve and, therefore, no further reason for its continuance. An immense grief—a grief that admitted no compensation—seized the hearts of the Jewish people who, up to the very last, had lived on the empty hope fostered by the false prophets.

The foolhardy obstinacy of Simon and John rejected, even then, the proposals of Titus, that he would spare both City and Temple. Hostilities were, therefore, resumed—implacably and pitilessly resumed. But the Jewish soldiers had not energy enough to keep pace with the fanaticism of their leaders; worn out by famine, they had not the unflinching resistance needed for repelling the sustained assaults of the Romans. Already, the Tower of Antonia, which commanded the Temple, was in the power of the enemy, and each day, he was seen closing in nearer to the sacred edifice. Its defenders resolved on one last effort; roused by the greatness of their misfortune, they rushed through the vale of Cedron, and made a desperate charge on the post of Mount Olivet. It looked as though, for these final engagements, the instinct of God’s vengeance, which weighed upon them, was leading them to this place of prophecy, where the Son of Man had wept over Jerusalem, and where, as we have already said, the first battle was fought. Repelled and in despair, they returned back to the City, which they were never again to leave; then, with their own hands, setting fire to the outer porticos of the Temple, they gave the first enclosure over to the Romans.

Titus, however, was desirous above all things to save the Temple; “but,” as Josephus observes, “God had, for certain, long ago doomed it to the fire … although the flames took their rise from the Jews themselves, and were occasioned by them, when that fatal day was come.” It was the 4th of August, in the year 70, a Sabbath day, and the anniversary of the first destruction of the holy place under Nabuchodonosor. The guards of the Temple, exasperated by sufferings, stupefied by hunger, attacked the soldiers who, by Titus’ orders, were quenching the fire that had been some days burning at the outer portion of the building. They were soon beaten back into the Temple, and this time they were not the only ones to enter. While they were falling by hundreds beneath the sword of the Romans, now unexpectedly made masters of the inner enclosure—one of the soldiers, forgetting the orders given by Titus, but, as Josephus puts it, urged on by a divine power, seizes a firebrand, and hurls it through a window, into one of the rooms adjoining the sanctuary. The flame bursts forth and spreads; the efforts of Titus to stay it are useless. Simon’s soldiers on Mount Sion see it rising up towards the sky. At this fearful spectacle, the famished and wounded, turning towards the falling Temple, forget all their sufferings. From these thousands of dying Jews, all of them possessed with the one same grief, there arises a loud scream of despair, which blending with the shouts of the pagan soldiers, is heard even on the mountains of Perea, beyond the Jordan and the Dead Sea. Mount Moriah, on fire, seems as though its very foundations were burning, and blood is flowing enough to quench the flames. The number of the slain is so great that the ground could not be seen, and the soldiers, as they marched, had to trample on the dead. The Priests who have mounted on the roof of their Temple—women and children crouching by thousands in its galleries—all perish in the flames with the treasures of the sanctuary.

John of Gischala, gathering together his few remaining followers, had escaped between the enemy’s battalions, and had joined Simon in the high portion of the city. The contest continued for a few weeks longer, but it was the effort of a last agony. On the first of September, Sion was taken, plundered and burnt like Moriah and the lower town. The prediction of today’s Gospel was fulfilled. Jerusalem—beaten flat to the ground, and the children that were in her—is but a mass of smoking ruins. Eleven hundred thousand men had perished during the siege. Of the ninety-seven thousand that had been taken prisoners during the whole war, seven hundred were picked out as fit to grace the conqueror’s triumph; the remainder (that is those who were over seventeen years of age) were sent to the mines, or reserved for the amphitheater; the others supplied the slave-markets of the empire for some length of time.

In the Offertory of today’s Mass, the Church delights in the thought that her children, aided by the grace of her divine Spouse, are all care to keep the commandments (the justices) of their Lord. It is this obedience of theirs which renders those judgments a joy and a sweetness to them, whereas for the synagogue, they were so fearful. The Secret is a prayer that God would grant us children of the Church the grace of assisting worthily at the holy Sacrifice, which really renews, each time it is offered, the work of our salvation.

Offertory
Justitiæ Domini rectæ, lætificantes corda, et judicia ejus dulciora super mel et favum: nam at servus tuus custodit ea.
The justices of the lord are right, rejoicing hearts; and his precepts are sweeter than honey and the honey-comb; and therefore doth thy servant observe them.


The Secret is a prayer, that God would grant us children of the Church the grace of assisting worthily at the holy Sacrifice, which really renews, each time it is offered, the work of our salvation.

Secret
Concede nobis quæsumus Domine, hæ digne frequentare mysteria: quia, quoties hujus hostiæ commemoratio celebratur, opus nostræ redemptionis exercetur. Per Dominum.
Grant us, O Lord, we beseech thee, frequently and worthily to celebrate these mysteries: for, as many times as this commemorative sacrifice is celebrated, so often is the work of our salvation performed. Through, etc.

The other Secrets, as in the Fourth Sunday After Pentecost.


The Communion Anthem expresses the mystery of divine Union, which is realized in the Sacrament just received.

Communion
Qui manducat meam carnem, et bibit meum sanguinem, in me manet, et ego in eo, dicit Dominus.
He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him, saith the Lord.


The sanctification of each individual member of the Church, and the unity of the social body, are the two fruits of these sacred Mysteries: the Church, in her Postcommunion, asks them of God.

Postcommunion
Tui nobis, quæsumus Domine, communio sacramenti et purificationem conferat, et tribuat unitatem. Per Dominum.
May the participation of this thy sacrament, O Lord, we beseech thee, both purify us, and unite us. Through, etc.

The other Postcommunion, as in the Fourth Sunday After Pentecost.

[Stone]

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST – ON THE DEATH OF THE SINNER ~ St Alphonsus
SERMON XXXVIII.

“Thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee.” LUKE xix. 43.

SEEING from a distance the city of Jerusalem, in which the Jews were soon to put him to death, Jesus Christ wept over it. “Videns civitatern flevit super illam.” Our merciful Redeemer wept at the consideration of the chastisement which was soon to be inflicted on the city, and which he foretold to her inhabitants. “Thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee.” Unhappy city! thou shalt one day see thyself encompassed by enemies, who shall beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children in thee, and shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone. Most beloved brethren, this unhappy city is a figure of the soul of a sinner, who, at the hour of death, shall find himself surrounded by his enemies first, by remorse of conscience; secondly, by the assaults of the devils; and thirdly, by the fears of eternal death.

First Point. The sinner at death shall be tortured by remorses of conscience.

1. “Their soul shall die in a storm.” (Job xxxvi. 14.) The unhappy sinners who remain in sin die in a tempest, with which God has beforehand threatened them. “A tempest shall break out and come upon the head of the wicked.” (Jer. xxiii. 19.) At the commencement of his illness the sinner is not troubled by remorse or fear; because his relatives, friends, physicians, and all tell him that his sickness is not dangerous; thus he is deceived and hopes to recover. But when his illness increases, and malignant symptoms, the harbingers of approaching death, begin to appear, then the storm with which the Lord has threatened the wicked shall commence. “When sudden calamity shall fall on you, and destruction as a tempest shall be at hand.” (Prov. i. 27.) This tempest shall be formed as well by the pains of sickness as by the fear of being obliged to depart from this earth, and to leave all things; but still more by the remorses of conscience, which shall place before his eyes all the irregularities of his past life. “They shall come with fear at the thought of their sins, and their iniquities shall stand against them to convict them.” (Wis. iv. 20.) Then shall his sins rush upon his mind, and fill him with terror. His iniquities shall stand against him to convict him, and, without the aid of other testimony, shall assail him, and prove that he deserves hell.

2. The dying sinner will confess his sins; but, according to St. Augustine, “The repentance which is sought from a sick man is infirm.” (Serm, xxxvii., de Temp.) And St. Jerome says, that of a hundred thousand sinners who continue till death in the state of sin, scarcely one shall be saved. “Vix de centum milibus, quorum mala vita fuit, meretur in morte a Deo indulgentiam, unus.” (Epis. de Mort. Eus.) St. Vincent Ferrer writes, that it is a greater miracle to save such sinners, than to raise the dead to life. “Majus miraculum est, quod male viventes faciant bonum finem, quam suscitare mortuos.” (Serm. i., de Nativ. Virgin.) They shall feel convinced of the evil they have done; they will wish, but shall not be able, to detest it. Antiochus understood the malice of his sins when he said: “Now I remember the evils that I have done in Jerusalem.” (1 Mach. vi. 12.) He remembered his sins, but did not detest them. He died in despair and oppressed with great sadness, saying: “Behold, I perish with great grief in a strange land” (v. 13). According to St. Fulgentius, the same happened to Saul at the hour of death: he remembered his sins; he dreaded the punishment which they deserved; but he did not detest them. “Non odit quid fecerat, sed timuit quod nolebat.”

3. Oh! how difficult is it for a sinner, who has slept many years in sin, to repent sincerely at the hour of death, when his mind is darkened, and his heart hardened!” His heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smiths anvil.” (Job xli. 15.) During life, instead of yielding to the graces and calls of God, he became more obdurate, as the anvil is hardened by repeated strokes of the hammer. “A hard heart shall fare evil at the last.” (Eccl. iii. 27.) By loving sin till death, he has loved the danger of his damnation, and therefore God will justly permit him to perish in the danger in which he wished to live till death.

4. St. Augustine says, that he who is abandoned by sin before he abandons it, will scarcely detest it as he ought at the hour of death; for he will then detest it, not through a hatred of sin, but through necessity. “Qui prius a peccato relinquitur, quam ipse relinquat, non libere, sed quasi ex necessitate condemnat.” But how shall he be able to hate from his heart the sins which he has loved till death? He must love the enemy whom till then he has hated, and he must hate the person whom he has till that moment loved. Oh! what mountains must he pass! He shall probably meet with a fate similar to that of a certain person, who kept in confinement a great number of wild beasts in order to let them loose on the enemies who might assail him. But the wild beasts, as soon as he unchained them, instead of attacking his enemies, devoured himself. When the sinner will wish to drive away his iniquities, they shall cause his destruction, either by complacency in objects till then loved, or by despair of pardon at the sight of their numbers and enormity. “Evils shall catch the unjust man unto destruction.” (Ps. cxxxix. 12.) St. Bernard says, that at death the sinner shall see himself chained and bound by his sins. “We are your works; we will not desert you.” We will not leave you; we will accompany you to judgment, and will be your companions for all eternity in hell.


Second Point. The dying sinner shall be tortured by the assaults of the devils.

5. “The devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time.” (Apoc. xii. 12.) At death the devil exerts all his powers to secure the soul that is about to leave this world; for he knows, from the symptoms of the disease, that he has but little time to gain her for eternity. The Council of Trent teaches that Jesus Christ has left us the sacrament of Extreme Unction as a most powerful defence against the temptations of the devil at the hour of death. “Extremæ Unctionis sacramento finem vitæ tanquam firmissimo quodam præsidio munivit.” And the holy council adds, that there is no time in which the enemy combats against us with so much violence in order to effect our damnation, and to make us despair of the divine mercy, as at the end of life. “Nullum tempus est, quo vehementius ille omnes suæ versutiæ nervos intendat at perendos, nos penitus, et a fiducia, etiam, si possit, divinæ misericordiæ deturbandos, quam cum impendere nobis exitum vitæ perspicet.” (Sess. 14, cap. ix. Doctr. de Sacr. Extr. Unct.)

6. Oh! how terrible are the assaults and snares of the devil against the souls of dyiug persons, even though they have led a holy life! After his recovery from a most severe illness, the holy king Eleazar said, that the temptations by which the devil assails men at death, can be conceived only by him who has felt them. We read in the life of St. Andrew Avelliuo, that in his agony he had so fierce a combat with hell, that all the religious present were seized with trembling. They perceived that, in consequence of the agitation, his face swelled, and became black, all his members trembled, and a flood of tears gushed from his eyes. All began to weep through compassion, and were rilled with terror at the sight of a saint dying in such a manner. But they were afterwards consoled, when they saw that as soon as an image of most holy Mary was held before him, he became perfectly calm, and breathed forth his blessed soul with great joy.

7. Now, if this happens to the saints, what shall become of poor sinners, who have lived in sin till death? At that awful moment the devil does not come alone to tempt them in a thousand ways, in order to bring them to eternal perdition, but he calls companions to his assistance. “Their house shall be filled with serpents.” (Isa. xiii. 21.) When a Christian is about to leave this world, his house is filled with devils, who unite together in order to effect his ruin. “All her persecutors have taken her in the midst of straits.” (Lamen. i. 3.) All his enemies will encompass him in the straits of death. One shall say: Be not afraid; you shall not die of this sickness! Another will say: You have been for so many years deaf to the calls of God, and can you now expect that he will save you? Another will ask: How can you repair the frauds of your past life, and the injuries you have done to your neighbour in his property and character? Another shall ask: What hope can there be for you? Do you not see that all your confessions have been null that they have been made without true sorrow, and without a firm purpose of amendment? How can you repair them with this heart, which you feel so hard? Do you not see that you are lost? And in the midst of these straits and attacks of despair, the dying sinner, full of agitation and confusion, must pass into eternity. “The people shall be troubled and they shall pass.” (Job xxxiv 20.)


Third Point. The dying sinner shall be tortured by the fears of eternal death.

8. Miserable the sick man who takes to his bed in the state of mortal sin! He that lives in sin till death shall die in sin. “You shall die in your sin.” (John viii. 21.) It is true that, in whatsoever hour the sinner is converted, God promises to pardon him; but to no sinner has God promised the grace of conversion at the hour of death. “Seek the Lord while he may be found.” (Isa. iv. 6.) Then, there is for some sinners a time when they shall seek God and shall not find him. “You shall seek me, and shall not find me.” (John vii. 34.) The unhappy beings will go to confession at the hour of death; they will promise and weep, and ask mercy of God, but without knowing what they do. A man who sees himself under the feet of a foe pointing a dagger to his throat, will shed tears, ask pardon, and promise to serve his enemy as a slave during the remainder of his life. But, will the enemy believe him? No; he will feel convinced that his words are not sincere that his object is to escape from his hands, and that, should he be pardoned, he will become more hostile than ever. In like manner, how can God pardon the dying sinner, when he sees that all his acts of sorrow, and all his promises, proceed not from the heart, but from a dread of death and of approaching damnation.

9. In the recommendation of the departing soul, the assisting priest prays to the Lord, saying: “Recognize, O Lord, thy creature.” But God answers: I know that he is my creature; but, instead of regarding me as his Creator, he has treated me as an enemy. The priest continues his prayer, and says: “Remember not his past iniquities. “ I would, replies the Lord, pardon all the past sins of his youth; but he has continued to despise me till this moment the very hour of his death. “They have turned their back upon me, and not their face: and, in the time of affliction, they will say: Arise, and deliver us. Where are the gods which thou hast made thee? let them rise and deliver thee.” (Jer. ii. 27, 28.) You, says the Lord, have turned your back upon me till death; “and do you now want me to deliver you from vengeance? Invoke your own gods the creatures, the riches, the friends you loved more than you loved me. Call them now to come to your assistance, and to save you from hell, which is open to receive you. It now justly belongs to me to take vengeance on the insults you have offered me. You have despised my threats against obstinate sinners, and have paid no regard to them. “Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide.” (Deut. xxxii. 35.) The time of my vengeance is now arrived; it is but just to execute it.

This is precisely what happened to a certain person in Madrid, who led a wicked life, but, at the sight of the unhappy death of a companion, went to confession, and resolved to enter a strict religious order. But, in consequence of having neglected to put his resolution into immediate execution, he relapsed into his former irregularities. Being reduced to great want, he wandered about the world, and fell sick at Lima. From the hospital in which he took refuge he sent for a confessor, and promised again to change his life, and to enter religion. But, having recovered from his illness, he returned to his wickedness; and, behold! the vengeance of God fell upon him. One day, his confessor, who was a missionary, in passing over a mountain, heard a noise, which appeared to be the howling of a wild beast. He drew near the place from which the noise proceeded, and saw a dying man, half rotten, and howling through despair. He addressed to him some words of consolation. The sick man, opening his eyes, recognized the missionary, and said: Have you, too, come to he a witness of the justice of God? I am the man who made my confession in the hospital of Lima. I then promised to change my life, but have not done so; and now I die in despair. And thus the miserable man, amid these acts of despair, breathed forth his unhappy soul. These facts are related by Father Charles Bovio (part iii., example 9).

10. Let us conclude the discourse. Tell me, brethren, were a person in sin seized with apoplexy, and instantly deprived of his senses, what sentiments of pity would you feel at seeing him die in this state; without the sacraments, and without signs of repentance! Is not he a fool, who, when he has time to be reconciled with God, continues in sin, or returns to his sins, and thus exposes himself to the danger of dying suddenly, and of dying in sin? “At what hour you think not,” says Jesus Christ, “the Son of Man will come,” (Luke xiii. 40.) An unprovided death, which has happened to so many, may also happen to each of us. And it is necessary to understand, that all who lead a bad life, meet with an unprovided death, though their last illness may allow them some time to prepare for eternity; for the days of that mortal illness are days of darkness days of confusion, in which it is difficult, and even morally impossible, to adjust a conscience burdened with many sins. Tell me, brethren, if you were now at the point of death, given over by physicians, and in the last agony, how ardently would you desire another month, or another week, to settle the accounts you must render to God! And God gives you this time. He calls you, and warns you of the danger of damnation to which you are exposed. Give yourself, then, instantly to God. What do you wait for? Will you wait till he sends you to hell?” Walk whilst you have light.” (John xii. 35.) Avail yourselves of this time and this light, which God gives you at this moment, and now, while it is in your power, repent of all your past sins; for, a time shall come when you will be no longer able to avert the punishment which they deserve.

[Stone]

Fr. Hewko's Sermons for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost


2013





2014





2015





2016 - Two Masses







2018 - Two Masses







2019





2020





2021

[Stone]

SERMON XXXVIII. NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST. – ON THE DEATH OF THE SINNER
by St. Alphonsus Liguori



“Thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee.” LUKE xix. 43.

SEEING from a distance the city of Jerusalem, in which the Jews were soon to put him to death, Jesus Christ wept over it. “Videns civitatern flevit super illam.” Our merciful Redeemer wept at the consideration of the chastisement which was soon to be inflicted on the city, and which he foretold to her inhabitants. “Thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee.” Unhappy city! thou shalt one day see thyself encompassed by enemies, who shall beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children in thee, and shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone. Most beloved brethren, this unhappy city is a figure of the soul of a sinner, who, at the hour of death, shall find himself surrounded by his enemies first, by remorse of conscience; secondly, by the assaults of the devils; and thirdly, by the fears of eternal death.


First Point. The sinner at death shall be tortured by remorses of conscience.

1. “Their soul shall die in a storm.” (Job xxxvi. 14.) The unhappy sinners who remain in sin die in a tempest, with which God has beforehand threatened them. “A tempest shall break out and come upon the head of the wicked.” (Jer. xxiii. 19.) At the commencement of his illness the sinner is not troubled by remorse or fear; because his relatives, friends, physicians, and all tell him that his sickness is not dangerous; thus he is deceived and hopes to recover. But when his illness increases, and malignant symptoms, the harbingers of approaching death, begin to appear, then the storm with which the Lord has threatened the wicked shall commence. “When sudden calamity shall fall on you, and destruction as a tempest shall be at hand.” (Prov. i. 27.) This tempest shall be formed as well by the pains of sickness as by the fear of being obliged to depart from this earth, and to leave all things; but still more by the remorses of conscience, which shall place before his eyes all the irregularities of his past life. “They shall come with fear at the thought of their sins, and their iniquities shall stand against them to convict them.” (Wis. iv. 20.) Then shall his sins rush upon his mind, and fill him with terror. His iniquities shall stand against him to convict him, and, without the aid of other testimony, shall assail him, and prove that he deserves hell.

2. The dying sinner will confess his sins; but, according to St. Augustine, “The repentance which is sought from a sick man is infirm.” (Serm, xxxvii., de Temp.) And St. Jerome says, that of a hundred thousand sinners who continue till death in the state of sin, scarcely one shall be saved. “Vix de centum milibus, quorum mala vita fuit, meretur in morte a Deo indulgentiam, unus.” (Epis. de Mort. Eus.) St. Vincent Ferrer writes, that it is a greater miracle to save such sinners, than to raise the dead to life. “Majus miraculum est, quod male viventes faciant bonum finem, quam suscitare mortuos.” (Serm. i., de Nativ. Virgin.) They shall feel convinced of the evil they have done; they will wish, but shall not be able, to detest it. Antiochus understood the malice of his sins when he said: “Now I remember the evils that I have done in Jerusalem.” (1 Mach. vi. 12.) He remembered his sins, but did not detest them. He died in despair and oppressed with great sadness, saying: “Behold, I perish with great grief in a strange land” (v. 13). According to St. Fulgentius, the same happened to Saul at the hour of death: he remembered his sins; he dreaded the punishment which they deserved; but he did not detest them. “Non odit quid fecerat, sed timuit quod nolebat.”

3. Oh! how difficult is it for a sinner, who has slept many years in sin, to repent sincerely at the hour of death, when his mind is darkened, and his heart hardened!”His heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smiths anvil.” (Job xli. 15.) During life, instead of yielding to the graces and calls of God, he became more obdurate, as the anvil is hardened by repeated strokes of the hammer. “A hard heart shall fare evil at the last.” (Eccl. iii. 27.) By loving sin till death, he has loved the danger of his damnation, and therefore God will justly permit him to perish in the danger in which he wished to live till death.

4. St. Augustine says, that he who is abandoned by sin before he abandons it, will scarcely detest it as he ought at the hour of death; for he will then detest it, not through a hatred of sin, but through necessity. “Qui prius a peccato relinquitur, quam ipse relinquat, non libere, sed quasi ex necessitate condemnat.” But how shall he be able to hate from his heart the sins which he has loved till death? He must love the enemy whom till then he has hated, and he must hate the person whom he has till that moment loved. Oh! what mountains must he pass! He shall probably meet with a fate similar to that of a certain person, who kept in confinement a great number of wild beasts in order to let them loose on the enemies who might assail him. But the wild beasts, as soon as he unchained them, instead of attacking his enemies, devoured himself. When the sinner will wish to drive away his iniquities, they shall cause his destruction, either by complacency in objects till then loved, or by despair of pardon at the sight of their numbers and enormity. “Evils shall catch the unjust man unto destruction.” (Ps. cxxxix. 12.) St. Bernard says, that at death the sinner shall see himself chained and bound by his sins. “We are your works; we will not desert you.” We will not leave you; we will accompany you to judgment, and will be your companions for all eternity in hell.


Second Point. The dying sinner shall be tortured by the assaults of the devils.

5. “The devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time.” (Apoc. xii. 12.) At death the devil exerts all his powers to secure the soul that is about to leave this world; for he knows, from the symptoms of the disease, that he has but little time to gain her for eternity. The Council of Trent teaches that Jesus Christ has left us the sacrament of Extreme Unction as a most powerful defence against the temptations of the devil at the hour of death. “Extremæ Unctionis sacramento finem vitæ tanquam firmissimo quodam præsidio munivit.” And the holy council adds, that there is no time in which the enemy combats against us with so much violence in order to effect our damnation, and to make us despair of the divine mercy, as at the end of life. “N ullum tempus est, quo vehementius ille omnes suæ versutiæ nervos intendat at perendos, nos penitus, et a fiducia, etiam, si possit, divinæ misericordiæ deturbandos, quam cum impendere nobis exitum vitæ perspicet.” (Sess. 14, cap. ix. Doctr. de Sacr. Extr. Unct.)

6. Oh! how terrible are the assaults and snares of the devil against the souls of dyiug persons, even though they have led a holy life! After his recovery from a most severe illness, the holy king Eleazar said, that the temptations by which the devil assails men at death, can be conceived only by him who has felt them. We read in the life of St. Andrew Avelliuo, that in his agony he had so fierce a combat with hell, that all the religious present were seized with trembling. They perceived that, in consequence of the agitation, his face swelled, and became black, all his members trembled, and a flood of tears gushed from his eyes. All began to weep through compassion, and were rilled with terror at the sight of a saint dying in such a manner. But they were afterwards consoled, when they saw that as soon as an image of most holy Mary was held before him, he became perfectly calm, and breathed forth his blessed soul with great joy.

7. Now, if this happens to the saints, what shall become of poor sinners, who have lived in sin till death? At that awful moment the devil does not come alone to tempt them in a thousand ways, in order to bring them to eternal perdition, but he calls companions to his assistance. “Their house shall be filled with serpents.” (Isa. xiii. 21.) When a Christian is about to leave this world, his house is filled with devils, who unite together in order to effect his ruin. “All  her persecutors have taken her in the midst of straits.” (Lamen. i. 3.) All his enemies will encompass him in the straits of death. One shall say: Be not afraid; you shall not die of this sickness! Another will say: You have been for so many years deaf to the calls of God, and can you now expect that he will save you? Another will ask: How can you repair the frauds of  your past life, and the injuries you have done to your neighbour in his property and character? Another shall ask: What hope can there be for you? Do you not see that all your confessions have been null that they have been made without true sorrow, and without a firm purpose of amendment? How can you repair them with this heart, which you feel so hard? Do you not see that you are lost? And in the midst of these straits and attacks of despair, the dying sinner, full of agitation and confusion, must pass into eternity. “The people shall be troubled and they shall pass.” (Job xxxiv 20.)


Third Point. The dying sinner shall be tortured by the fears of eternal death.

8. Miserable the sick man who takes to his bed in the state of mortal sin! He that lives in sin till death shall die in sin. “You shall die in your sin.” (John viii. 21.) It is true that, in whatsoever hour the sinner is converted, God promises to pardon him; but to no sinner has God promised the grace of conversion at the hour of death. “Seek the Lord while he may be found.” (Isa. iv. 6.) Then, there is for some sinners a time when they shall seek God and shall not find him. “You shall seek me, and shall not find me.” (John vii. 34.) The unhappy beings will go to confession at the hour of death; they will promise and weep, and ask mercy of God, but without knowing what they do. A man who sees himself under the feet of a foe pointing a dagger to his throat, will shed tears, ask pardon, and promise to serve his enemy as a slave during the remainder of his life. But, will the enemy believe him? No; he will feel convinced that his words are not sincere that his object is to escape from his hands, and that, should he be pardoned, he will become more hostile than ever. In like manner, how can God pardon the dying sinner, when he sees that all his acts of sorrow, and all his promises, proceed not from the heart, but from a dread of death and of approaching damnation.

9. In the recommendation of the departing soul, the assisting priest prays to the Lord, saying: “Recognize, O Lord, thy creature.” But God answers: I know that he is my creature; but, instead of regarding me as his Creator, he has treated me as an enemy. The priest continues his prayer, and says: “Remember not his past iniquities. “ I would, replies the Lord, pardon all the past sins of his youth; but he has continued to despise me till this moment the very hour of his death. “They have turned their back upon me, and not their face: and, in the time of affliction, they will say: Arise, and deliver us. Where are the gods which thou hast made thee? let them rise and deliver thee.” (Jer. ii. 27, 28.) You, says the Lord, have turned your back upon me till death; “and do you now want me to deliver you from vengeance? Invoke your own gods the creatures, the riches, the friends you loved more than you loved me. Call them now to come to your assistance, and to save you from hell, which is open to receive you. It now justly belongs to me to take vengeance on the insults you have offered me. You have despised my threats against obstinate sinners, and have paid no regard to them. “Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide.” (Deut. xxxii. 35.) The time of my vengeance is now arrived; it is but just to execute it.

This is precisely what happened to a certain person in Madrid, who led a wicked life, but, at the sight of the unhappy death of a companion, went to confession, and resolved to enter a strict religious order. But, in consequence of having neglected to put his resolution into immediate execution, he relapsed into his former irregularities. Being reduced to great want, he wandered about the world, and fell sick at Lima. From the hospital in which he took refuge he sent for a confessor, and promised again to change his life, and to enter religion. But, having recovered from his illness, he returned to his wickedness; and, behold! the vengeance of God fell upon him. One day, his confessor, who was a missionary, in passing over a mountain, heard a noise, which appeared to be the howling of a wild beast. He drew near the place from which the noise proceeded, and saw a dying man, half rotten, and howling through despair. He addressed to him some words of consolation. The sick man, opening his eyes, recognized the missionary, and said: Have you, too, come to he a witness of the justice of God? I am the man who made my confession in the hospital of Lima. I then promised to change my life, but have not done so; and now I die in despair. And thus the miserable man, amid these acts of despair, breathed forth his unhappy soul. These facts are related by Father Charles Bovio (part iii., example 9).

10. Let us conclude the discourse. Tell me, brethren, were a person in sin seized with apoplexy, and instantly deprived of his senses, what sentiments of pity would you feel at seeing him die in this state; without the sacraments, and without signs of repentance! Is not he a fool, who, when he has time to be reconciled with God, continues in sin, or returns to his sins, and thus exposes himself to the danger of dying suddenly, and of dying in sin? “At what hour you think not,” says Jesus Christ, “the Son of Man will come,” (Luke xiii. 40.) An unprovided death, which has happened to so many, may also happen to each of us. And it is necessary to understand, that all who lead a bad life, meet with an unprovided death, though their last illness may allow them some time to prepare for eternity; for the days of that mortal illness are days of darkness days of confusion, in which it is difficult, and even morally impossible, to adjust a conscience burdened with many sins. Tell me, brethren, if you were now at the point of death, given over by physicians, and in the last agony, how ardently would you desire another month, or another week, to settle the accounts you must render to God! And God gives you this time. He calls you, and warns you of the danger of damnation to which you are exposed. Give yourself, then, instantly to God. What do you wait for? Will you wait till he sends you to hell?” Walk whilst you have light.” (John xii. 35.) Avail yourselves of this time and this light, which God gives you at this moment, and now, while it is in your power, repent of all your past sins; for, a time shall come when you will be no longer able to avert the punishment which they deserve.

[Stone]

Taken from Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life for Everyday of the Year
By Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.

252. CORRESPONDENCE WITH GRACE
NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Lord, grant that Your grace in me may not be void.


MEDITATION

1. Today the liturgy invites us to consider the grave problem of our correspondence with grace. It does this by showing us the sad picture of the sufferings of Israel, the chosen people, upon whom God had showered His benefits, whom He had surrounded with graces, protected with jealous care, and who, in spite of all this, were lost through their own infidelity. In the Epistle (1 Cor 10,6-13), St. Paul, after mentioning certain points about Israel’s unfaithfulness, concludes : “ Now all these things happened to them in figure, and they are written for our correction.... Wherefore, he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall.” This is a strong call to vigilance and humility.

If God has gone before us with His graces, if He has called us to a more intense interior life and to closer intimacy with Himself, all this, far from making us presumptuous, should deepen our humility of heart. God’s gifts are preserved beneath the ashes of humble mistrust of self. Woe to us if we consider ourselves henceforth free from the weaknesses which we meet and, perhaps, condemn in others! Rather let us humbly say: “Lord, help me, or I shall do worse.” At the same time that he exhorts us to be humble, St. Paul also urges us to have confidence, because “ God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able: but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be able to bear it.” The Apostle is telling us that the knowledge of our weakness should not discourage us, because God is always ready to sustain us with His grace. God knows our weaknesses, the struggles we have to undergo, and the temptations that assail us; and for each of them He gives us the measure of grace we need in order to triumph over them. It is very true that when the storm is raging we can feel only the impact of the struggle, and the grace that God is giving to help us remains completely hidden; nevertheless, this grace is there and we should be certain of it, because “ God is faithful.” “ God has always helped me....” St. Thérése of the Child Jesus said, “I count on His aid. My sufferings may reach even greater heights, but I am sure He will not abandon me” (St).


2. The Gospel (Lk 19,41-47) continues the same subject of the Epistle and shows us Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. The Creator, the Lord, the Redeemer weeps over the ruin of His creatures, the people whom He has loved with predilection, even choosing them as the companions of His earthly life, and whom He had desired to save at any price.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem...how often would I have gathered together thy children as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldst not! ” (Mt 23,37). This was the constant attitude of Jesus toward the holy city, but it always remained blind to every light, deaf to every invitation, and the Savior, shortly before going to His Passion, broke forth into His last sorrowful admonition: “If thou also hadst known and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace!” But again the city resists, and Jesus, after having loved it so much, and after having wept over it as a mother weeps over her son who has gone astray, predicts its ruin: “Thy enemies...shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation.”

Do you know how to recognize the moments in which Our Lord visits your soul? A word read or heard, perhaps even by chance, an edifying example, an interior inspiration, a new light which makes you see your faults more clearly and opens new horizons of virtue and of good—all are visits from Jesus. And you, how do you correspond? Is your soul sensitive to these lights, to these admonitions? Do you not sometimes turn your gaze away, fearing that the light you have glimpsed may ask you for sacrifices which are too painful for your self-love?

Oh! if you had always recognized the moment in which the Lord visited you! If you had always been open to His action! ‘Try then to begin again today, resolve to commence anew each time that you happen to give in to nature. “The things that are to your peace, ” your good, your sanctification, are precisely here, in this continual adherence to the impulses of grace.


COLLOQUY

“As I have already confessed to You, O glory of my life, O Lord God, strength of my salvation, I have sometimes placed my hopes in my own virtue, which was no virtue; and when I attempted to run, thinking I was very strong, I fell very quickly and went backward instead of forward. What I expected to reach, disappeared, and thus, O Lord, in various ways You have tested my powers. With light from You, I now see that I could not accomplish by myself the things that I wanted to do most. I said to myself: ‘I shall do this, I shall finish that,’ and I did not do either the one or the other. The will was there but not the power, and if the power was there, my will was not; this because I had trusted in my own strength. Sustain me then, O Lord, for alone I can do nothing. However, when You are my stability, then it is true stability; but when I am my own stability, then it is weakness” (St. Augustine).

“O Lord, teach me to be always docile to Your grace, to say ‘yes” to You always. To say ‘yes’ to Your will as expressed in the commandments, to say ‘ yes ’ to the intimate inspirations by which You invite me to a more intense union, to more generous self-denial and more complete detachment. Grant that I may always be ready to open the door of my will to You, or rather, to keep it open always, so that You can enter there, and thus I shall not miss a single one of Your visits, a single one of Your delicate touches; not one of Your requests will escape me.

“Make me understand well that true peace does not consist in being exempt from difficulties or in following my own wishes, but in total adherence to Your will, and in docility to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit ” (cf. Sr. Carmela of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D.).