Hunolt Sermons/Volume 10/Sermon 61

The pious Christian alone can rejoice in the present life: 1. Because he is on the right way to attain his end; 2. Because he has a star shining before, which assures him that he is on the right way.—Preached on the feast of the Epiphany.

Videntes autem stellam gavisi sunt gaudio magno valde.—Matt. ii. 10.

“And seeing the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.”

But do not rejoice too quickly! You are not yet where you wish to be! You must not sing the song of triumph before having gained the victory. You are indeed in search of a great Hood, but you have not found it yet; you may now hope and desire, but you should not rejoice till you have found and actually hold what you seek. You have already once failed, and the same may happen to you again. Why then such great joy? “They rejoiced;” and that too with a great joy, nay, with an exceeding great joy. So might one have addressed the three wise kings when they left Herod in the city of Jerusalem, and went on farther in their search after Jesus, the Saviour of the world, whom they did not find there. And they might have answered: ​Say what you will, we rejoice with an exceeding great joy. Why so? Because we again see our star shining before us, so that we have no need now to ask the way or to be fearful of having lost it; and if we are not yet in possession of what we seek, the star assures us that we are on the right way that will surely bring us where we want to be, and where we shall find the Child whom we seek. My dear brethren, the man who seeks God, and is certain that he is on the right way to find God, has truly reason to rejoice even in this life with an exceeding great joy. That is the case with you, O pious and just Christians! no matter how poor you may be in the eyes of the world; and you alone have reason thus to rejoice, as I now propose to show for the comfort of the good and the instruction of the wicked. I repeat:

The pious Christian alone can rejoice with an exceeding great joy even in this life, because he is on the right way to attain his end; the first part. Because he has a star with him to assure him that he is on the right way; the second part. Therefore he who wishes to have true joy on earth must always keep on this way, if he is on it already, or otherwise he must seek it if he has lost it.

For this twofold grace, and that we may have the joy that springs from it, we all turn the eyes of our mind to the star of the world, Mary, and to the lights of Heaven, our holy angels.

It is a comfort for the traveller to know that he is on the right road. The traveller who has a long journey before him to the place he wishes to reach in order to transact some weighty business on which much depends, can, as long as the journey lasts, have no greater comfort, joy, or pleasure than that which arises from the certainty that he is on the right road which will surely bring him to his goal. He may have many difficulties to encounter, many annoyances to put up with; he may have to be content with an uncomfortable inn, where he will find little to eat, and an uneasy couch at night; but in spite of all, he still preserves his good humor, and consoles himself with the thought: I do not belong to this place, and meanwhile I am getting nearer and nearer to the end of my journey; I am still on the right way, and all I have to do is to keep straight ahead. This consolation is much increased when he has with him some faithful, pleasant companion who is well acquainted with the road, and shortens it by agreeable conversation, giving him at the same time ​the assurance that he is on the right way to his destination.

But very annoying to be always in doubt about it. On the other hand, what a source of trouble it is to the traveller to be always in doubt, and to have to wander here and there without rightly knowing where his footsteps lead him? To be obliged to make one’s way through a gloomy forest by different paths; to travel on until one is ready to fall down with fatigue and weariness, and withal to have to ask one’s self: where am I going to? am I on the right way, or not? that is indeed a source of extreme discomfort. And how it grieves him, when, after having asked the way, he is told that he is altogether astray, that instead of going to the east, he has been travelling for hours to the west, and must now retrace his steps! For he has had much labor in vain that he might just as well have expended on attaining the true end of his journey.

We men are on the way to heaven. Mark there, my dear brethren, the joyous consolation which the just and pious, and the just and pious alone have in this life; and on the other hand, the anxiety that torments the wicked, and the wicked alone, in spite of their apparent happiness. Who are we who live here on this earth? What are we doing here? We are all strangers and travellers on earth; we are only passing through it, as St. Paul says: “Pilgrims and strangers on the earth;”^[1] to whom earth is lent only for a short time, not given for eternity: “For we have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come.”^[2] Where have we come from, then? “We are absent from the Lord,”^[3] says the Apostle; we have come from the Lord. Whitherare wegoing to? Back to the same Lord. As the rivers come from the sea to pour themselves into it again, so all men have their origin from God as their Creator and first Cause, in order to return to God as their last end, and to be happy with Him forever. To no purpose do we live; in vain do we toil and labor, if we do not seek God, if we do not strive for God as the one object of our wishes. Let the human heart seek true repose, contentment, pleasure, wherever it will, it will never find them except in God alone. To possess Thee alone, O Lord! we are created; that we know to be true, and we acknowledge with Augustine: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is uneasy until it rests in Thee.”^[4] Not to attain to Thee is the ​abyss of the most extreme misfortune; to attain to and possess Thee, the fulness of all imaginable happiness.

Hence it is a great comfort for a soul desirous of salvation to know that it is on the way to heaven. What is there then to give man, as long as he is a traveller and pilgrim, true consolation, if such a thing is to be found on earth? Nothing can do so better than this thought: I am on the right way, which will assuredly lead me to heaven, to God, to my supreme Good. And what is that way? That of which David speaks when his heart is enlarged for happiness: “I have run the way of Thy commandments, when Thou didst enlarge my heart.”^[5] The way, namely, of the law of God, the way of virtue and justice, which you, O pious Christians! keep and walk on. It is truly a narrow and difficult way, one that requires much labor and toil to keep; but what does that matter to you? You do not belong to this world. Yet it is the true and direct way that leads to eternal life, which you desire to attain; it is the only way thither, and there is no other; and he who wishes to come to God must enter on and travel by it. “For they that work iniquity have not walked in His ways,”^[6] says David in the same psalm.

Hence sinners can have no true comfort or repose. What consolation then, or pleasure, can the wicked have in this life? They are subject to the same miseries and accidents as other men; they are banished into this vale of tears like all others; and at the same time they must know and say to themselves: I am going every day farther and farther from my last end; I am on the road that leads to eternal death; “the ends thereof lead to death.”^[7] Oh, what a wretched state to be in! What a terrible journey to make! Poor, sorrowing, sick, persecuted, but just Christians! do not complain as if you alone were unfortunate, as if you were the only ones whom God subjected to misery in this world! No; there are countless numbers who have more to suffer than yon, who have far less pleasure in life than you. Let the wicked laugh and boast, and say: we are at the top of the wheel; we have a pleasant life of it; we eat, drink, dance, and amuse ourselves; that is the business of our lives; we seek and find all that delights the flesh and the senses; joy and pleasure is our portion on earth. But do not believe them; they are lying; what they say is not true. The joy and pleasure that are found outside of the way to heaven are only false and deceitful ​delights; or they are a mere hypocrisy, an appearance of joy that shines outwardly, but leaves the heart filled with bitterness. St. John Chrysostom likens them to the poor, unhappy Israelites, who wept and mourned in the Babylonian captivity, far from the promised land, as we read in the one hundred and thirty-sixth psalm: “Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept when we remembered Sion. On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments;” and all we could do was to weep and lament. Our masters tried to cheer us up, and to hear us singing joyous melodies. “For there they that led us into captivity required of us the words of songs:…Sing ye to us a hymn of the songs of Sion.” Ah, we answered, how can we do that? “How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?”^[8] How could we be joyous away from our fatherland? away from the right road, nay, away from all hope of reaching it? This, says St. Chrysostom, is a sketch of the miserable state of those who are not on the way to heaven: “Those who are slaves to sin and estranged from God ought to walk dumb and silent and to cease all music and song.”^[9]

Since they know they are going away from heaven and to hell. For how is it possible for one to be truly joyous and happy who knows that all his happiness is in God, and at the same time must acknowledge that he is far away and estranged from God? How can he indulge in a hearty laugh who believes that his eternal welfare is in heaven, and yet goes farther and farther away from heaven? Who can rejoice who has nothing to fear so much and to avoid so much as the everlasting fire, the neverending torments of hell, and yet knows that he is hourly going to hell with gigantic strides? “What pleasure can there be where there is so much fear, danger, and the apprehension of such great evils?”^[10] The interpreters of Holy Writ are amazed with reason when they come to the nineteenth chapter of the Third Book of Kings, to read how the Prophet Elias could sleep calmly in the open field, although he was actually being sought for to be put to death by the raging and furious Jezebel: “He cast himself down, and slept in the shadow of the juniper-tree.” ​But that is, after all, not surprising; he was a holy man, whose conscience did not reproach him with any crime; all he could lose was his mortal life, and he had already begged of God to take it from him: “He requested for his soul that he might die, and said: It is enough for me, Lord; take away my soul.”^[11] I am far more astonished and terrified to think that a man who has a grievous sin on his soul can for even one moment laugh, sleep, rest himself, indulge in the festivities of shrove-tide, while he is actually on that most dangerous road on which the Almighty God, whom he has made his bitterest enemy, follows him step by step with the sword of wrath; on which the hellish furies surround him on all sides, while hell opens wide its jaws to swallow him up at once, and to sever him for eternity from God and from heaven. If the wicked had nothing on earth to torment them but this one thought: I am on the wrong way, and if I die now I shall be lost forever, it alone should suffice to show the truth of the mournful but vain lamentation of the reprobate in hell: “We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and have walked through hard,” troublous, and difficult “ways.”^[12]

But the good can rejoice in the thought, I am going to heaven. How much more joyous, O Lord! is the life of Thy servants on the rude way of the cross! I must acknowledge with Thy Prophet: “Blessed,” and more than blessed, “are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that search His testimonies, that seek Him with their whole heart.”^[13] They can laugh and rejoice with an easy mind; they can be joyous from the bottom of their hearts, “with an exceeding great joy.” For what a consolation, what bliss it is to be able to think and say: I am on the right way, and as long as I walk on it I am sure that I love my God, and that God loves me! On that way I may walk, stand, sit, lie down, wake, sleep; at all times my God is with me—my truest Friend, my most loving Father, who protects me in danger, defends me from evil, takes special care of my body and soul; who arranges all that happens to me in this woful world for my greater good; who counts all my steps, marks down all my thoughts, words, and actions, reckons up all my sighs and tears, that He may give me an ​eternal reward for them. As long as I live and walk on that way I shall surely find what I seek and desire, namely, that same God, my only and sovereign Good; if I die on that way, no matter what the manner of my death may be, I shall certainly reach my longed-for fatherland, to which I am journeying, and where my inheritance shall be among the saints and elect in the eternal heaven of joys. Oh, what a comfort! It seems to the sinner and worldling as a mere fable and folly; but the servants of God know and experience how great and sweet it is.

A greater consolation is not on earth. Herein consists that agreeable repose of the soul that the Apostle calls “the peace of God, which surpasseth all understanding;”^[14] a peace that far transcends all the senses and all the delights of sense that creatures can perceive. Thus a pious soul can say to himself: Although lam not in high esteem with the world, what does it matter to me? Vain honors are not what I seek, nor do they constitute my happiness. I may not have great riches; I may be poor and needy, and in want of many things, but why should I trouble about that? Money does not make the happiness that I have to seek in this journey of life. I may live in a poor place where I have many annoyances and mortifications to contend with, that come in my way in my efforts to keep the commandments of God amid all the dangers to which I am exposed; but what of that? Pleasures, delights, bodily comforts, are not the happiness that I have to seek in this my earthly sojourn. What I do seek and desire, the sole object of my journey, is eternal happiness, an eternal crown of honor, an eternal treasury of wealth, an eternal abundance of joys, an eternal, infinite God, and in God an infinite Good that I possess when I love Him; and when I once have that Good, and do not wilfully cast it away, no man can take it from me. Wicked, unjust world! do what you can; you may take away my temporal goods by chicanery and deceit, but the chief Good that I seek you cannot deprive me of or steal from me. Impious and uncharitable tongues! talk as much as you will; you may lessen my good name before men, but you cannot take from me the favor of my God, nor lessen it in the least. Demons of hell! strain every nerve; rage, rave, and storm against me as long as you will; you may tempt and plague me, but it is not in your power to separate me from God, unless with my own consent. Although I am still a traveller, and see my fatherland only afar off; although ​I have not yet secured possession of my God in heaven, for that I cannot hope for or expect as long as I am on earth, yet I am on the right way to it, and I am quite certain and assured that if I do not, of my own accord, turn aside, I shall reach heaven. There is nothing more for me to wish or hope for during the period of my earthly pilgrimage.

Hence God exhorts the good always to rejoice in the Lord. Oh, my dear brethren, now I no longer wonder that in countless passages of Holy Writ the Almighty encourages, exhorts, commands, His pious and just servants to rejoice and be glad at all times, in all places and circumstances, although they are still in this vale of tears. “Be glad and rejoice.”^[15] “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.”^[16] “Serve ye the Lord with gladness. Come in before His presence with exceeding great joy,”^[17] and so on. Howling, weeping, fear, and anxiety, of which I otherwise speak so often, belong to the wicked, who have made themselves My enemies, and who hurry on to their ruin on the road of sin; but you, My true servants and faithful friends, My dearest children, who love and serve Me, and live according to My law, “be glad and rejoice.” Go on; you are on the right road; you are not very far from your reward, which will be exceeding great and abundant in heaven.

Especially as they are sure they are on the right way to heaven. Yes, you say, that is a great comfort indeed; but how am I to know that I am one of the pious friends of God? that I am in the state of grace, and on the right way of justice and the observance of the commandments? The three holy kings saw the star before them, which by its light showed them the way, and made them sure of finding Jesus, the Saviour of the world. “Where am I to find a star like that? Perhaps I am going astray while I imagine I am on the right road. Perhaps I am still on the way to hell while I flatter myself that I am getting nearer to heaven? I have often sinned grievously before now; can you furnish me with a document to show that my sins are forgiven? The judgment of men is a different thing from that of the almighty God, who found even His angels guilty of sin. Perhaps I am doing wrong when I think I am doing good. God pleases me; maybe I do not please Him. Is it not written: “Man knoweth not whether he be worthy of love or hatred”?^[18] How then can I dare to trust in my having taken the right way, and ​to rejoice with an easy mind? And if I am now on the right road, how long shall I remain on it? May not the devil be a highwayman to rob me? How do I know what God intends to do with me? whether or not He has written my name in the Book of Life, among the elect? And have I not reason to fear that I shall be damned on account of my past many and grievous sins? Faith assures me that the number of the elect will be small, and that most people shall go to hell; have 1 not cause to fear that I shall be with the majority? No matter how I look at the matter, I cannot be sure of being saved at last. And with all this, how can I rejoice and be glad? Truly, my dear brethren, that objection seems a well-grounded and a difficult one. But away with all cowardly and unnecessary fear! That he who has the good will to serve God truly and constantly has no need to fear the devil on his way to heaven; that he has nothing to fear on account of past sins, many and grievous though they be, provided he has duly repented of and confessed them; that he has nothing to fear on account of the fewness of the elect; that he has nothing to fear on account of the uncertainty in which he is regarding his salvation: all this, if God grants me life and light so long, I will prove as occasion offers in the course of the present year. To-day let this be enough for our comfort, that we are on the right way to heaven. Yes, you say; but I do not know even that. But truly you do know it; you and all those who do their best to serve God piously have a bright star, a guide to assure you that you are in the state of grace, on the right way to reach God and heaven; and therefore, like the three holy kings, you may securely rejoice with exceeding great joy, as for your further consolation I now proceed to show in the

The pious man can have a human certainty and assurance that he is in the grace of God. It is true that God is a strict, all-seeing Judge, from whom nothing can be hidden: " Indeed, I know it is so,” says the innocent Job, “and that man cannot be justified compared with God.”^[19] True it is, as Ecclesiastes says: “Man knoweth not whether he be worthy of love or hatred: but all things are kept uncertain for the time to come;”^[20] that is, as the Council of Trent says, man does not know with an infallible certainty, such ​as is required for an article of faith; thus no one on earth is as sure of being in the state of grace as he is sure, for instance, that Christ is really present in the Blessed Sacrament, for it is impossible for this latter not to be true; but that you or I should not be in the state of grace is not impossible, since we have no revelation from God regarding the matter. Nor can we have such a certainty about that matter as we have, for instance, that if we put our hand into the fire it will be burnt; for this latter consequence must inevitably follow, unless God by a miracle prevents the fire from working its usual effect, as He often has done. Nevertheless, even in this life, as theologians, with Father Francis Suarez, teach, one can have a positive assurance and certainty of being in the grace and friendship of God, an assurance that, humanly speaking, will not deceive him; that is, one that rarely fails him, and on which he can always rely firmly, so that he cannot have any reasonable cause for doubt. For example, that you may understand the thing more clearly: it is not impossible for the upper part of this pulpit to fall down and break my head, nor for the whole church to tumble to pieces and bury us all in its ruins; nor would a miracle be required to cause either of those events to happen, for they might arise from purely natural causes. And yet if I were to ascend the pulpit with fear and trembling, and keep looking up at the top to see if it is coming down on my head, or if one of you were to remain at home and never to venture into a church, or to hear Mass or a sermon, or otherwise while in the sacred edifice were continually anxious lest the roof should fall in, or the arches give way: would any of you look on either of us as being in his right senses? No; a fear of that kind is foolish and unreasonable. This church has stood a long time already; it shows no signs of decay in the foundations, no dangerous cracks in the arches, and hence I have no sound reason to fear that it will fall on me; I enter it therefore without the least fear or anxiety, for it is humanly certain that it will not fall. Similar to that is the assurance and certainty of the pious Christian that he is in reality leading a holy life, that he is in the state of grace before God, and on the right way to heaven; and that assurance he has from the sole testimony of his good conscience.

And this assurance is given him For when a man is earnestly minded to save his soul, to please God and do His holy will, as far as it is known to him, judges on reasonable grounds that he has no mortal sin on his ​by his conscience. conscience which he has not already repented of and confessed; when, moreover, he is firmly resolved for the future not to commit a single mortal sin for any reason whatever, and has remained faithful to his resolution for some considerable time, keeping the commandments constantly, he may believe without any doubt that he stands well with God, and can rejoice therefore with all his heart. These are not my words; if they had no better authority you might refuse to credit them; but they are the words of the great St. Basil and other doctors of the Church. “You ask,” he says, “how one can persuade a soul that it is free from sin?” And he answers: “If a man is in the same dispositions as David, who said: ‘I have hated, abhorred iniquity;’ if he can truly say: ‘Not to me did the perverse heart cleave,’ then without doubt he may believe himself free from sin.”^[21] So speaks St. Basil. SS. Isidor, Bonaventure, and others speak to the same effect. On the same basis St. John founds the intimacy with which he dealt with the Almighty, and which he advises us also to use towards God: “If our heart do not reprehend us, we have confidence towards God,”^[22] and know that we belong to Him. If, then, you wish to find out whether you are in, the number of the pious who are on the right path to heaven, ask your own conscience in all sincerity, for you must not try to deceive yourself, whether it can reasonably and with truth maintain that it still holds hidden a mortal sin not yet confessed or repented of, or that a perverse heart still cleaves to it, that is, the desire to commit mortal sin; and if your conscience cannot show that either of these is true, then without doubt you may believe yourself free from sin. If a grievous sin lay on the conscience, it certainly would not be at rest, especially in one who is determined to love God and save his soul. Therefore if your conscience does not accuse you, be perfectly at rest; return your joyous thanks to the good God for the favor He has shown you, and beg of Him humbly, and at the same time confidently, to keep you on the right path always.

What joy and comfort this testimony gives. This, namely, the good conscience, is the star and guide that makes you sure of being on the right road; the Psalmist says of it: “Light is risen to the just, and joy to the right of ​Shown from the Fathers. heart;”^[23] and the Apostle, writing to the Romans: “The Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God.”^[24] Can any one in the world desire or wish for more for his peace, contentment, and true joy than the testimony that the just man always bears about with him, that he is a child of God, an heir to the kingdom of heaven? This alone was enough to fill St. Paul with joy in the midst of tribulations, pains, and persecutions, so that he boasts publicly before the world: “Our glory is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity of heart and sincerity of God, and not in carnal wisdom, but in the grace of God, we have conversed in this world.”^[25] All other things I consider as mere dirt; the only thing in which I set my honor, glory, and reputation is my good conscience. O happy joy of a holy conscience! exclaims St. Augustine. Thou art the soft pillow on which the soul may repose in security, with pleasure, without fear, in this stormy sea of the world, amidst the raging and tossing of the billows, and in spite of all the miseries of life. Thou art the paradise of joys into which the heavenly Bridegroom leads His spouse to show her what a sweet Lord He is, and what an agreeable consolation it is to serve God, to be in the friendship of God! Thou art a foretaste and sure pledge of heaven, in which there will be no other joy but to know God, to love God, and to rejoice in and with God! Rejoice, O soul! that art adorned with a good conscience; rejoice with a heavenly and eternal glory! So speak the holy Fathers of a good conscience.

Confirmed by the experience of the good. But what do the hearts of those who have already experienced and known this repose say of the matter? Ask the pious souls themselves, even those who are away from all worldly consolations, and who lead lives of the utmost severity that seem troublous enough; ask them how things go with them. Gaily and cheerfully, they will answer; thanks be to God! all goes well; I am satisfied; I do not know what more I have to desire or wish for! O sinners! no matter how rich or powerful you are, how gorgeously you are clothed, how much you hunt after all kinds of pleasures, which of you can dare to say with truth: everything goes well with me; I am satisfied; I want nothing more? ​Ah, bring all your imaginary joys and pile them in a heap; no pious servant of God, who is satisfied with his Creator, would change with you, or barter his repose of conscience for all your wealth and pleasures; nay, he would not give his austerities, his sighs and tears for all your delights. We sometimes see with heartfelt pity a soul that loves God shedding hot tears of sorrow for past sins; what, asks St. Chrysostom, do you think those are bitter tears? No; you are far astray; those tears are far sweeter than any laughter. “Those who have a good conscience feel and know what a comfort there is even in tears, fasting, mortification, and penance.”^[26] Now if weeping is as sweet as laughter on the way of the just; if pain itself brings joy and consolation to a good conscience, what are we to say of the delights and comfort that the good God, who never allows Himself to be surpassed by His creatures in generosity, gives abundantly even in this life to His true servants who seek Him? And if such exceeding great joy is to be found, even on the way to God, in this present pilgrimage, how indescribable must be the joy of the soul at the end of its journey, when it shall enter the heavenly country, after all the toil and labor is over, and behold for the first time the sovereign Good it sought so eagerly? when at its departure from this world the gates of heaven shall be opened to it and the angels will come out to meet it with the joyful invitation: “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”^[27]

Exhortation to the just to keep always on the right way. Rejoice, then, just and pious Christians, with exceeding great joy! “Rejoice in the Lord always.” You alone have cause to do so; you are on the right road to God; you have a star with you; you bear about with you everywhere your conscience that gives you infallible testimony that you are not gone astray. “Rejoice in the Lord always!” in all occurrences and circumstances, even in poverty, even in contempt, even in sickness, even in the most painful crosses and sufferings; for you have always this sweet thought to console you: I stand well with God; God is my Friend; I am a child of God; I am going to heaven if I only remain constant! The only thing you have to guard against most carefully is to lose the right path by committing sin; otherwise there is nothing in the world to disturb your repose of conscience, the only true joy that the soul can have in this life.

​To sinners, that, seeing the misery of their state. You, O sinners, on the other hand, you who are going astray on the paths of wickedness and hastening to your eternal ruin, how I pity and bewail your miserable, lamentable state, not merely on account of the hell you are hastening to, but also on account of the misery you suffer in this life. You will never persuade me that you lead a pleasant, peaceful, and quiet life. Laugh as much as you will; give to eyes, ears, taste, and sinful flesh all that can delight them; the soul, the heart, in which alone peace and contentment reside, and which in your case is tormented by the gnawing worm of conscience, cannot enjoy repose; and therefore you may not boast of true joy or pleasure. Oh, no! the troublesome guest you have admitted, even against your will, that is, your bad conscience, will not permit you to be happy; whether you like it or not, you must always hearken to its voice crying out to you: You have done evil; you are an enemy of God, a slave of the devil, a child of destruction, a victim for hell. No; until this sharp thorn is taken out of your foot, you must feel the inflammation and the pain it causes. As long as your conscience gnaws at you, you will seek in vain for perfect peace and joy. What do I say? Joy? You will have a hell on earth if you have a bad conscience, as St. Augustine says, who had experience of it before his conversion. Sinners! if you are not sunk in the very depths of vice, you must know how very bitter it is to have abandoned the Lord your God.

They may return to God. Do you wish then to enjoy true peace of heart and real joy? Ah, then turn away at once from the path of sin to the way of the pious and just. Hear the loving words with which Christ invites you: “Come to Me, all you that labor and are burdened,” and sigh under the heavy yoke of the devil, “and I will refresh you. Take up My yoke upon you,…and you shall find rest to your souls; " you will see and know that " My yoke is sweet, and My burden light.”^[28] It is not a heavy one, as you imagine; it is a sweet yoke, a light burden. Must not you yourselves acknowledge this? Tell me, is there any one of you who has before now truly repented of his sins and laid down the heavy burden of them by a good confession? If so, I ask him: how was it with you then, when, having received absolution, you left the church? Did yon not experience a sudden change, a wonderfully sweet joy of heart? Oh, truly! You seemed to ​walk as lightly as if a heavy mill-stone had been lifted from your heart. And how soft and calm your sleep that night! Thus your own experience compels you to acknowledge that it is a far greater happiness to be freed from sin, and to be a servant, friend, and beloved child of God than to give a loose rein to your passions in the miserable state of sin and in the slavery of the devil. But if you have never had experience of this, then come, I beg of you, and give it a trial! Do penance sincerely, and learn how true it is that the just man can always rejoice with an exceeding great joy. “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is sweet.”^[29]

Conclusion to serve God faithfully and to rejoice in Him. Yes, O Lord! I believe it. I know what sweetness Thou hast prepared for those who love Thee with their whole hearts, and serve Thee alone! Did things ever go wrong with me when I kept by Thy side, and on the way of Thy commandments? If I were to say so, I should not speak the truth. Was I ever truly joyous or happy when I left Thee and Thy service? I should lie if I said so. If I ever spent a miserable hour, it was that in which my conscience reproached me, saying: you have made God your enemy! you have lost your soul, heaven, and all! Ah, I still bewail that unhappy time! I curse that pleasure, that good,, the love of that person which led me into sin and separated me from my sovereign Good! In future nothing in the world shall be so dear to me as to bring me again into such misery! For where can I find perfect peace and joy of heart, unless in Thee alone, O God! the one object of my love? Thee shall I seek, and Thee alone shall I seek, and seek constantly. Let others strive for what pleases them, and find their joy where they will: “But I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will joy in God, my Jesus.”^[30] In Him shall I place my honor, my riches, my hope, and my all. But I beg of Thee humbly with Thy servant David: “Perfect Thou my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps be not moved;”^[31] that I may never leave the right way until, led by Thy grace, I shall have accomplished my journey, and arrived at the place where I shall find Thee, and rejoice with Thee with a great, an exceeding great joy. Amen.