Because they have not known the Father nor Me.
by VP
Posted on Sunday December 22, 2019 at 12:00AM in Quotes
Behold the fatal cause of the persecutions of the Apostles, and of other Ecclesiastics !
Behold the source of the damnation of innumerable souls, ignorance, wilful and deliberate !
Because no one understandeth, they shall perish for ever" (Job. iv. 20).
If people are, in great part, slaves of the devil, it is from want of knowledge : " Therefore is My people led away captive, because they had not knowledge" (Is. v. 13). "Where there is no knowledge of the soul there is no good " (Prov. xix. 2). And we must acknowledge with grief that this ignorance, which is the mother of all vices, springs from the carelessness of Priests, because they neglect to preach the Word of God, which is " living and effectual" (Heb. iv. 12). Justly, therefore, does St. Gregory declare against such Priests as render themselves guilty of the ruin of innumerable souls, who are thus lost for want of instruction. We who are called Priests, he says, are guilty of murdering men's souls, for we are the cause of the death of all those whom by our tepidity and silence we allow to go to destruction.
Let us remember what the devil one day said to a French Priest, who was preparing to make a speech at the opening of a synod : " The Rulers of the infernal darkness salute the Rectors of Parish Churches, and thank them for their negligence in teaching the people ; because sin is born of ignorance, and damnation is born of sin."
Let us implore the Holy Spirit to bestow on us a little of that light and zeal which he gave to St. Paul, so that we may be able to say with him, "I am clear from the blood of all men, for I have not spared to declare unto you all the counsel of God" (Acts xx. 26, 27). " By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all the power of them by the Spirit of His mouth." — Pu xxxii. 6. " I will pour out My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thy stock' Is xliv. 3.
