Epistle.
Colossians iii. 12-17.

Brethren:
Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy, and beloved, the bowels ol mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you also. But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection: and let the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts, wherein also you are called in one body; and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom: teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing in grace in your hearts to God. All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Gospel.
St. Matthew xiii. 24-30.

At that time:
Jesus spoke this parable to the multitude, saying: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that sowed good seed in his field. But while men were asleep, his enemy came and oversowed cockle among the wheat, and went his way. And when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared also the cockle. Then the servants of the master of the house came and said to him: Master, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it cockle? And he said to them: An enemy hath done this. And the servants said to him: Wilt thou that we go and gather it up? And he said: No, lest while you gather up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it. Let both to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up first the cockle, and bind it into bundles to burn; but gather the wheat into my barn.

Sermon XXVIII.

Gather up first the cockle,
and bind it into bundles to burn;
but gather the wheat into my barn.
—St. Matthew xiii. 30.

The parable which is the subject of the Gospel of to-day is explained by our Lord himself a little further on. The disciples asked him to expound it to them; and he told them that the good seed were the children of the kingdom—that is, all good and faithful Christians; and that the cockle were the children of the wicked one—that is, all those who refuse to believe in the faith which God has revealed, or who will not obey his law. These two kinds of people, said he, live together in this world, but at the end of the world they shall all be for ever separated, the wicked to be cast into the furnace of fire, and the just to shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

Our Lord calls the sinful the children of the wicked one—that is, of the devil. But he does not mean that the devil created them, for he can create no one; no, God created us all, and has, furthermore, redeemed us all with his precious Blood. There is something about them, though, which the devil may be said to have created, and that it is which makes them his children. It is sin, which he first brought into God's creation, to which he tempted our first parents, and to which he is all the while tempting us now. Sin is the devil's work; and sinners are his children, because they do his work.

But few people, at least few Christians, are all the time sinners and children of the devil. Sometimes they repent and become, at least for a time, children of God. Good and evil are mixed up in them, as they are in the world. So our Lord's parable is true of each one of them as it is of the world at large. Each of our hearts is a little field in which God is sowing the good seed of his holy inspirations, and the devil the bad seed of his wicked temptations; and sometimes consent is given to one, sometimes to the other.

Perhaps we may have asked ourselves the question (for it is a very natural one to ask): "Why has God allowed the devil to sow his bad seed in the world and in the hearts of men? And why, if he lets it be sown, does he not root out this bad seed, and not let it grow and choke what is good?" I should not wonder at your asking this question, and you should not wonder if we cannot give all of God's reasons for it, for it is one of the mysteries of his providence. But he has himself given one reason for it in his explanation of this parable. The servants, you will remember, wanted to go and root out the cockle; but the master said: "No, lest while ye gather up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it." Would it not be so with us, too, if God should take away all the bad seed of temptation out of our hearts? A great deal of our virtue would be rooted up, too, and what was left would not be very strong and solid. You can see that often. A person seems very good, but what is the reason? It is because he is not much tempted. Let a strong temptation come, and perhaps such a person will sin more easily than one who has seemed much worse, but has really been acquiring solid virtue by faithfully combating with difficulties the other has not had. And not only would our virtue not be solid, but our merits would not be very abundant, without temptation; for most of our merit is gained by resisting sin.

Our Lord, then, does not mean to pull up the cockle out of the way of the wheat, but wants the wheat to live and outgrow the cockle. It is for us to see that it does so; for if there is any cockle left when we come to die there will be something to do before the wheat goes to the barn—that is, to cast the cockle into the furnace of fire; and that furnace of fire, for those who die in the grace of God, is the fire of purgatory. We shall have to wait there till the cockle of sin is all burned before we can go to heaven with our wheat of virtue and of merit.

Let us not think, then, in this month of November, only of praying for those who are in those purging flames, but also of avoiding them ourselves. Our Lord does not want us to go to purgatory. He would infinitely rather take us to heaven from our death-bed than let us remain in that state of suffering. What he wants is to have the wheat grow over the whole field and choke the cockle instead of being choked by it—in a word, he wants us to be saints. That is what St. Paul says: "This is the will of God, your sanctification." Let this, then, be our devotion in the month of November and all the year round: to imitate those (and there are many of them) who have died and gone before their Lord with plenty of wheat and no cockle on their hands.

Sermon XXIX.

Bearing with one another,
and forgiving one another,
if any have a complaint against another:
even as the Lord hath forgiven you,
so do you also.
—Colossians iii. 13.

These words, my dear brethren, are taken from the Epistle of to-day. They certainly contain a most important lesson for us, and one which we are too apt never even to begin to learn. You will find plenty of people who are near the end of a long life—who have, as the saying is, one foot in the grave—who do not seem to know how to overlook and to pardon injuries any better than when they first began to be exposed to them.

There are two very good reasons, my brethren, why you should learn this lesson. The first is that, unless you do, you can never be happy in this life; the second, that, unless you have learned it, there is great reason to fear for your happiness in the life which is to come.

You can never be happy, I say, in this life, unless you know how to pardon and overlook the injuries you receive from others. And the reason of this is very plain. It is, in the first place, because it is very uncomfortable to be brooding over injuries received—that is plain enough; and, in the second place, you will always be exposed to them. There is a way to avoid them, it is true: it is to go out into the desert and live there in some cave or hut all alone. But I think there are very few nowadays who have any vocation to that; and if you should undertake to live the life of a hermit without any vocation for it, the chances are that you would be ten times as miserable as you would be with the very worst neighbors in the world. This is the only way to avoid them; for, however good the people are among whom you live, they will always be somewhat selfish; they will want to have their own way sometimes, at least, and it will often happen that they cannot have their way and at the same time let you have yours. And they will always be somewhat thoughtless. They will not be so very careful not to offend you; and you cannot expect it of them, for you are not so careful yourself. You would be surprised if you should know how often you have given offence to others.

The fact is, there is not room enough in this world for us all to get along without sometimes treading on each other's toes. There are a great many of us sailing together down the stream of life, and it will take the most careful steering to prevent our now and then running foul of each other. And such careful steering cannot be expected of every one, or of any except one or two here and there. If you really should try it yourselves you would find how difficult it is. The saints do try it, and that is one reason why it is a work of sanctity to be indulgent to the faults of others.

Well, I said the second reason why you should learn the lesson of forgiveness to others is that, unless you do, there is great reason to fear for your happiness in the life to come. If you can have any doubt of that, those words of our Lord in another place will settle your doubt. "If you will not forgive men," he says, "neither will your Father forgive you your offences." You may confess all your sins, and receive the sacraments over and over again, but so long as you have a hatred against your neighbor your confessions and communions will be bad; you will not be in the friendship of God; and if you go out of the world with that malice in your heart you will be shut out from his presence.

You will say to me, perhaps, "Father, I will forgive, but I cannot forget" If you say this to me I say to you: Take care. As long as you do not at least try to forget, as long as you keep in your mind that sore feeling which the injury you have received, or think you have received, has caused, it will always be an occasion of sin to you. It will always prompt you to withhold from the persons whom you blame that charity which you are bound to show to all. You will always be inclined to speak evil of them, to try to prevent others from praising them, to throw out some hint in which the venom which lies lurking in your heart comes up to the surface. And do not be too sure that you have really done all that God requires because the priest has given you absolution. He cannot read your heart, and often he is obliged to forgive uncharitable people like yourself, with great doubt in his mind whether his sentence is approved by the great Judge who cannot be deceived.

Now, that you may forgive more easily, remember what I suggested a little while ago: that is, that those who have offended you have generally done so either through selfishness or carelessness, not through malice. Believe me, real malice is quite a rare thing. If you could see the real dispositions of others you would see that on the whole they are about as good as your own; and I do not suppose you think you are malicious, and I do not believe you are. Put, then, those unworthy suspicions out of your minds, and forgive others freely and generously as you yourself wish to be forgiven.