Epistle.
Romans vi. 19-23.
Brethren:
I speak a human thing, because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as you have yielded your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity, unto iniquity; so now yield your members to serve justice, unto sanctification. For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from justice. What fruit therefore had you then in those things, of which you are now ashamed? For the end of them is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death: but the grace of God, everlasting life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Gospel.
St. Matthew vii. 15-21.
At that time Jesus said to his disciples:
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree yieldeth good fruit, and the bad tree bad fruit. A good tree cannot yield bad fruit, neither can a bad tree yield good fruit. Every tree that yieldeth not good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them. Not every man that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Sermon XCIX.
Mortal Sin The Death Of The Soul.
The wages of sin is death.
When the Apostle, my dear brethren, wrote these words, he did not mean only to express the truth (for truth it is) that the inevitable result of sin, even in this world, is the misery, and finally the death, of the sinner; nor even (though this also is true) that by sin death was introduced into the world. But he wished especially to teach us that the direct and immediate effect of mortal sin is a death much more fearful in itself, and much more awful in its consequences, than any mere cessation of the life of the body—namely, the death of the soul.
Mortal sin cuts a man off from his last end; it, as it were, disconnects the soul of any one who is unhappy enough to be in that state with all the springs of the supernatural state. A soul which is in mortal sin is cut off from the mystical body of Christ, and, like a limb cut away from the body of a man, it ceases to have any part in the nourishment with which that body is supported and enabled to pass through the wear and tear of the every-day life of the world.
The soul from the time of baptism to the time of death is kept alive by the gift of sanctifying grace. Remove this and the soul inevitably dies. Restore this and it is alive again. Now, it is just the removal of this sanctifying grace which is the immediate effect of mortal sin. As long as any baptized person remains free from the fearful stain of deliberate mortal sin sanctifying grace remains, and every sacrament received, nay, every good act performed, every good word spoken, and every aspiration to higher and better things which passes through the mind, increases the grace which is conferred upon that soul; but the moment the will is deliberately turned away from its Creator, at that moment sanctifying grace ceases and the soul dies. This death is a real death of the soul; it prevents the soul from meriting anything towards the attainment of its last end, and should any one be unhappy enough to die with mortal sin upon his conscience his soul must, by the law of its very being, be buried for all eternity in hell.
See, then, my dear brethren, how fearful a thing this sin is which can have such fearful effects. God has made us to enjoy him for all eternity in heaven, and yet by sin we turn against ourselves, and, if I may so speak, compel the good God to issue against us an eternal sentence of banishment from his divine presence. We prevent our own souls from reaching that end for which alone they were created. We reap for ourselves an eternity of untold misery, instead of one of surpassing bliss.
Let us, then, to-day make a firm and constant resolution that, cost what it may, nothing in this world shall induce us to kill our souls by staining them with sin; and if any one is so unhappy as to be in that state now, let him now resolve that he will by a good confession cleanse his soul, and from henceforward, casting behind the things that are past, he will press forward to the things that are before.
Sermon C.
False Prophets.
Beware of false prophets.
—Gospel of the Day.
I think, my dear brethren, that you all know pretty well what our Lord means when he says in to-day's Gospel, "Beware of false prophets." You would tell me, at least if you stopped to think for a moment, that he means to warn us against those who were to come after him, pretending to teach his doctrine, claiming that theirs was the true and pure Christian religion, or putting on, as he says, the sheep's clothing, but really striving to draw the faithful away from the unity of the church which he had established; being, in fact, to use his own words, ravenous wolves.
Yes, you would tell me this, and you would be right in your explanation of his words. It is, indeed, of these false Christian teachers that he would warn us. It is against the innumerable errors which are taught as Christianity, and against the countless self-appointed guides to his one religion who were to multiply as time went on, that he wished to forewarn us; to keep us from listening to them, or allowing ourselves to be turned by them from the one source of truth which he has provided for us in his holy Catholic Church.
And no doubt, in a way, we listen to his warning, and are not much deceived by their pretensions, at least in these days. If a Catholic loses his faith nowadays, it is usually easy enough to see that he does so, not because he is really deceived by the false prophet and takes him for a true one, but because he wishes to lead an easier life without being blamed for it; because he objects to confession and the other laws of the church as imposing too much restraint on him, or because his temporal interests will be advanced by the change.
But still, in spite of this general security which we now have against being deceived by the persuasions of those who would lead us into error, nay, even on account of this very security which we feel, we do not obey quite carefully enough our Lord's warning. We think we are in no danger from these false prophets, and so we are willing enough to hear what they say. We would not join with them; far from it; but we think there is no harm in hearing or reading their discourses, or acquainting ourselves with their books. We do not, in short, beware of them; we think that there is no need to do so.
Really, however, there is. When our Lord said, "Beware of these false prophets," he meant just what he said. He knew that they would do us harm if we did not beware; that, if they did not destroy our faith, they would at least mar its purity or diminish its intensity if we did not take care to avoid them and their teachings in every way. And the church has always acted on the principle which her Divine Founder here laid down, in her instructions to her children. She does not wish even her priests to concern themselves with heretical or infidel doctrines, except with the intention of confuting them as their office requires, fortified though they be with the most thorough instruction in and knowledge of the truth.
We are none of us perfectly wise and above the reach of even the most absurd errors, especially when our nature, corrupted by sin, is enlisted on the side of those errors; and, if not in danger of actually falling into any of them in particular, we may at least, by acquainting ourselves with those into which great men have been led, be likely to fall into the most dangerous of all errors, that of believing that truth is so hard to find that it cannot be expected that all should find it, and that it makes no difference what a man believes, as long as he does what seems to the world in general to be right.
The true course for us is, then, to beware of false guides in religion by keeping out of their way altogether; and, on the other hand, to study as far as we can the truth, which, if we learn it and grasp it as we should, conveys in itself the answer to them all. Listen to the true prophets, and leave the false ones alone; that is the highest wisdom from the mouth of our Divine Lord himself.
Sermon CI.
The Last Sin.
For the wages of sin is death;
but the grace of God,
life everlasting in Christ Jesus our Lord.
—From this Sunday's Epistle.
This is not the only place in Holy Writ, my brethren, where eternal life and death are set before us as the wages we shall some day be paid. The word of God frequently admonishes us of the choice we are compelled to make between eternal sorrow and eternal joy, and for this most evident reason: we are always actually engaged in making the choice. The very essence of our merit hereafter will be that we shall have freely and deliberately chosen Almighty God and his friendship, in preference to any and everything besides. And the reason, and the only reason, why a man will lose his soul will be because he committed mortal sin and died unrepentant—that is to say, choosing to love what God bids him hate. What we call the choice between virtue and vice St. Paul calls the choice between life and death. And with that choice we are constantly confronted. Not that we always realize it, nor do I mean to say that the first time one grievously offends God he settles his fate eternally; but that each mortal sin really earns the wages of eternal death, and only the blessed mercy of God saves us from our deserved punishment. And furthermore, it is some mortal sin or other that at last breaks down God's patience. If at any particular occasion he does not see fit to take us at our word, so to speak, and leave us for ever in that state of enmity that we have chosen, it is not because we do not deserve it; it is because he is a loving Father to us, and is often willing to stand a great deal of wickedness on our part; or because we have some dear friends who are servants of God and who pray for us; or because the Blessed Virgin has acquired some special attachment to us and intervenes for us; or because God reserves us for a later day, when he will make such an example of us as will save other sinners; or because, again, he saves us for a later day to make us models of true penance.
But just look around you, brethren; just call to mind what you have heard or perhaps seen of God's judgments, and the Apostle's lesson becomes object-teaching. Have you not heard of a sudden and unprovided death and then remembered how years ago that man started a disreputable business? It was thus that he made his decision for all eternity. On the other hand, a man now temperate, once a drunkard, will tell you that long ago he took the pledge and broke it, and broke it again, but still persevered, and finally, by the grace of God, has managed to keep it. He was fighting the battle of fate and he won the victory. That dreadful appetite overcome, the practice of religion became easy to him.
In another case a man is led away little by little from the rules of honest dealing; at last he refuses to pay a certain just debt, one that he can easily pay if he wishes. After that avarice eats into the core of his heart and he is lost for ever.
And, brethren, what a relief to hear after a sudden death that the poor soul was a monthly communicant!
Many are tested by Almighty God demanding that they shall withdraw from the proximate occasions of mortal sin. The voice of conscience, a sermon heard in the church, the private advice of some good friend—for all these are the voice of God—admonish[ing] them against what leads them to mortal sin; against very bad company, or the saloon, or the Sunday excursion, or dangerous reading, or lonely company-keeping. Perhaps one's conduct about such dangers has more to do with his choice in eternity than any thing else.
I do not mean to say that this fateful decision is a mere lottery, but it is a moment at the end of years of rebellion against God when an effort is made by the grace of God to save the sinner; and for weal or for woe it is the last chance. Some time or other the last sin will be committed, the last grace will be granted.
O my brethren! how very reasonable is the holy fear of God. Oh! how wise are they who have joined fear and love of God together so that the fire of love has burned the dross of slavishness out of fear, and fear has mingled reverence and humility with love. Alas! that so many should live as if eternal life and death had no meaning for the present hour.
Some are like that millionaire I heard of. Walking home one day, a heavy shower of rain began, he stopped a hack and asked what the driver would take him home for. Fifty cents, was the answer. he began to beat him down, and finally, refusing more than twenty-five cents, he walked home in the rain. But he caught cold, went to bed, and died. He had played the miser many a time before, but the last time had come. So many a one thinks his one sin more, his one other rejection of grace, is but like the multitude of other such offences gone before; and all the time he is deciding an eternal fate.
