Hunolt Sermons/Volume 10/Sermon 59

1. Some have a false and presumptuous love and devotion to the Mother of God, and build their hope of heaven thereon; a false and deceitful hope. 2. Others have a tepid, imperfect love for the Mother of God, and build their hope of heaven thereon; a good hope indeed, but not a very firm one.—Preached on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.

Qui me invenerit, inveniet vitam, et hauriet salutem a Domino.—Prov. viii. 35. From to-day’s Epistle.

“He that shall find me shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord.”

This is the joyful day on which the world first beheld that most blessed Virgin, of whom was born Jesus the Saviour of the world. Rejoice, ye just! your advocate, by whom God wishes to secure your salvation, is born. Rejoice, O sinners! for the refuge of sinners is born, by whose hands God will give you the grace of repentance and true conversion. Rejoice, especially you who love Mary! Hear what she says to you: “He that shall find me shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord.” No one who loves Mary shall be lost forever. So it is; to love and honor Mary is one of the surest signs of predestination to heaven, as I have often told you in my sermons. But yet there are many who do not understand this in the proper sense, and ​who imagine that if they have any sort of devotion to our blessed Lady they are sure of heaven. Truly, a gross and grievous error, which causes the ruin of many souls; and it comes from the fact that they mistake for true love and devotion that which is not really so at all. To refute this error and show in what it consists is the subject of the present sermon.

Some have a false and presumptuous love for and devotion to the Mother of God, and build their hope of heaven thereon; a false and deceitful hope, as we shall see in the first part. Others have a tepid and imperfect love for and devotion to the Mother of God, and build their hope of heaven thereon; a good hope indeed, but not a very firm one; the second part. The first concerns many sinners; the second, many of the just.

Mary, Queen of heaven! obtain for us on this joyful feast of thy nativity, with the help of our holy guardian angels, a true, childlike, and perfect love for and devotion to thee, and then with full hope and confidence we shall abandon ourselves to thy motherly goodness, and expect the happiness of heaven.

A false friend is detested everywhere. It is a well-known sign of feline treachery to lick before and scratch behind, as the saying goes. A common trick in the perverse world is to bear a smiling countenance, a caressing demeanor, to offer one’s services and pay a thousand compliments to a person whom one hates in his heart, and despises, and is determined to persecute on every possible occasion. Treachery of the kind is condemned even in unreasoning brutes, much more so in men; and amongst honorable people nothing can be said which tends more to lower a man in their estimation than: he does not act honorably; one cannot trust him; he is not worthy of confidence; he says one thing, and does another.

Most sinners are false friends of the Blessed Virgin; they are friends only in appearance. Most sinners act thus treacherously towards the Blessed Virgin when they pretend to honor and love her. If you seek for proofs of their devotion and love to her, where will you find them? Nowhere unless on their lips, with which they praise and bless her; on their tongue, with which they invoke and call upon her; in their hands, which they fold to pray to her; in their knees, that they bend in her honor; in the outward signs, scapulars, rosaries, and so forth, with which they give themselves out as her servants. Mere empty flatteries and compliments!

​While their hearts are full of hatred towards her. But look meanwhile, if you can do so, into the hearts of those servants of Mary, and you will find them full of cunning, nay, to speak more correctly, of the bitterest hatred to the Blessed Virgin. “This people honoreth me with their lips,” she might well say in the words of her divine Son, “but their heart is far from me.”^[1] For could you imagine that he loves you who does all he can to displease you? Do you think a mother really loves her son, who wilfully causes him all the annoyance, chagrin, and trouble possible? Would she not rather be looked on as his worst enemy? Now what is in reality the conduct of those pretended servants of Mary whose devotion consists of mere words? They remain attached to their usual vices; they are immersed in the filth of sin; they keep on committing the same impure actions from year to year; they maintain unlawful intimacies, remain in the occasion of sin, retain possession of ill-gotten goods, nourish hatred and anger against their neighbor, and indulge in the hateful habit of cursing and swearing. In a word, they heap sin on sin with the utmost recklessness, and they often do not confess them properly, seldom repent of them sincerely, hardly ever amend their lives. What else is that but acting in all things contrary to the wishes of that Blessed Virgin who, being always free from every stain, regards sin with an almost infinite hatred, displeasure, and disgust.

She does not look on them as her friends and children. Could those eyes, that were never opened but to contemplate her divine Son and heaven, look on him lovingly as a friend whose eyes are opened only to indulge in impure glances? Could those hands, that were never raised but to pray to and bless her Creator, give her gifts and graces into hands that are stretched out to unbecoming or unjust actions? Could that mouth, that always praised God, claim as a faithful servant him whose mouth is, as the Prophet David says, like an open grave? “Their throat is an open sepulchre: with their tongues they acted deceitfully; the poison of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”^[2] Could those ears, that were never open to wickedness, receive with favor the prayer of him who listens with pleasure to impure or uncharitable discourse? Could that heart, that always dwelt in heaven in thought, and that was inflamed with divine love more than all the seraphim, have any love or affection for one whose heart is constantly filled ​with all sorts of wicked desires and longings? Could Mary, the holiest of all the saints, wish to be served by one who is the slave and friend of the devil? Can she consider as her child one who is the sworn enemy and persecutor of Christ, her divine Son?

For they are sworn foes of her dear Son. To live in sin, what else is it but to take sides with the devil against God, to wage perpetual war on Christ, to insult, dishonor, and torment Him, as far as the sinner can? Could that Mother, and such a Mother, behold that without pain, endure it without displeasure, and even treat as her dear friend him who acts so wickedly? It is an especial characteristic of every love to rejoice in the welfare of the loved one, and also to feel most keenly all that annoys and contradicts him. In what creature did love ever attain such a degree as it did in Mary for her Son? Your love, O parents! for your sons and daughters is but child’s play in comparison with the love of this holy Virgin for Christ, her Son. With reason does St. Anselm say: “The love of this Mother for her Son exceeds all the love that parents have for their children.”^[3] What greater sorrow or grief then can be caused her than that which she feels when she sees her only beloved Son mocked at and despised by sinners, and, as St. Paul says, again crucified and slain by them? And you who are guilty of that, can you still pretend to be a devout servant of the Mother of God? You are a false and perjured traitor; you do not act honestly with all your seeming devotion, as long as you do not amend your life; you lie most shamefully when you say that you love Mary. “You that love the Lord hate evil,”^[4] says the Prophet David. And changing the words a little I say: “You that love Our Lady hate evil;” if you really are devoted to this great Queen of heaven, this Mistress of the world, then prove your devotion by hating sin above all things, for sin she cannot bear. This merciful lady interceded for the poor people at the marriage-feast of Cana, but on one condition, that they should do the will of her Son. When she said to Our Lord: “They have no wine,” He seemed at first somewhat disinclined to grant her request; but she turned to the servants and told them to do whatever He would command: “Whatsoever He shall say to you, do ye.” Nor was the favor granted till Our Lord’s commands were observed. There were in the room six ​large pitchers; these Christ told them to fill with water: “Fill the water-pots with water.” The poor people who did not know what was to happen might well have been amazed at this order, and might have said to themselves: what is the use of filling the pitchers with water? It is wine we want, and not water; it is wine, not water, that the guests wish to have; and if we fill the pitchers as desired we only lose our time and weary ourselves for nothing. However, they did not say those things, but without further hesitation did as they were commanded, and filled all the vessels to the top. Then Jesus said to them: “Draw out now, and carry to the chief steward of the feast. And they carried it,”^[5] and found that it was no longer water, but the best of wine. From this we should learn that it is necessary for us to keep the commandments of God if we wish to have good grounds for hoping that Mary will lend us her powerful intercession to secure the salvation of our souls. You go now to her altars and say the rosary every day; for her sake you give alms to the poor, etc.; but how do you fulfil the divine will? " Whatsoever He shall say to you, do ye;” that is what the Blessed Virgin requires of you. God says to you: you must lay aside that secret hate and anger against your neighbor; you must avoid all injustice and impurity. He says: you must honor your superiors; you must pardon from your heart those who offend you; if you are in the state of sin you must at once repent and make a good confession; you must love God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself. See, that is what God and the Mother of God expect from you. As long as you refuse to obey in those things, your love for and devotion to the Blessed Virgin is only mere outward flattery and deceit.

Such conduct on the part of sinners is great presumption when they hope to go to heaven. And it is moreover great presumption. For what is the object of your pretended devotion to Mary? What do you wish to gain by the prayers you daily address to her? What do you desire or expect from her? That she should help me. But in what? Must she help you to sin, which you do every day? No; he must help me to obtain pardon of my sins from God. What! pardon of sins that you are not sorry for and have no intention of avoiding? And must she obtain for you the grace of God, while you reject and trample under foot the graces offered you? She must save me from hell, that I may not be lost forever. ​From hell, to which you are going every day nearer and nearer of your own accord? She must help me to get to heaven. To heaven, which you close more and more against yourself by your sins, as by so many bolts? Go and throw yourself into the Moselle, and trust that your mother, who is standing on the bank, will save you from drowning; leap into the fire and call on your father to help you out; try this only once and see how you will fare. Oh, what superstitious presumption! God Himself could not help you under the circumstances; He will not, nay, in the present arrangements of His providence, He cannot save your soul without your own co-operation; so that you expect Mary to have more power in this respect than her almighty Creator? No; neither Mary nor any other saint will protect a man who only abuses that protection to sin all the more freely. Nay, God forbids them to intercede when confidence in their prayers encourages the sinner to be more hardy in his revolt against God. When Achillas and Alexander, two priests in high authority in the city of Alexandria, asked St. Peter, bishop of that city, to receive back into the communion of the faithful, Arius, who had appeared to repent, he gave them this answer: My brethren, I am not wanting either in pity or in goodness; I know how to have compassion on a penitent sinner; but that God who sees the heart has already been beforehand with me; Christ Himself has appeared to me with a torn garment, and said that it was Arius who had torn it. And He told me too that I should be asked to receive him back again; but that I must be on my guard and never allow myself to be persuaded to admit His sworn enemy into favor. If you persist in mortal sin, and yet put your trust in the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, you have just reason to dread a similar misfortune. Perhaps Our Lord has been already beforehand with His Blessed Mother; perhaps He has warned her, saying: You will be asked to take that enemy of Mine under your protection; but do not allow yourself to be induced to help one who will not cease to offend Me.

Or not to die without the grace of repentance. But I know well what you think. I acknowledge, you say, that I cannot go to heaven without doing penance, but I have a firm hope that the Blessed Virgin will not allow me to die without penance. To this end she will obtain for me in my old age, or at the end of my life, powerful graces that will enable me to repent of my sins. Yes? And what grounds have you for expecting those graces? for you now act very badly towards her and ​her divine Son. Is that the reason why she should give you extraordinary graces that are rarely given to any one? And by what means shall she get them for you? Where are your prayers or works of devotion that she can present before the throne of God? Are the trifling praises you offer her daily worth being presented to the Almighty? But what is the good of prayer in the moutli of a sinner whose heart is far from God? Perhaps the communions you receive sometimes on her feast-days find favor in her sight? But what efficacy can communions have that are for the most part unworthy and sacrilegious, since you make no efforts to amend your life?

That is even a blasphemy against the Blessed Virgin. But, you say, she can and will offer her own prayers and merits to God for me. Why should she do so? That you may indulge your passions for a while longer, and continue to live in sin without fear? Oh, this is not only gross presumption, but a grievous blasphemy against the Blessed Virgin. So you wish to make her a cloak for your wickedness? And her intercession is to help you to despise and offend her beloved Son recklessly and daringly? And she is appointed advocate between her Son and men that vice may reign supreme under her protection, and sin be committed more freely? Could she not with reason complain of those false-hearted servants in the terms in which God spoke to the Prophet Isaias of His faithless people: “Thou hast made Me to serve with thy sins; thou hast wearied Me with thy iniquities”?^[6] Do you greet me as your Mother and pretend to be my children that I may help you in your abominations? that I may defend and shelter you in your wickedness? See, my dear brethren, what a terrible and outrageous thing it is! So far have some gone that they make devotion to the Mother of God only an excuse to sin all the more boldly. “I shall have peace,” they say with those people mentioned in Deuteronomy, “and will walk on in the naughtiness of my heart.”^[7] I will live in peace and pleasure, according to my desire, and gratify all my inclinations. “I shall have peace;” I have nothing to fear; as long as I only honor Mary every day I am in no danger of damnation. No client of Mary shall be lost forever. I trust in her power and motherly mercy; she is the refuge of sinners as well as of the just. And do we not read of grievous sinners who refused to amend their wicked lives, and yet were miraculously ​converted at the end, and saved by the prayers of the Blessed Virgin?

She is the refuge of sinners; but of those who wish to amend. What you say now is true enough; Mary is the Mother of mercy—a sure refuge of sinners. Ah, truly that is the case. O Blessed Virgin! if thou hadst not helped me, where should I now be? What would have become of me, a wretched sinner? Again I say: Mary is the refuge of sinners, but of those who are earnestly minded to do penance humbly, who beg for the grace of repentance and amend their lives, and not of those who are still determined to persist in sin. True it is that she is a Mother to those who call upon her, and looks on them as her children, but only when they are true children of hers. The servant of Mary will not be lost forever; there is no doubt of that; it is a truth founded on the authority of the holy Fathers, on reason and experience; but it must be understood of faithful servants, and not of slaves of the devil. Great, exceeding great is her power; mighty her intercession to obtain from God all she wishes; that too is true, and I agree with St. Bernard in saying that “from her comes all our hope, all our salvation, all our grace;”^[8] but she bestows those gifts on her friends and not on her declared enemies. Great was the power of Queen Esther with Assuerus; did she employ it in favor of Aman? In spite of his prostrations and prayers he was hanged on a gibbet. The sole refuge and protection of the Israelites was the ark of the covenant, a figure of our blessed Lady; and yet, in the very presence of the ark, thirty thousand of them bit the dust. “There was an exceeding great slaughter, for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen.”^[9] And why should we wonder at this, asks Theodoret, for although they honored the ark, they were steeped in sin?

She has helped to save most wicked sinners, but in an extraordinary way that not everyone can reasonably expect. Finally, it is true that many great and obstinate sinners have been wonderfully converted and saved by her intercession; but mark well that it has been done by her wonderfully, that is, miraculously. Have you good grounds for hoping for a similar miracle in your own favor? If so, then why do you poor peasants plague yourselves to such an extent, laboring in your vineyards on the banks of the Moselle? Why do you toil and moil so hard? Go and fill all your vessels with water, and wait with confidence till Christ, at the prayer of His Mother, turns the water into wine. Yes, you say, a likely thing indeed! But why ​not? It has happened already; and we read of it, not in a history of doubtful authority in which examples are sometimes recorded without sufficient proofs of their veracity, but in the Holy Scripture itself, which cannot be wrong; we are assured that Our Lord worked a miracle of the kind at the wedding-feast of Cana, as we saw in the beginning of this sermon. But I am afraid you would have a long time to wait for such a wonderful thing to happen in your case.

Therefore that hope of sinners is a treacherous one. Therefore, you who are in sin, no matter who you may be, do not flatter yourself that your devotion will help you; do not depend on the protection of Mary; give up that foolish idea, “I shall have peace;” I love, praise, and honor the Mother of God every day, and therefore I have nothing to fear. I have a prayer in my book which has a revelation concerning it to the effect that no one who says it constantly will die an unhappy death, so that I shall not be damned. Ah, you will find out that bye-and-bye! Prayers of that kind, as I have often told you, are mere deceits, no matter how devout they seem. The words are in themselves good and praiseworthy; but the assurance of a happy death for merely saying the prayer, and the revelation confirming it, are, believe me, only lies with which the devil ensnares simple souls. Pray as you will and as much as you can; if you do not change your sinful life, your devotion to the Mother of God, and all the hopes you place in it are alike false and presumptuous. Stick to youropinion that you will not be damned; I tell you that you will be damned in spite of your devotion, and will go to hell with the Blessed Virgin looking on and approving. I come now to the

True, perfect love and devotion to the Mother of God consist in imitating her virtues. Too long have I spent talking of those false servants, my dear brethren. My opinion of you is much better. You honor the Queen of heaven with a sincere devotion; your love for her is found in your pure hearts as well as on your lips; you show it by deeds as well as by words; but is it a zealous and perfect love, or only a weak and tepid affection? This latter is, I fear, the case with some even just souls. For perfect love and earnest desire to please another make a person always try to conform himself with the object of his affection, as experience shows. A lover is like an ape; he imitates all he sees and experiences in the loved one; what pleases the latter pleases him too; what ​the latter cannot bear is a torture to him; if the one finds a thing good to eat, the other at least pretends to eat it with great relish, and often eats with pleasure, simply because the loved one presents it to him, what would otherwise cause him disgust. In a word, all the habits and manners of lovers are alike, as far as may be. Now, if perfect love requires this, have I not reason to fear that but few zealous lovers of the Mother of God are to be found? Ah, holy Virgin, how cold and tepid are my love and devotion to thee!

But very few, even of the just, do that; so that there are few who truly love the Mother of God. For where is our earnest zeal and diligence to resemble thee in all things? to imitate, as far as possible, thy virtues and habits? to make our lives copies of thine? But what am I talking about? The rosary is the tax we pay thee daily; we greet thee with an Ave when we hear the clock strike; on Saturdays we fast, or abstain, or light a candle in thy honor; when we see thy pictures we bow the head; on thy feast-days we go to confession and holy communion; our hearts are filled with confidence in thee in all our wants and necessities in which we call upon thee. These and similar things are almost the sole proofs we give of our love; in them our devotion consists, and he who performs them constantly thinks he does much to honor thee, and indeed what he does is good and praiseworthy. But where is the purity of soul? where the hatred and detestation of all deliberate, and even venial sin? For when we consider thy conception and the whole course of thy life, we cannot find the least stain or shadow of sin. Where is our zeal in the divine service? For we see thee as yet a child of only three years of age, hastening to the temple, and offering thyself altogether to the service of thy Creator. Where is the true humility that we, to our great astonishment, remark in thee, O great Mother of the sovereign God! when in thy Annunciation we hear thee say the words: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord”? when in thy Visitation we see thee acting as the servant of mortals in the house of Elizabeth? Where is the reserve, simplicity, and modesty that shone in all thy demeanor, after the model of thy divine Son? For, through sheer wantonness and dissipation of spirit we hardly know how to do enough to conform to the outward show required of us by the vain world. Where is the carefulness with which we should fulfil the duties of our state, in order to imitate that wonderful obedience that made thee subject thyself, as an ordinary woman, to the severe and dishonoring law of purifica​tion? Where is the conformity and perfect resignation of our will to the will of God, that we should have to resemble thee, when with thy little Infant in thy arms thou didst set out in the dark night, at a single sign of the divine will, for the unknown and idolatrous land of Egypt, hardly aware of where thy journey would end? Where are the true patience and love of the cross? for we see thee, the Mother of sorrows, thy heart pierced with grief, standing under the cross of thy dying Son. Where is our contempt of earthly things, our ardent desire of heavenly goods? for we see thee in thy holy death breathing forth thy soul through sheer desire for heaven. Ah, we think seldom or never of those things! Alas! then have I hitherto without reason called myself thy faithful servant; for my acts and behavior often prove me to be the very opposite; a child unlike indeed to 3uch a Mother! I know that no matter what I do I shall never attain to thy perfection; yet I should strive according to my means, and it is not impossible forme, to follow thee at least at a distance; I am, in fact, bound to do so if I wish to be looked on as having a true, childlike love for thee. For this you, too, my dear brethren, must strive if you wish to deserve the same name. True love for the Mother of God does not consist in outward works of devotion, nor in the mere movements of the heart, but in the diligent imitation of her most holy life. “If you love Mary,” says St. Bernard, “if you wish to please her, imitate her.”^[10] St. Augustine, writing of the feast we celebrate to-day, agrees with him, and says: “Let us all recommend ourselves to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, and implore her protection; but what will it profit us to beseech her by words if we do not follow the example of her humility?”

Answer to an objection. Yes, some one will say, if all this is required to be a child of Mary, what need have we of her protection? To what end a great love for and devotion to her? For if I keep from grievous sin, if I always lead a good and pious life, then I shall get to heaven without her help. Eh! and why then do you not draw this conclusion also: if all those things are required to make a true servant of God, what do I want with the help of God? Why should I stand in need of His grace? For if 1 always lead a holy and pious life, I shall go to heaven without His help and assistance, since the God of truth has promised that reward to him who lives holily. I hardly think you will go so far in your ​reasoning, for yon know well that the grace and help of God are necessary to enable you to live in that manner. And that is the answer I make to your objection; to keep free from sin and lead a good and virtuous life, you stand in need of the help and intercession of Mary, without whom God has determined not to give any grace. And if yon now live holily, do you know that you will persevere in virtue? Is it not possible for you to fall through weakness, or the surprise of a violent temptation, or in some sudden occasion? Are you not then in need of a refuge to help you to rise again after your fall? This you will find in the Mother of God, who will help her child to repent sincerely. And if you have never sinned in your whole life, are you sure of the final grace of a happy death, that God has promised to no one? See where your Mother can help you, and she will not allow her child to be lost forever.

Exhortation to sinners to pray to Mary for the grace of repentance. Oh, more than happy then is he who loves Mary honestly, truly, and zealously! He has, as it were, a written document to show that he is in the number of those whom God has resolved to make happy with Himself in heaven, as all the holy Fathers teach, and as I shall prove in detail on another occasion. O sinners! change your false devotion into a true one! Renounce that secret hatred with which you persecute that holy Virgin and her divine Son by your sins; lay it aside if you do not wish to cheat yourselves! Yet if any one on account of the proximate occasion in which he is, or of inveterate habit, or violent passion and inclination is a slave to sin, as it were by violence, and serves it as he would a tyrant, then I beg of him not to omit his usual prayers and devotion to this most holy Virgin. For although his homage comes from an unclean heart, it is not altogether unprofitable, nor is his state a desperate one. Cease not, although you groan under the weight of your sins, to send forth to her daily with the Catholic Church the sigh for help, “Help me, who am falling.”^[11] O Mary! I know that I am in an unhappy and a dangerous state; I cannot overcome myself and free myself from it. Help me then, O powerful Mother! Obtain for me from thy divine Son the grace to enable me to change my disposition, to overcome this habit, this violent inclination, to free myself from this occasion, and to rise again to penance, to friendship with God, to the life of grace! This prayer may still help to obtain the grace of true devotion.

​Resolution of the just to love Mary sincerely. But as for ourselves, my dear brethren, let us love Mary more and more, and love her always and constantly; and especially as children are apt to watch their mother and to imitate what they see in her, so let us endeavor, as far as we can, to follow the example of our heavenly Mother. Oh, yes, dearest Mother, what good reason I have to begin at last to do this! I must acknowledge that I am one of those presumptuous beings who have dared to make thee a cloak for their sins. Ah, do not therefore reject me from the number of thy children. I desire henceforth to remain in thy service, only that I may promote thy honor all the more in myself and in others. This shall be the object of all my daily prayers and devotions, so that thou mayest obtain for me a true, zealous, and perfect love for thee; that thou mayest increase it, and preserve it in me constantly to the end. Thus I shall live in the assured confidence of ascending one day to thee in heaven, where I shall see, praise, and love thee, my hope, my sweetness, my refuge, my life, for all eternity. Amen.