The last Day
by VP
Posted on Sunday November 24, 2024 at 12:00AM in Sermons
"Amen, I say to you; this generation shall not pass, till all things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.-MATT. xxiv. 34, 35."
"THESE words, with which the Church both commences and concludes her evangelical year, call your attention to that great scene, emphatically denominated, in sacred language, the last day. One of the characteristics of the Deity, which he has himself pointed out to us in his inspired oracles, is, that he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. His revealed religion is marked with a similar feature. With respect to this material world, she may be called the beginning and the end: she invincibly proves herself divine, by the sublime and sovereign manner in which she disposes of both extremities. Who, but religion, has taught us how we were created, and how this our inhabited earth began? On this subject, what human system does not sink into contempt, by the side of her simple and majestic narrative? In like manner, who, but religion, pretends to inform us how this great scene is to terminate? On the former head, man has attempted a few feeble conjectures; but on the latter, if I mistake not, he has been utterly silent. Or, if his unassisted reason has ventured to touch the subject, he has been afraid to pronounce his favored abode perishable; and, seeing it permanent amid all his own changes, has vainly imagined it to be eternal. Religion alone speaks out with confidence on the dark but interesting subject, and boldly declares that the world is not eternal; that, temporary like its lord, it shall one day pass away like him: heaven and earth shall pass away.
Even as mere matter of curiosity and contemplation, I can imagine no subject more choice and inviting to the mind: the last of days-the great epilogue; -the closing page of man's eventful history, which is to shut up the long-expected volume, or rather to supersede at once all its insignificant records! But, my brethren, the subject is not merely curious; it is one of deep interest and expectation; for it speaks of a scene, in which you are yourselves to appear, not as remote spectators, but to act your several parts. Induced by these considerations, and, above all, encouraged and authorized by the Church of God, I venture this day to approach the awful and interesting, but arduous, subject. Attempting little of my own, I will assemble, select, and digest for you, what has been said by those who alone have a right to speak on the subject-the inspired writers.
Man, by his fall, seems to have involved in that mortality, which was its punishment, all that is connected with him: even the world, which he inhabits, is become mortal, like himself. As it is decreed for all men once to die, so it is decreed that the world shall perish. There will come a day, which to this universe will be final and fatal. That day is already known in the counsels of heaven: but, to us, one of its most awful and alarming circumstances is its inscrutable uncertainty. In this, as in other particulars, it bears a remarkable resemblance to man's individual sentence, which from nothing borrows so much terror as from that mysterious darkness which hangs over its execution. As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be then. For as, in the days before the deluge, men were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, till the very day when Noah entered the ark, and they knew not, till the deluge came and carried them all away; so shall be the coming of the Son of Man.
This uncertainty, too, will subsist in the midst of the most pointed warnings; for no future event was ever marked out by more striking and plainer preludes. Here, also, it keeps up its parallel with the dissolution of man. For, as that dreaded event is commonly preceded by a succession of appearances and symptoms, both remote and proximate, which indicate to every eye, but perhaps the interested individual, that the human machine is running down and hastening to its last stroke; so, it has pleased the Almighty to usher in the great day of the world's dissolution, by a series of preludes, which shall clearly announce that its last hour is approaching. Its remoter indications may be said to be the general decay of faith and piety among men; the coldness and almost total extinction of charity; the wide-spread corruption of manners; the neglect of divine worship, and the appearance of that mysterious character, called in scripture anti-christ, or the man of sin, who is to seduce many from the true faith, to deceive with signs and wonders, and to make war on the Church of God. When these have subsisted their due period, then shall commence those more immediate symptoms, so awfully accumulated in the divine oracles. You shall hear, says the Son of God, of wars and rumors of wars; nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be pestilences, and famines, and earthquakes. These are the beginnings of sorrows. Let us expand a little, and dwell on these fearful particulars.
There shall be wars. Man himself shall begin the work of destruction, and co-operate with the vengeance of heaven. This is signified under the figure of the red horse, which was seen by St. John. And to him that sat thereon it was given, that he should take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and a great sword was given him.-Men, restless and agitated with all the furies of discord and revenge, will turn their ferocity against their own species, will assemble in vast bodies for the destruction of each other, and cover the earth with the blood of its inhabitants. If past history speaks of rivers of blood shed in battle, here shall be a deluge. The wine-press, in the mystic language of St. John, was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the wine-press, even up to the horses' bridles, for a thousand six hundred furlongs.And there shall be famines. Famine is the natural concomitant of war, and accordingly is the next figure presented to us in the Apocalypse, as the black horse, the rider of which held a balance in his hand, wherein he was to weigh rigorously the scanty necessaries of existence. And Pestilence, the other attendant of war. And behold, says St. John, there was a pale horse, and he that sat upon him his name was death, and hell followed him. These three, War, Famine, and Pestilence, as we see in the history of David, are the commissioned scourges of the Almighty, which he sends forth, at intervals, to punish the sins of men. And if they are even now so terrible, devastating whole nations, as we read and even see, when yet their visitations are only limited and partial, what will they be, when they shall become unbounded and universal, like the deluge of iniquity which shall call them down? If they are so formidable in the day of God's mercy, what will they be when sent as harbingers to what is emphatically called the great day of his wrath?
In addition to this, the earth itself, man's own domain, will rise up against him, and, with its different elements, combine to scourge him. There shall be earthquakes, says the divine oracle. The solid globe, as if no longer patient of its iniquitous burden, shall swell and oscillate round its ample circumference, not with those partial and petty heavings which we have hitherto read of in history, but with such vast undulations as to threaten its destruction. And there was, says St. John, a great earthquake, such a one as has never been since men were upon the earth, such an earthquake, so great. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. The sea shall next add its terrors. Its awful and heart-subduing roarings shall reach the most distant lands; and their inhabitants, safe beyond intervening continents, will start and shudder at the portentous sound. I am not exaggerating; I am giving but a feeble paraphrase of the very words of the Son of God. There shall be distress of nations by reason of the roaring of the sea, and of the waves, men withering away through fear and expectation of what shall come upon the world. Next the air will charge itself with vengeance. We have already seen it loaded with pestilence and death; besides this, St. John speaks of lightnings, and thunders, and whirlwinds, and vast hail like a torrent; the whole artillery of heaven exploding on the devoted earth.
As the awful day draws nearer, the great tempest of nature shall still thicken; the convulsions of an agonizing world shall become still more terrific. The day of the Lord is nigh, cries out the prophet, it is nigh and exceeding swift; the voice of the day of the Lord is bitter. A day of wrath, a day of tribulation and distress, a day of calamity and misery, a day of darkness and obscurity, a day of clouds and whirlwinds. The prophet seems lost under the accumulation of its terrors; but let us hear Him, who was the Inspirer of the prophets, himself depict the extraordinary catastrophe. And immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened; the moon shall not give her light; and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be moved.
It only remains, that the last of the commissioned elements come in, and, with its rapid energies, obliterate the scene. Behold the Lord will come with fire, says Isaiah, and his chariots are like a whirlwind, to render his wrath in indignation, and his rebuke with flames of fire; for the Lord shall judge by fire. A day of clouds and whirlwinds, exclaims Joel, the like to it hath not been from the beginning, nor shall be after it, even to the years of generation and generation. Before the face thereof a devouring fire, and behind it a burning flame; the land is like a garden of pleasure before it, and behind it a desolate wilderness; neither is there any one that can escape it. Fire is, of all the elements, the most active and violent, and is therefore reserved by the Almighty for the consummation of his judgment, for the temporal death of this visible world, as well as for the eternal death of the world to come. He chastised and reformed the earth by water; he will destroy it by fire; and as, on that occasion, he not only opened the floodgates of heaven, but broke up the fountains of the great deep,-so we may naturally suppose, that now he will not only pour down the destroying element from above, but will command the great deep of hell to open its gates and send forth an inundation of fire upon the earth. It is the sentiment of one of the Fathers. Follow, my brethren, in imagination, the course, the range, the waste of this fiery deluge, as it rolls over the earth, a garden of pleasure before it, and instantly a desolate wilderness behind. Will man here, too, scale the mountains, or bury himself in the depths? Will he entrench himself behind his marble bulwarks, or attempt, by another tower, to baffle the wrath of heaven? Alas! the elements themselves, says St. Peter, shall melt with heat; and the earth, and the works which are in it, be burnt up. His houses, his gardens, his palaces, his cities, shall be swept away in a moment by the devouring element; his limits and his landmarks, his provinces and his countries, shall be rapidly effaced; every trace of his existence on the earth will disappear, and all lie low and level, in one undistinguished blank.
Thus, my brethren, are all the great preludes accomplished; thus is the earth prepared for the coming judgment of its Creator. And it was fitting, that whatever had risen prominent on its surface, should be leveled into insignificance before Him; and that nothing, of all that once divided the attention of his creatures, should, when he came to take his final cognizance, be found standing in his presence.
Where now are those who once most figured in the busy scene, who fondly flattered themselves with immortality? who labored hard during life to gain it, and left no art unpracticed to secure it after death? Oh, mockery of earthly ambition! oh, cruel satire on human vanity! What better application could we make of the celebrated sentence of the Wise Man, than to inscribe it here, as an epitaph on the tomb of a buried world? Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity. And if, my brethren, those schemes and projects, which enjoyed, after all, some semblance of greatness, and at least a shadow of success, are to have at last so pitiful an exit, what shall become of those petty objects which now occupy and fill our minds?-that fortune which one is raising?-that fame which another is aiming at?-that treasure of science which a third is accumulating? that trivial distinction which a fourth affects, of person, dress, or equipage? Where shall then be found these insignificant nothings, which even now have no real importance, and yet, unhappily, divert us from our only interest, bind us to this perishable earth, and make us forget our last end, and the great Judge before whom we are infallibly to appear.
At the appointed hour, ere the great Judge descends upon the earth, he will give the signal to his attendant angels, four of whom will instantly take their station at each quarter of the globe, and sound forth from the celestial trumpet the resuscitating decree: Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment. The powerful voice will instantaneously echo round the vast convex, pierce earth and sea, and resound in the lowest hell. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, says the apostle, the dead shall rise; from first to last, they shall all wake from their long slumber, reanimate their original dust, and be seen issuing forth in throngs from their various repositories, the bowels of the earth, the depths of the ocean, and the abyss of hell. St. John saw it: And the sea, says he, gave up the dead that were in it, and death and hell gave up the dead that were in them. Of the immense series, not one shall be overlooked or missing; the least and obscurest shall appear, as surely as the greatest and most famous; the infant of a day, who only just saw the light of heaven, and resunk into oblivion, as certainly as the patriarch of nine hundred years; all who once drew the breath of life shall revive, and cover the earth; an army, in the language of Scripture, exceeding vast. If the posterity of one family is compared to the sands of the sea-shore, by what shall we aid the imagination to conceive the simultaneous assemblage of the uncalculated millions that, during the long period of six thousand years, have peopled the globe?
While we cast our eyes in thought over this vast multitude of men now assembled together, for the first, yes, for the last time, what a surprising change do we observe! As we see mankind in life, nothing is more remarkable than those numerous and broad distinctions which everywhere appear in their ranks rich and poor, noble and plebeian, lord and slave, polite and vulgar, learned and illiterate: now these have totally disappeared, and the whole is leveled down to one equal, common, undistinguished crowd. In vain shall we look for the scepter or the diadem, the robe of office, or the sword of conquest. The renowned monarch, whom we so often read of in history, is, doubtless, here; but he is hid among the dense mass of his own subjects; the mighty conqueror, who strode across the earth with destructive march, is here too, but lost amid the rude press of the ignoble myriads, upon whom he once trampled. One simple distinction alone remains; which before existed indeed unperceived, but now breaks forth, and extinguishes every other-the distinction of good and bad; the former clothed with light, beauty, and immortality, the latter unsightly and hideous. Oh! my friends, what will be the confusion and astonishment of the great ones of this world, when they shall see those whom they once hardly deigned to look upon, exalted in power and glory, and themselves sunk in impotence and disgrace, thrust aside without regard, as the scorn and refuse of the assembly! What will be the shame and agony of the fair ones of the world, when they shall see those charms, of which they were foolishly vain, and guiltily prodigal, transferred with infinite improvement to the neglected beggar, or loathed leper, and themselves stamped with eternal deformity!
But from these reflections, my brethren, it is now time to turn to a scene, which will quickly absorb them. But, how shall I attempt to give you an idea of a spectacle so awful and so extraordinary, Heaven itself coming down in judgment! Even the judgment-seat of man is surrounded with awe and dread. What, then, may be expected, when the Son of God himself, appointed by his eternal Father supreme Judge of the living and the dead, shall disclose his tribunal, surrounded with all the grandeur and terrors of his omnipotence? His appearance will be as the lightning darting from east to west; that is, no sooner shall the dazzling vision burst on the horizon, than it will envelope the whole hemisphere in a blaze of glory. The assembled multitude will instantly turn towards it their intensest gaze. And every eye shall see him, says St. John, and they also that pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth shall bewail themselves because of him. In front of the judicial array will appear the ensign of the cross, that comfort of the just and terror of the wicked, environed with dazzling effulgence, and surpassed only by Him whose sign it is. He will be the great focus of regard, riding supreme on the clouds, clothed in all the beauty and grandeur of his visible humanity, and supported with all the power of his invisible divinity. The whole court of heaven will be his attendants, and, arrayed in visible forms, will surround his throne, in their several hierarchies, order above order, filling the air with their countless myriads, and illumining it with ten thousand glories. He himself has assured us of these particulars. When the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the seat of his majesty. Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and all the tribes of the earth shall mourn: and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and majesty.
In this form will the judicial pomp descend; and, as it reaches its destination, the just will rise into the clouds to meet it, taking their station, likewise, in the air aloft, while the reprobates are left in the vale beneath, grovelling on that earth which was the theater of their crimes and the utmost object of their low desires. Then without delay the judgment will proceed; it will not be lingering and tedious, like human trials, but summary and rapid. The judgment sat, says the prophet, and the books were opened;-those books, in which are minutely and unerringly recorded all the moral transactions of men, from the beginning of time. These shall be instantly displayed in the face of the universe, and each individual life exposed in broad characters to its gaze. If a little shame be now so powerful, in this petty scene, so scanty and so circumscribed, what must be the effect, on the guilty soul, of this complete and universal publicity? Here there will be neither excuse nor defense, neither patron nor advocate, neither appeal nor repentance. What treasures of iniquity will then appear! what works of darkness will be brought to light! What extraordinary discoveries will then be made! what manifestations and justifications of Divine Providence! Then shall be seen the reason why one man, with every virtue that could merit prosperity, was pursued with unrelenting adversity; and why another was allowed to riot in every guilty pleasure, and yet die in peace, though a debtor to all the vengeance of heaven. Then, too, shall be explained all the mysteries and paradoxes of human character and conduct: it shall be seen, why this man so unaccountably resisted all the impressions of grace; what was the secret bar, which prevented their efficacy: why that man, after the most promising beginning, made a sudden and ominous pause in the way of virtue, and was never afterwards seen to advance; why a third, living in the midst of light, was never enlightened, that is to say, why, surrounded with evidences of the true religion, and pressed by them on every side, in reading, in argument, in observation, in reflection, he was able to withstand, where so many thousands had yielded: and why a fourth, who apparently possessed every moral virtue that could prepare the way for the true faith, yet
did never attain it, but continued to the last an alien from salvation, in spite of the exhortations of friendship, the invitations of example, and the prayers and tears of a pious family. All these discoveries will then be made, with many others, too numerous even for allusion. On the other hand, all the secret and retiring merits of the just will be brought forward and displayed in glory; all those virtues, which they studiously concealed, oftentimes under the assumed garb of a repulsive exterior; -all those deeds of beneficence and piety, which they carefully buried in oblivion; -all those generous ardors, by which, wanting the means, they burned with the desires of the most arduous sacrifices, and thus in secret made every merit their own.
But it is time that we hear the definitive sentence, which is to conclude this awful scene. Preparatory to this, charge will. be given to the ministering spirits, to arrange on either hand the sheep and the goats, that is, to assemble the just on the right hand, and to drive the reprobate to the left. Then the great Judge, collecting into his heavenly countenance all that beauty, of which he is the sole center, all that sweetness, of which he is the ravishing source, all that love, of which he is the immense ocean, will say to those on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive ye the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world. Oh, thrice happy ears, which shall be found worthy to hear this sentence! Who shall express what the hearts of the just will feel at its pronunciation? If the human breast heaves so powerfully at the infusion of those little drops of joy which occasionally refresh it in this miserable life, how will it support that flood of rapture with which these divine words will deluge its small capacity?
Then, turning to the unhappy multitude on his left hand, armed with all the frowns and terrors of angry Omnipotence, he will thunder out against them the dreadful anathema: Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels. Both of these sentences will be immediately executed. The happy just will hear the dreadful award of the wicked, with acquiescence and approbation: the time is now come for them, in the language of the Scripture, to wash their hands in the blood of the sinner; the feelings of commiseration and charity have no longer any place, but are swallowed up in the sense of divine justice, with which they take part and congratulate. Accordingly, they will now look down with an eye of indifference on the fate, dreadful as it is, of acquaintance, of friends, and of relatives; and, absorbed in their own felicity, will rise aloft, singing canticles of jubilee, to take possession of that eternal kingdom, to which their God has so lovingly invited them.
Let us follow, then, my brethren, the different fate of the reprobate. No sooner shall the almighty voice have uttered their sentence, than the earth will yawn under their feet, and hell, opening for the last time its voracious jaws, will engulf the vast multitude in its terrible abyss. Then the infernal gates will for ever close upon them: the Eternal will affix his irrevocable seal, and shoot the bolt, which shall never be drawn back. -But oh, my brethren, how shall we express or conceive what will pass below, in the darkness and confinement of that infernal dungeon! St. John finely, but terribly, paints it to us, in these sublime words: The smoke of their torments ascends for ever and ever.
Yes, their dreadful torment shall incessantly steam forth a baleful vapor: the smoke thereof will ascend for ever before the eyes of the Almighty, and, in the language of Scripture, bring up in remembrance before him the sufferings of the damned;he will remember them and will never regard them. His ears will never be open to their cries: their tears and blasphemies, their prayers and their execration will find him equally indifferent. He will live on with his elect, in an eternity of bliss; and they will live on, with the demons, in a parallel eternity of woe; and will then conceive a hope of period or change in their sufferings, when they shall discover a hope of change or period in his essential existence.
Such will be the end of
time; such the termination of this present state of things. It may be
remote, but it is not on that account the less certain. You are not more
secure in the present testimony of your senses, than you are in the
reality of what you have here listened to; you are not more surely here
present, than you will be at the last scenes,
which you have here contemplated. The present assembly, so soon to
separate, and perhaps ere long to scatter over the world, will there
finally
meet again: the eyes, with which you now regard me, do not more
certainly apprehend their object, than they will then view the great
Judge on his awful tribunal: the ears with which you now listen to my
voice, the very same will then re-echo with the twofold sentence, and
either be ravished with the sweet invitation of the just, or astounded
with the terrible condemnation of the reprobate. That the former may be
our common lot is the most expressive wish and prayer which I can make
in conclusion."The Catholic Pulpit: Containing a Sermon for Every Sunday
St. John of the Cross, Confessor, Doctor, A.D. 1591.
by VP
Posted on Sunday November 24, 2024 at 12:00AM in Saints
Saint John of the Cross, by Zurbaran
"Live in faith and hope, though it be in darkness, for in this darkness God protects the soul. Cast your care upon God for you are His and He will not forget you. Do not think that He is leaving you alone, for that would be to wrong Him." St. John of the Cross.
"THIS saint was born near Avila in Spain. From his tender years, he showed great devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and was preserved from many dangers through her intercession. He had so great a love of suffering, that he slept on a hollow board and wore a rough hair shirt, besides practicing severe fasts, and almost incredible mortifications. His constant prayer was to be allowed to suffer, and be despised for his Savior's sake. He embraced the reformed Order of barefooted Carmelites; and his example and exhortations inspired the religious with a perfect spirit of solitude, humility, and mortification. Almighty God, to purify his heart, allowed him to pass through most severe trials of spiritual dryness and desolation: but, after some time, rays of light, comfort and divine sweetness scattered these mists, and filled his soul with heavenly delights. This comfort was succeeded by other trials of various kinds, which this holy servant of God endured with invincible constancy, always rejoicing when he shared the cross of his Redeemer. It had always been his prayer that he might die in humiliation and contempt; and his prayer was granted. He died at Ubeda in the year 1591, being forty-nine years old.
The spirit of Christianity is the spirit of the cross. To attain to the pure love of God we must live and die in the spirit of the cross. Our divine Redeemer merited the graces,
which we receive, by suffering for us: and it is by suffering with him,
that we are best prepared for his graces. This all the saints assure us by their own example. But in the divine
love, they found a recompense, which amply repaid them for all their
sufferings. Impatience and dejection make ill impressions on all who witness these infirmities. Be careful to prevent them, and by your good example in your sufferings, endeavor to teach others how to suffer. Be watchful in suppressing the first motions of fretfulness and impatience, and pray for the true spirit of a Christian." The Catholic Faith by Fr. John Gother
Twenty-Fourth Day: Value of Good Works offered for the Suffering Souls
by VP
Posted on Sunday November 24, 2024 at 12:00AM in Meditations
St. Thomas of Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, affirms that the succor and suffrage given to the departed is more acceptable to God than that which is bestowed upon the living, because the former are more in need and are unable to obtain help for themselves. The Venerable Ludovico Blosio, a great master of the spiritual life, says: "Our good and merciful Lord loves the souls of His elect, who must be purified after death. And He desires their release so ardently that whenever in Christian charity we set free by our suffrages any soul from Purgatory, we do a thing as acceptable to God as if we had delivered the Lord Himself from a hard captivity. And He promises to give us as full recompense as such a work of mercy practiced towards Himself from a hard captivity. For He Himself has said: "Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these, My least brethren, you did it to Me." (Matth. XXV. 40.)
The same is asserted by St. Ambrose: "Whatever we do for the suffering souls with a pious intention, will revert to our own merit, and shall be returned a hundred-fold in the hour of death."
Prayer: O God of love and mercy, animated with charity and compassion for our departed brothers and sisters, we offer Thee our prayers and good works and supplicate Thee to accept them as a propitiatory sacrifice in their behalf. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen
Prayer for Priests in Purgatory: My Jesus, by the sorrows Thou didst suffer in Thine Agony in the Garden, in Thy Scourging and Crowning with thorns, in the Way to Calvary, in Thy Crucifixion and Death, have mercy on the souls of priests in Purgatory, especially those most forgotten and who have no one else to pray for them. I wish to remember all those priests who ministered to me, the priests my heart has never forgotten, and for those that I no longer recall due to my frailty of memory. Do Thou deliver them from the dire torments they endure; call them and admit them to Thy most sweet embrace in Paradise.
Pope Saint Pius X and Saint John Vianney, pray for us and especially for our priests. Amen
Special Intercession: Pray for the souls of those who were negligent in offering good works for the suffering souls.
Lord grant them eternal rest, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen. (three times)
Invocation: My Jesus, mercy!
Source: Manual of the Purgatorian Society, Redemptorist Fathers. 1907