# Hunolt Sermons/Volume 10/Sermon 45

ON THE ELECT AT THE LAST DAY.
FORTY-FIFTH SERMON.
ON THE CALLING OF THE ELECT TO HEAVEN.
Subject.
The invitation of the elect to heaven should be an incentive to all of us to endure joyfully any labor or trouble, cross or suffering that may occur in the service of God.—Preached on the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr.
Text.
Ecce video cœlos apertos, et Filium hominis stantem a dextris Dei.—Acts vii. 55.
“Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.”
Introduction.
It is hard to have to suffer injuries, insults, persecution, banishment, stoning even to death; and to have to endure those things when one is innocent and has done no harm to any one is still harder; but worst of all is to have to suffer those things from one’s own countrymen to whom one has tried to do good. Such was the experience of the holy Protomartyr, St. Stephen, ns we learn from the Acts of the Apostles; and how did he endure it? With the greatest patience and meekness towards his persecutors and tormentors, with the utmost joy and consolation of heart. To have this joy and consolation all he did was to raise his eyes to heaven: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” Heaven, he thought, is opened and invites me to enter after my suffer​ings here; therefore I must and will bear with joy what I now have to bear. My dear brethren, if in the midst of torments the mere sight of heaven and the Saviour therein caused St. Stephen such great joy, how indescribable must be the consolation and exultation of the just on that day when, freed from all tribulation, they shall see the whole heavens opened, and Christ in His majesty and glory surrounded with angels? when they shall hear His sweet voice calling and inviting them into His heaven: “Come, ye blessed of My Father”? This joyful invitation shall form the subject of to-day’s meditation.
Plan of Discourse.
The invitation of the elect to heaven should be an incentive to all of us to endure joyfully any labor or trouble, cross or suffering that may occur in the service of God. Such is the whole subject.
Judge of the living and the dead! we beg of Thee through Thy dearest Mother and our holy guardian angels, to impress this loving invitation so deeply on our hearts that we may be encouraged so to live in future as to be amongst the number of the elect who are to hear that invitation.
Impossible to understand what the joy of the elect will be on hearing this sentence. When the sheep shall have been separated from the goats, the just from the wicked, each one according to his rank, which depends solely on his merit, being placed in the position assigned to him; when the books of conscience have been opened and the works of men, bad and good, have been juridically examined and published before heaven and earth down to the least idle word and the most secret thought, “then shall the King say to them that shall be on His right hand:” (lift up your eyes and heads, O chosen souls! hear the last sentence, the desirable invitation for which your bodies, long rotting in the earth, but now glorified, have been waiting so eagerly)—then shall the sovereign Judge with benignant countenance and in a most loving manner turn to His chosen children and say to them: “Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” O comforting words! Before we consider them in due order, think, my dear brethren, how joyfully they must resound in the ears and minds of the just. But ​who can understand the greatness of this joy, and describe it to us? Ah, we shall never comprehend it until we shall have the fortune of hearing those words addressed to ourselves.
That joy shown by similes. But to have somo little idea of it, imagine that the son of a great king is about to choose a bride out of some princely or royal family; what hopes and fears are excited as to the object of his choice who is to be raised to royal dignity! Now if this good fortune, which is considered a great thing in the eyes of the world., should fall to the lot of some poor and noble young lady, who is chosen and publicly proclaimed queen on account of her beauty and virtue, what a change would take place among all the people! What felicitations and joy in the happy family! And what would be the sentiments of the bride herself? We find in the Holy Scripture an example of this kind in the person of Esther, who being an orphan was adopted and cared for by Mardochai. Meanwhile King Assuerus had divorced his queen Vasthi, and had caused ail the most beautiful maidens to be assembled from all his provinces in order to select one of them as his queen; no one, says the Scripture, dared appear before or approach the king, “unless the king desired it, and had ordered her by name to come.” Poor Esther! what were thy thoughts then? What wert thou thinking of when the king called thee? Yet thou art to be the one preferred before all the others. As soon as Assuerus saw her he “loved her more than all the women,…and he set the royal crown on her head, and made her queen instead of Vasthi.” Consider, my dear brethren, the great joy that must have filled the heart of Esther at this unexpected piece of good fortune.
Further explained by similes. Let us represent to our imaginations a far more ordinary stroke of good luck than that. A lottery, as often happens in large towns, is published in the newspapers, offering for a few shillings the chance of winning hundreds and thousands of pounds. Suppose now that all the preliminary arrangements have been made, the time is come, the prizes and the names of the winners are drawn and read out in public before the people; as is generally the case in such things, a child is seated on a stage between two judges, and with one fiand draws out a scrap of paper on which is written the prize, with the other a second scrap containing the name of the winner. How the people then ​gape and stare; how they prick their ears to hear the name! The paper is opened and the crier calls out the prize: “four thousand pounds!” How excited all are to know who is the lucky man! The paper with the name is then drawn; who is it? A poor servant-maid, so you are to imagine, who has with great difficulty saved enough out of her small salary to pay for her lottery ticket; she is the recipient of that large sum. Poor girl! what are your feelings on hearing the good news? I believe that it makes you almost beside yourself, and that you can hardly understand the shouts and congratulations of the people at seeing you thus raised from poverty to a condition of affluence. Let us go still farther in our efforts to picture that great joy to our minds; and this time I descend to mere child’s play. How great the joy and exultation of the student when at the end of the year he is called on to mount the stage before all the people, there to receive the first golden book at the end of the play! This prize, small as it is, for often the book is not worth more than a few shillings, is yet much coveted, for it is a mark of honor and a proof of diligence, and being given before the public causes such satisfaction as can hardly be realized except by the student himself who receives it; his parents, if they are present, are frequently unable to restrain their tears, so great is the consolation and joy they experience, especially when there are friends and acquaintances to add to the festive occasion by their congratulations. Ask one of them what they value that honor and joy at. I am sure they would not give it for a hundred pounds.
Every word of the invitation shall cause great joy. Now a little higher with your thoughts, my dear brethren. I have said that I descend to child’s play; but all these instances of good fortune that I have adduced are in reality mere trifles compared to the bliss to which the servants of God shall be called and invited on that great day of the Lord. Then there shall not be question of selecting a bride for a mortal king, or of being called to a perishable crown; for the elect shall be chosen and invited by the eternal Son of God to the everlasting joys of heaven. There is question, not of a hundred or a thousand pounds, but of an inexhaustible treasure of riches, that are to be possessed for all eternity. There is question of a prize of honor that consists, not in a book covered with gilding, but in a reward so valuable that the whole world could not purchase it; because this prize is the infinite God Himself, who is given as it ​were on a public stage in the presence and to the great admiration and wonderment of all the angels, saints, demons, and reprobate. And generally speaking it is to the poor in spirit, who on this earth are humbled, persecuted, afflicted, oppressed, and penitent that this prize is given.
“Come, How joyfully the welcoming words of Our Lord shall resound in their ears: “Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess yon the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Let us consider those words briefly. “Come!” Come from combat to victory; from labor to an exceeding great reward; from the lowly cross to glory and honor; from sorrow to joy; from danger to safety; from darkness to light; from a prison to liberty; from banishment to your fatherland; from the vale of tears to the city of eternal rest. Come! for all care is at an end, sorrow is past, there is no longer any danger of sinning and losing My grace.
Ye blessed of My Father, “Come, ye blessed!” Formerly, as St. Paul says, you were “in labor and painfulness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” Formerly you were counted amongst those Christians of whom the same Paul says: “Others had trial of mockeries and stripes, moreover also of bonds and prisons;” “being in want, distressed, afflicted.” Now you are blessed and supereminently happy and blissful in all things. Formerly the world hated and persecuted you because you did not live according to the manner of vain worldlings nor adopt the customs of the world; now you are a source of terror to the lovers of the world, who must tremble at your feet. Formerly you were despised, persecuted, often reviled, and cursed; now you are raised above all, admired and blessed by all. Blessed in your soul, which always employed its memory, understanding, and will for its last end and My pleasure; blessed in your body, which wore out its health and strength in My service; blessed are your eyes, with which like holy Job you made a compact that they should not look on any dangerous object, and which have so often wept for your past sins; blessed your ears, which you always kept closed against sinful talk; blessed your tongue, with which you announced My praise; blessed your hands, with which you labored for My honor, and which so often helped Me ​in the persons of the poor and needy; blessed your feet, which so faithfully travelled along the rude, narrow way of the cross in the observance of My commandments; blessed your flesh, which you so often mortified by fasting and other austerities for My sake; blessed your lives, which you formed after the example of humility I gave you; blessed your death, which you willingly accepted in My grace; blessed are you now for all eternity! Come, ye blessed of My Father, who has adopted you as His children in My name, because during your lives you have honored and loved Him as a Father, and have heroically preferred doing His will to all the seeming happiness promised you by the vain world. Blessed are you by Me, because you have readily and willingly taken upon you the cross I laid on you, and borne it after Me daily; blessed are you by the Holy Ghost with whose grace you have worked; blessed are you by My Mother Mary, who is yours also, because you have truly honored and loved her as a mother, from whose hand so many benefits have been showered down on you; blessed are you by My angels, whose good inspirations you have always obeyed; blessed .are you by all creatures that you have made use of in My honor, love, and service.
Possess you the kingdom.” “Possess you the kingdom;” take possession of the crown that you have earned as your lawful inheritance by your good will and My grace; possess that same kingdom in which I with the Father and the Holy Ghost reign forever on a throne of glory; possess the kingdom that has no end, and that, safe from all danger, can never be lost; possess the kingdom that is free from all evil and filled with all imaginable goods that your hearts can desire, in which you shall rule and govern with me for all eternity! “Possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;” the kingdom prepared for you, which the reprobate through their perverse will did not wish to enjoy, and which is prepared for you in preference to them from the beginning of the world, to which My Father has predestined and chosen you from eternity, because He foresaw that you would spend your lives doing good, and would die in sanctifying grace! Come, My faithful servants, My best friends, My dearest brothers and sisters, My beloved children, the companions of My cross! Come, enter with Me into the joy of your Lord! Far too small are your hearts to contain the vastness of this joy; enter into it then, as into an inexhaustible ocean, ​where you shall be inundated with all delights, pleasures, and joys for all eternity! Oh, truly that is a most desirable sentence to hear from the divine Judge!
The feelings of the elect and the damned on hearing this sentence. Reflect on this, Christians. What unspeakable exultation and jubilee shall be amongst the elect when they hear this welcome invitation! How they will congratulate each other when parents shall find themselves with their children, husbands with their wives, friends with their acquaintances, preachers with their hearers, and shall be led as in triumph to Our Lord and to Mary, the Mother of God, amidst throngs of angels! How they will praise and thank God the Father for having created them, God the Son for having redeemed them, God the Holy Ghost for having comforted them; the Blessed Virgin because she was their advocate; the holy angels who guarded them, the preachers, confessors, and teachers who instructed them in good! How they will bless the good works they did during life! O good cross! they will exclaim with the holy apostle St. Andrew! O sweet sorrow! O wholesome pain and suffering! O desirable poverty! O blessed contradiction! which we endured for a short time for God’s sake! What exceeding joy you have brought us! O golden tears! sweet repentance with which we formerly bewailed our sins! O blessed prayer that we sent up to heaven! Happy mortification and self-denial with which we subdued our senses! Happy alms and works of charity with which we helped Christ in His poor! to what a height of happiness you have raised us! What an immense gain you have brought us in! And what a joyous echo shall fill the heavenly courts when all the angels and elect shall sing together their canticles of praise, as St. John heard them according to what we read in the Apocalypse: “Alleluia! Salvation, and glory, and power is to our God: for true and just are His judgments.…Let us be glad and rejoice, and give glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come.” Meanwhile the damned, filled with envy and madness at the sight of this triumph of the elect, shall howl and cry out in bitter rage: “These seeing it, shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the suddenness of their unexpected salvation, saying within themselves, repenting, and groaning for anguish of spirit: These are they whom we had sometime in derision, and for a parable of reproach. We.… ​esteemed their life madness, and their end without honor;” these are the people whom we considered miserable, whose humility we deemed ridiculous folly: “Behold how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints.” But we are rejected among the goats and demons; we wretches have to burn in unquenchable fire, while they enter in triumph into eternal joys!
The consideration and expectation of it should now encourage us to despise the invitations of the devil, the world, and the flesh. Ah, joyful words, Come, ye blessed! May I hear you one day! My dear brethren, I do not doubt that during the meditation every one of you forms the same wish and desire in his heart, and says to himself: may I too be among the number of the elect on that day to receive that blissful invitation! And who could help forming such a wish? If we had a thousand lives, should we not cheerfully give them all to have the good fortune of hearing that sentence from the lips of Jesus Christ? But we can have it, if we wish, and that too with one life only, and a very short and uncertain life, if we only serve God truly while we are in it. The treacherous world often invites us now with nattering words: Come, it says; “let us eat and drink.” “Let us enjoy the good things that are present.…Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments;” let us spend our short lives in dancing and amusing ourselves; who knows when we shall die? The corrupt flesh says to us: “Let us crown ourselves with roses before they be withered.” Let us enjoy ourselves while we are young and have the opportunity! Come! cries out perfidious Satan; I will make you great and honored before the world; I will fill your coffers with gold; I will raise you to great power and influence. Christians, do not listen to those invitations! They all lead on to the broad way of destruction; they are invitations that shall one day be followed by the terrible sentence of the Judge, Depart, you cursed! They are invitations that seem delightful at first, but that lead to an evil end, and if we now listen to them we shall have no chance of ever hearing the joyful words, “Come, ye blessed.”
And to bear Now our Saviour and future Judge gives us another invitation: ​trials with patience.
“Come to Me, all,” He says; but how? “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” on the way in which I travelled while on earth, and in which My holy servants have come after Me: the way of meekness, humility, patience, poverty, crosses, and sufferings. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into His glory?” There is no other road to heaven for you: “Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God,” as I have warned you by My Apostle. An invitation that is apparently hard to hear; but “look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand.” Think of the day on which that invitation shall be changed into another joyful one, when to your great consolation you shall hear the words, “Come, ye blessed!” He who now gladly hears the word of the cross, says Thomas à Kempis (a chapter of whose golden book of the Imitation of Christ you ought daily to read), he will hereafter hear the glad invitation to eternal joys. “A patient man shall bear for a time, and afterwards joy shall be restored to him,” such are the comforting words of the Holy Ghost by the wise Ecclesiasticus.
For after a short sorrow eternal joy shall come. Shown by similes. Not without reason did our dear Saviour adduce the simile of the trees when He was speaking of the last judgment, and encouraging us all to be constant and patient: “See the fig-tree, and all the trees: when they now shoot forth their fruit you know that summer is nigh.” Go into a garden in winter and look at all the trees, one after the other; how miserable they seem! They are bare, dry, and sapless; not a green leaf is to be seen on them; they are covered with snow and have hardly the appearance of trees; we cannot tell whether they are to bear apples, pears, or other fruit; they look just like old brooms, and one hardly cares to see them. But what is there to wonder at? It is winter time, and we cannot expect anything else. Wait, however, till the cold is past, and the pleasant spring-time arrives; then the dry, leafless, naked trees shall clothe themselves again; ​they shall put forth their buds and leaves, and rival in their blossoms the most beautiful flowers; the bees fly round them and suck out their honey; the birds hop about on the branches and sing and frolic the live-long day; then we go with pleasure into the gardens, fields, and forests, to see the beautiful verdure, and to enjoy the song of the birds. So it is with us mortals; in this life many of us are very badly off; one is sick and in pain; another despised and abandoned; another poor and needy; many a one has to plague himself with hard work, and even then can hardly find enough to feed himself and his family; many a one lives in continual care and sorrow, and sighs and moans under the pressure of tribulation; one is in want of this, another of that, until life itself becomes a burden; no one is without the cross. But be not amazed at this; it is winter-time: we are living in the sorrowful vale of tears. Have courage; only serve the Lord zealously, and let each one bear his cross with patience and resignation to the divine will. It will not last long; the gloomy winter shall hold only for a few uncertain years, and then the joyful, pleasant spring shall come. Then shall we hear: “Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come. For winter is now past, the rain is over and gone;” all tribulations have come to an end. “The flowers have appeared in our land,” flowers that shall never fade; “the time of pruning is come.” “Come, ye blessed of My Father,” enter into the eternal joy of your Lord! Oh, how small shall then appear all former labor and trouble; how light and sweet it shall seem in comparison to the immense weight of joy and glory that shall be given to us in return!
When we possess this joy we shall look on all past sorrow as nothing. If we could now open heaven, and ask the elect about the trials, mortifications, and penitential works they endured during their lives for God’s sake, what answer would they make us? Even what Our Lord said to His two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They were talking with each other about the passion and death of their Master: “What are these discourses,” He said to them, " that you hold one with another as you walk, and are sad?” What! answered one of them, “art Thou only a stranger in Jerusalem?” Art Thou the only one that knowest not what has been done to Christ? “To whom He said: What ​things?” as if He knew nothing of it, although He understood more of it than any one, and felt all the agony of His bitter death. Our Lord’s design in this, says Silveira, was to show that all He suffered in His cruel passion seemed as trifling to Him in comparison to the present happiness of His glorified body as if He had forgotten all about it; and therefore He asked: What things? What was done to Him? The same, I say, would be the answer of all the saints in heaven; what? they would say; what have we done on earth? What martyrdom, or penance and mortification, or trouble and sorrow? It is not worth while to speak of those things, nor to ask a question about them. We have forgotten them long ago; we never think of them unless to our own greater consolation, because we have undergone them. They are all nothing compared to the joy we now have; our sorrow was over in a moment; now we rejoice in eternal delights, in which our bodies shall have their share too on that day when we shall hear the sweet voice of our Judge saying to us: “Come, ye blessed.”
Exhortation to reflect often on this invitation. “Look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand.” My dear Christians, lift up your heads, or better, your hearts, in spirit. Whenever a temptation to sin attacks you, or some tribulation comes in your way in the service of God, or any cross embitters your life: look up at once to heaven! Think of the last day of the world; imagine that you already hear the words of your Judge: “Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Ah, and think at the same time: is then this joyful invitation, which I so long and desire to receive, not powerful enough to keep me for a short time from forbidden pleasures, or to enable me to bear patiently for a while these pains, this sickness, this trouble, this cross and trial?
After the example of the holy penitent Pelagia. Thoughts of this kind made a wonderful penitent of St. Pelagia, who was once a notorious sinner. She could hardly form a good desire for anything supernatural; she was sunk in the mire of impurity; but on one occasion curiosity and perhaps too the wish to show herself off and excite others to unlawful desires, impelled her to go to a church, in which the holy Bishop Nonnus was preaching to the people on the sentence of the Judge on the last day. This so touched her heart that through shame ​and fear she covered her face with her veil, began to weep bitterly, and after the sermon made a most contrite confession of all the sins of her life. Pelagia! she said to herself; Pelagia! away with you! this is no place for you! away from the company of men, into the desert! And putting on a penitential garb she went to Mount Olivet, where she built herself a small hut from which she could see the valley of Josaphat. The meditation of the last judgment, said she, has converted me from my sinful life, and brought me back to God; the meditation of the last judgment shall also help me to lead a pious life with God in future. To that end she used to spend the greater part of the day at the window of her hut, looking down into the valley. There, she would say, is the place of judgment, where I and all the people of the world shall one day meet, and await our Judge; in that valley the great account-book shall be opened in which my sins are written; in that valley I shall be either on the left or on the right hand of the Judge; in that valley shall be thundered forth the sentence on the damned: “Depart, you cursed;” in that valley shall be heard the joyful words of the Judge to the elect: “Come, ye blessed.” Pelagia, what do you think of this? Will you not serve your God faithfully that you too may hear those joyful words? And whenever the enemy tried to bring her back to her former sinful life by exciting in her unlawful desires, she fled for refuge to the window. Listen, Pelagia, she would say: “Depart, you cursed!” How do you like that? Are you still inclined to sin? And if her fasting, prayer, or mortification seemed too hard to her, she would again run to the window and looking out on the valley of Josaphat, exclaim: “Come, ye blessed!” hear that, Pelagia! Is it not well worth your while to suffer a little for a short time?
Conclusion to serve God zealously, that we may one day recieve that invitation. Let us often renew those thoughts, my dear brethren, and make this earnest resolution: I too will serve my God truly to the end! Away, deceitful world, with all your vanities! Begone from me all you who have hitherto tried to lead me into sin; I will listen to your invitations no more: I will not follow your treacherous customs and fashions: I wish to be in the number of the elect who shall on that day hear the joyful words from the lips of their Judge: “Come, ye blessed!” Therefore I will spend the short time that remains to me in Christian humility, meekness, patience, and charity; therefore from this moment forward I give over, O my God! to Thy fatherly providence, myself ​and all belonging to me, in joy and sorrow, in consolation and trouble, in crosses and adversity, just as it may please Thee! I am ready for everything, and prepared to do Thy will in all things, that I may one day, as I trust, with child-like confidence, hear that desirable, and joyful, and consoling invitation in the valley of Josaphat amongst the sheep of Thy fold: “Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;” enter into eternal joy. Amen.
Another introduction to the same sermon for the first Sunday of Advent.
Text.
His autem fieri incipientibus, respicite et levate capita vestra; quoniam appropinquat redemptio vestra.—Luke xxi. 28.
“But when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads: because your redemption is at hand.”
Introduction.
But, O Lord! are not these strange words of Thine? Is that the time to lift up our eyes and heads, when the powers of heaven are to be moved, when the stars are to fall from the firmament, when the sea shall overwhelm the earth by its raging waves, when men shall wither away for fear, when that terrible day of judgment is approaching, and in every tomb shall resound the cry: Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment? When we shall see Thee coming in a cloud with great power and majesty, shall we then lift up our heads and await our redemption? Should it not rather be the time for us to bow down our eyes and heads humbly to the earth, to strike our breasts, and to implore mercy? No, says Our Lord; “when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads;” rejoice and exult. It is to you I am speaking, faithful servants of God; because fear, anguish, withering away, and despair are only for the wicked on that day. Yes; they indeed may well seek to hide themselves under the earth; they may call on the mountains and hills to cover them. But be you of good heart then, “because your redemption is at hand.” My dear brethren, last year as a warning to the wicked I selected as the subject of our meditation the terrible sentence of the Judge against the sinner: “Depart from Me, you cursed, ​into everlasting fire;” and that meditation we made in the holy season of Advent. Ah, do not forget it! Think often of it; consider what it means to be rejected by God, to be accursed by God, to be sent to eternal fire! And now for the encouragement of all in the divine service I shall take a more consoling subject, namely, the far different sentence that shall be passed on the just on that day: “Come, ye blessed,” etc. Continues as above.
* ↑ Venite beneditull Patrus mei.—Matt, xxv. 34.
* ↑ Tunc dicet rex his qui a dextris ejus erunt: venite benedicti Patris mei, possidete paratum vobis regnum a constitutione mundi.—Ibid.
* ↑ Nisi voluisset rex, et eam venire jussisset ex nomine. Adamavit eam rex plus quam omnes mulieres, et posuit diadema regni in capite ejus, fecitque eam regnare in loco Vasthi.—Esth, ii. 14, 17.
* ↑ In labore et ærumna, in vigiliis multis, in fame et siti, in jejuniis multis, in frigore et nuditate.—II. Cor. xi. 27.
* ↑ Alii vero ludibria et verbera experti, in super et vincula et carceres.—Heb. xi. 36.
* ↑ Egentes, angustiati, afflicti.—Ibid. 37.
* ↑ Alleluia! Salus et gloria et virtus Deo nostro est; quia vera et justa judicia sunt ejus. Gaudeamus et exultemus, et demus gloriam ei: quia venerunt nuptiæ Agni.—Apoc. xix. 1, 2, 7.
* ↑ Videntes turbabuntur timore horribili, et mirabuntur in subitatione insperatæ salutis. Dicentes intra se, pœnitentiam agentes, et præ angustia spiritus gementes: hi sunt quos habuimus aliquando in derisum, et in similitudinem improperii. Vitam illorum æstmabamus insaniam, et finem illorum sine honore. Ecce quomodo computati sunt inter filios Dei, et inter sanctos sors illorum est.—Wis. v. 2–5.
* ↑ Comedamus et bibamus.—Is. xxii. 13.
* ↑ Fruamur bonis quæ sunt. Vino pretioso et ungruentis impleamus. Coronemus nos rosis antequam marcescant.—Wis. ii. 6–8.
* ↑ Si quis vult post me venire, abneget semetipsum, tollat crucem suam, et sequatur me.—Matt. xvi. 24.
* ↑ Nonne hæc oportuit pati Christum, et ita intrare in gloriam suam?—Luke xxiv. 26.
* ↑ Per multas tribulationes oportet nos intrare in regnum Dei.—Acts xiv. 21.
* ↑ Respicite et levate capita vestra; quoniam appropinquat rederoptio vestra.—Luke xxi. 28.
* ↑ Usque in tempos sustinebit patiens, et postea redditio jucunditatis.—Ecclus. i. 29.
* ↑ Videte ficulneam et omnes arbores. Cum producunt jam ex se fruetum, scitis quoniam prope est æstas.—Luke xxi. 29, 30.
* ↑ Surge, propera amica mea, columba mea, formosa mea, et veni. Jam enim hyems transiit, imber abiit, et recessit. Flores apparuerunt in terra nostra, tempus putationis advenit.—Cant. ii. 10–12.
* ↑ Qui aunt hi sermones, quos confertis ad invicem, ambulantes, et estis tristes? Tu solus peregrinus es in Jerusalem? Quibus ille dixit: quæ?—Luke xxiv. 17–19.