The Retribution of Sin
by VP
Posted on Sunday July 21, 2024 at 12:00AM in Sermons
Enrique Simonet
1. Our Lord's lament over Jerusalem.
2. That city the type of the fate of sinners.
3. The mistake: sinfulness not liberty but slavery.
4. This remembrance helps us to be watchful and to pray.
"It was as our Blessed Lord was riding towards Jerusalem, during His brief triumph on Palm Sunday, that He uttered these words. For the last time before His Passion He looked down upon that city which had been blessed in so many ways-the chosen city; the home of the Temple; the city that had heard so many of His divine words and warnings; that had witnessed so many of His miracles. But all to no purpose; for during the next few days that city would resound to the cries," Away with Him, crucify Him !" Our Lord wept over it as He realized that all His mercies had been of no avail, and foretold the dreadful judgment and punishment that would befall it for its rejection of its Saviour. It was all its own fault, its impenitence and hardness of heart. Alas! Jerusalem is the type of so many of God's creatures of ourselves, perchance. God gives a sinner many chances, graces innumerable; visitations of mercy; warnings to urge him to give up his evil ways. But there is an end of God's mercies, for this life is short, and remorseless death is hastening to overtake us.The last grace offered and disdained, then the allmerciful God has to abandon us, because we "have not known the time of our visitation." Words that verify this flash across our memory. And Jesus hid Himself" (John vii. 59). "You shall seek Me, and you shall not find Me " (ibid. 43). You shall seek Me, and you shall die in your sin " (ibid. 21).
It seems almost impossible that man could prove himself thus obdurate, in spite of all that the loving Saviour has done for him. But always and everywhere there have been men and women, who really and through their own fault have made themselves so guilty and impenitent as to be abandoned by their Saviour and their God. This hard and impenitent heart is the result of the power of the habit of sin, which enslaves them. When a man begins to sin and to turn from God, he thinks he will be his own master and independent. He will not brook the commandments, "Thou shalt " and" Thou shalt not." His own will is to be master. There is the fatal mistake! Free, independent, one's own master; yes, such is the lying suggestion of the devil. Whereas the truth, the inspired Word of God, teaches us most emphatically the very opposite.
Amen, amen, I say to you, that whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin " (John viii. 34), are the solemn words of our Blessed Lord Himself. And St. Peter, who, alas ! knew what sin was, says, "They themselves are the slaves of corruption, for by whom a man is overcome, of the same he is a slave " (2 Pet. ii. 19). If by sinning we become the servants, the slaves of sin, to what a state of abject slavery, indeed, must a habit of sin enthral us! Of his own power such a man is utterly unable to free himself. He has bound himself beyond release. A bad habit is like a rope. A child can snap a few slight hempen meshes of which a rope is made. But when countless strains have been twined and formed into a stout rope, the man that is bound with it is powerless. And so with our souls. Habits slight at first, that a good will and a sorrowful heart could break, by degrees form themselves into bonds that defy our efforts, and will become everlasting bonds, unless God's gracious mercy intervenes.
But why all this? We are not as bad as this; no, thank God; but we should be humble and thankful that we are not. For how many graces have the best of us disregarded! How many sins have we not committed! How many habits have begun to twine themselves round our souls, but, by God's mercy, they have been snapped by our repentances and confessions. A good man, therefore yea, a very good and devout man-should fear and watch any starting of a careless, sinful habit. He should break it at first, lest it grow too strong and enslave him. This holy fear and watchfulness will make us careful to use God's graces and the means of our salvation, and to obey the admonitions of the Church. And there is one practice that will ensure this carefulness and piety, and it is this: to pray for others. Pray for others, who are in the sad state of habitual sin, and who do not see and understand their peril. It is likely that we know someone who needs prayers. What an act of charity to rescue their soul! Let us give them of our best.
And at this very hour it is certain that there is someone near to death. Remorse, despair, agonizing his soul that he has not known the day of the visitation of God's graces. He may doubt God's goodness and the tender mercy of the Sacred Heart. If our prayers, our Mass, our Holy Communion could whisper hope to that poor soul, and bring him, writhing in the bondage of his evil habits, humbly to plead for mercy once again, he would find it was not too late! What more precious offering could we make to our heavenly Father than that of a soul redeemed by the precious Blood, snatched from the evil one, even at his last hour? Such prayers will help to save others, and secure for ourselves a holy life now, and a welcome to heaven after a merciful judgment, because we have not stood idly by and let our brethren perish." Short Sermons on the Epistles & Gospels of the Sundays of the Year By Rev. Fr. Francis Paulinus Hickey OSB 1922 (9th Sunday after Pentecost)
