# Hunolt Sermons/Volume 10/Sermon 39

ON HELL.
THIRTY-NINTH SERMON.
ON THE ETERNAL FIRE OF HELL.
Subject.
The reprobate shall be condemned: 1. To fire; 2. To eternal fire.—Preached on Quinquagesima Sunday.
Text.
Tradetur enim gentibus.—Luke xviii. 32.
“For he shall be delivered to the gentiles.”
Introduction.
Who was to be delivered to the gentiles? The Son of man, Jesus Christ. He was to be mocked, despised, spat upon, scourged, nailed to a cross, and put to death. And what wrong had He done? None whatever. He was innocence and holiness itself. Why then had He to suffer such treatment? To atone for the sins of the world, and to offer full satisfaction for them to His heavenly Father. O sinners! wo to you and me if we do not atone by timely repentance for our many crimes! For if an angry God delivered up His only Son into the hands of the gentiles to be put to death for the sins of others, how will it be with us if we fall into the hands of an avenging God on that day? If the sentence on us shall be, “Depart, you cursed;” words which we have made the subject of a recent meditation? Alas! thus abandoned and rejected by God, shall we too be delivered up? and to whom, and for what purpose? To the gentiles, to be mocked, and scourged, and crucified? Ah, even that would be tolerable! But far more terrible shall the sentence be. Hear it again: “Depart, you cursed!” Whither? “Into ever​lasting fire!” Here is food for thought. Fire! Eternal fire! These words alone suffice to represent to the imagination that terrible final sentence. Loss of heaven! Separation from the sovereign Good! The gnawing worm of conscience! Mental anguish and desperation! Mad rage and fury against one’s companions! Hideous goblins and devilish shapes of horror! Mad howlings and curses and blasphemies of the damned! Intolerable stench of so many bodies burning in a pit of sulphur! Hunger and thirst! Serpents and the gall of dragons! Torments without alleviation, comfort, or hope! These and similar horrors are ascribed to hell in the Holy Scriptures; but I need not refer to them now. I may afford to treat them as if they were mere fables. Fire! Eternal fire! This one thought is enough to make the hair stand on end. O fire! eternal fire! who can dwell in thee? My dear brethren, we think so seldom of this; and yet if we reflected on it as frequently as we should, eternal fire would not be the lot of so many. We shall consider this subject to-day, according to the warning of the Holy Ghost: “Let them go down alive into hell;” go down in thought into hell during life, that you may not have to go there after death.
Plan of Discourse.
Therefore the wicked shall be condemned to fire by the final sentence. Ah! what terrible pain for them; as we shall see briefly in the first part. They shall be condemned to eternal fire. Ah! what an incomprehensible pain: the second part. The folly of the sinner in wilfully choosing that terrible fire shall be the concluding thought.
All shall find some useful considerations in this meditation. Great God! my words are powerless; Thy grace must now speak and work with special strength and emphasis! We do not implore Thee on behalf of the unhappy wretches who are now burning in hell, for Thou hast no more grace for them; but we do beg of Thee to impel us, who are still living, so to order our lives that not one of us may have to suffer in that fire. This we beg of Thee through Mary, the Mother of mercy, and our holy guardian angels.
Of all earthly torments, that caused by fire is the worst Of all the elements, the most active and penetrating is fire; of all torments, the worst and most intolerable is that caused by fire. The hardest stones and metals, steel and iron, brass and copper, ​silver and gold, are melted by the heat of fire, and made like a flowing stream. To be burnt alive, singed with burning torches, torn with red-hot pincers, and roasted on burning coals were the worst tortures inflicted either by criminal judges on offenders, or by tyrants on the martyrs of Christ, who gave their blood for the faith. Our Father Eusebius Nierenberg, who was in his day a wonder of learning and piety in Spain, lay for ten years grievously ill in bed, and suffered so much in every part of his body, that there was hardly a limb that had not its own special torment; it was believed of him that he had begged of God so to afflict him in this life, that he might increase his merit by suffering the pains of purgatory before death. In all his torments, his only answer to those who used to visit and try to console him was: “It is not fire: it is not fire!” The pain I have to suffer is indeed severe, but it is not fire. His nerves were so contracted that he became quite crooked; his long lying in bed caused the flesh to become so corrupted that it had to be cut off his body; but his only cry was: “It is not fire; it will soon.be over.”
As we know by experience. Why need we seek the testimony of others, my dear brethren, since we can consult our own experience on this point if we wish, and see what pain fire can cause? If one happens to burn the outer skin of the finger, it is recommended to hold the affected part to the fire to draw the heat out. The remedy is an assured one; but did any of you ever try it to see how painful it is? Oh, how the poor patient screams and bites his lips, and how often he draws his finger away! One might think he is almost on the point of losing his senses, so great is the pain he suffers. It would be almost impossible to bear it for the space of one Miserere. Yet the flesh is not even in the fire, which merely sends the heat out to it. How would it be if the finger had to be kept in the fire or on a burning coal for the space of a Miserere? Truly, there is many a one who would rather cut the finger off altogether than bear such torture. Some of you may have seen a glass-blowing establishment, or a smelting-furnace, in which iron and copper are melted? Is it not a grizzly sight to see the seething, hissing mass of molten flame? Not long ago I stood before a brew-kettle, and saw the fire underneath, which was not at all equal to that of a smelting-furnace. I wished to throw in a piece of wood, but the heat was so great that I was glad to abandon my intention. O my God! thought I; how would it be ​if I were thrown bodily into that fire? I could not live long in it, certainly, for in a moment I should be suffocated. But if God were to prolong my life therein by a miracle only for the space of one Ave Maria, how could I endure that pain even for such a short time? And if I had to spend a whole hour in the flames? Or a whole day, or a month, or a year? The bare thought made me shudder with horror! But I could not help thinking at the same time: what is it all compared to the fire of hell? It is only a mere shade, a fire painted on the wall, if the holy doctors of the Church, holy Writ, and reason itself deserve credence.
But the fire of hell is far more painful and terrible. So it is; all the fire we have ever seen or could see on earth, or picture to our imaginations, is only a thin smoke in comparison with the intensity and activity of the fire of hell. Truly, says St. Bernard, those mountains of sulphur that vomit forth flames and destroy whole countries; the fiery rain that an angry God poured down from heaven on the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrha, which burnt up at once a whole country; that furnace in Babylon, of which the flames rose to the height of forty-nine cubits; all these things are nothing compared to hell, or else they are mere chimneys or sparks from the infernal fire; such are the words of the Saint. The holy martyr, St. Lawrence, jested with his executioners as he lay on the gridiron for a few hours at the farthest. Other martyrs, acting on the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, did not wait for the executioner, but of their own free will leaped into the burning pile as if it were a bed of down; others took up the glowing coals and heaped them on their bare heads, as if to crown and adorn themselves; others sang joyous melodies in the midst of the flames. So little did they think of earthly fire, if they could only escape the far more terrible fire of hell, in which there is no singing or laughing, but only howling, weeping, and gnashing of teeth.
The reason of this. And the reason of this is evident; for all our tire on earth is only a natural element, which can work and torture only according to its ordinary natural strength, and can burn nothing but material bodies. The fire of hell, on the other hand, is an element raised miraculously above its natural powers, so that it burns and tortures not merely bodies, but also souls and pure spirits. Our earthly fire after a short time deadens sensibility and consumes the body to ashes, but the fire of hell has received from the Creator the peculiar property of devouring and at the ​same time preserving what it devours, of tormenting and yet never destroying what it tortures, of burning and yet never consuming what it burns. It does not destroy what it burns, says Tertullian. Our fire is kindled by weak creatures; the infernal fire by the Almighty God.” I…will refine them as silver is refined.” says the Lord by the Prophet Zacharias. I Myself shall burn and torture the wicked man who is delivered over to My justice. Thus we may say that the divine omnipotence is the soul of this fire; It lights it, fans it, and, as Tertullian says, excites it to the highest pitch according to the fulness of the Godhead. It is kindled by an angry, embittered, and now implacable, avenging God, whose chastising justice shall be as sharp and severe in the next life as His long-suffering mercy is mild and meek in this. Such is the threat He utters by the wise Ecclesiasticus: “For mercy and wrath are with Him.…According as His mercy is, so His correction.” Therefore this fire is so terrible that it comprises in itself all imaginable torments, so that from the severity of the punishment we may understand how far the vengeance of an offended and Almighty God surpasses any chastisement inflicted by a mere creature. Therefore Tertullian calls the fire of hell a rich treasure of torments hidden in the bowels of the earth.
If earthly fire causes intolerable pain, what must the fire of hell be? Now if our earthly fire can cause such pain, that one may not hold his finger in the flame of a wax candle for the space of one Miserere; who of us, my dear brethren, shall be able to dwell in the midst of the raging flames of hell, compared to which all our fire is but a shadow? And yet the reprobate man shall be buried in this flame; that is, he shall be covered and surrounded with it on all sides, and shall have to remain so for all eternity. Holy Writ always represents this fire to us by most terrible pictures, and by the awful effects it produces; it is a place where a fiery shower falls from above like a stream on the damned, and inundates them from below: “Burning coals shall fall upon them; thou wilt cast them down into the fire.” Elsewhere it is described as a madly rushing torrent, which drowns the wicked in its foaming and raging waves: “The breath of the Lord as a torrent of brimstone kindling it.” Again it is likened to a fierce dragon that bites, tears, and devours: “Thou shalt make them ​as an oven of fire, in the time of Thy anger: the Lord shall trouble them in His wrath, and fire shall devour them.” Our dear Saviour uses a strange mode of expression in the Gospel of St. Matthew: after having exhorted us rather to cut off the hand or foot, and tear out the eye that might lead us into sin, and thus to enter blind and lame into heaven, than having eyes, hands, and feet, to be hurled into hell, He adds these wonderful words: “For every one shall be salted with fire.” That is to say, as fish that is salted in a barrel is so completely penetrated by the salt that no part of it remains unsalted, so also they who are condemned to hell shall be tormented by fire, not merely on the outside of their bodies, but in every part of them. They shall be “salted with fire.” Oh! wo to thee, sinner, who art now given up to carnal sins; if thou dost not do timely penance, thou shalt one day be a burning coal in this fire; that body of thine, corrupted by the filth of foul passions, shall be completely penetrated by an intolerable heat, that will pierce thee through like a glowing iron; thy flesh shall be roasted, the marrow in thy bones melted, thy brain shall boil and seethe in thy head, and, like the iron bull that Phalaris invented to be heated from the outside with burning coals, nothing but flames of fire shall burst forth from thy mouth, and nose, and eyes, and ears. Thus shalt thou be in hell surrounded with fire, above and below, on the right and on the left, inside and outside; thou shalt be more fire than the fire itself! O fire! what a terrible torment thou art! O fire of hell! what a far more terrible torment art thou! O eternal fire of hell! what am I now to think and say of thee? That we shall consider in the
Second Part.
It would be tolerable in some degree if it were ever to end; but it is eternal. To burn in fire is a fearful torment, but it is still tolerable; it is the lot of even the chosen friends and children of God, the poor souls in purgatory, and indeed they endure the fire with the utmost patience and love of God. What a terrible torment it is to be slowly burnt alive! Yet even that is endurable, for St. Lawrence suffered it and actually laughed and jested in the midst of his martyrdom. But to live always in fire; to have a fiery house for one’s dwelling; flames for one’s bed and covering; ​never to die in that fire; never to be released from it; never to have any alleviation of one’s torments, to burn forever: that is at the same time terrible and incomprehensible! O truly! let hell be far hotter than the Holy Scriptures describe it; let its pains and torments be increased a thousand-fold; let them last for countless millions of years; all that would be nothing as long as the fearful " forever” is wanting. If the fire of hell would only come to an end some time or other; if I could now go to the lost souls, and say to them with truth: your torments, O unhappy wretches! shall indeed last for a long time, but sooner or later they shall end; I should make a heaven out of a hell, and fill it with songs of gratitude and praise, instead of curses and blasphemies. But, alas! unhappy souls, this hope is not for you; you must burn forever and ever, for all eternity! My dear brethren, I acknowledge that this is a sad, melancholy, and gruesome thought: I feel it so myself. But what of that? We must necessarily give it our serious consideration. What would it help us to refuse to think of it, or to hear of it? Would the fire of hell be thus rendered less painful, or of shorter duration? Should we have less reason for fearing and avoiding it? Oh, you think, such a subject is enough to take all pleasure out of one’s life! Would to God that we had ho pleasure in sin; then might we laugh at the thought of hell; and for that very reason we should often think of the torments of the damned, so that, being filled with the fear of offending God, we should not run the risk of having to burn in that terrible fire of hell. But you fill us with fear! And if I do so, is it not an infallible truth that there is the eternal fire of hell appointed for the impenitent sinner; an article of faith revealed by God? I do not make things worse than they are. If it gives you any pleasure, I can make them far better. Suppose that in hell there is no other punishment than the gridiron of St. Lawrence, nay, nothing worse than the flame of a torch or of a wax candle to torment the reprobate unceasingly on only one part of the body; and alas! that that pain last forever, as we cannot deny, unless we wish to make the Lord God a deceiver, the true Church of God a liar: “The hell of fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.” “Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire!” Let us ponder for a while on these words, and see what eternity means, and then so order our ​lives that we may never have to suffer in such a fire; for our fate in that respect depends on ourselves.
Even pleasure, when too protracted, becomes a pain. Even a pleasure, a delight, an entertaining play, delightful music, as I have elsewhere said, and as experience proves, becomes after a time a source of weariness and discomfort. For instance, what can be more comfortable than to lie in a soft bed of down? Yet try what it would be to lie in a bed of that kind for seven or eight hours at a stretch, on one side and fully awake; you will soon see that even such a comfortable position becomes intolerable after a short time. Wonderful was the plan employed by a certain pious king to bring to a better way of life a courtier of his, who was living rather carelessly. He invited the man to court on a certain day, to spend the time with him in all kinds of amusements. Early in the morning he got up a grand hunting-party that lasted for a considerable time; immediately after there was a game at ball for some hours, and finally he was invited to witness a play. The courtier; wearied with such a round of amusements, was anxious to go home, but out of courtesy he had to follow the king, who went to the play. The performance lasted four hours; God be praised, he thought, at last there is an end of it! But he was mistaken; for hardly had he left the play-house when he was asked to go and hear a grand company of foreign musicians; the invitation was rather pressing, and in spite of his reluctance the poor man was obliged to accept. It seems, he said to himself with vexation, as if the king wished to put an end to me by sheer force of pleasure-seeking to-day; if another invitation follows this one, and I sincerely hope such will not be the case, it will surely finish me. But he was again disappointed; the fifth invitation came; as evening approached a ball was given in the palace, and he was told that the king awaited him, and expected him to supper afterwards. Alas, said the poor man, what is to become of me! Is there nothing but dancing for me now, and I am almost dead from fatigue? I am so tired, I can hardly stand! Your majesty, he exclaimed at length, I am most grateful for your extreme kindness to me, but for God’s sake grant me a little rest; I feel quite faint. How could one expect to stand eighteen hours of amusement without a rest? What, replied the king; is that too much for you? Do you find eighteen hours of constantly changing amusement too much! If so, how will it be with you hereafter, in case you have to go to hell and spend a long eternity in unin​terrupted pains and torments, without any alleviation or change? and unless you alter your mode of life that will most certainly be your fate.
What then must pain be when it lasts long and indeed forever? My dear brethren, let us often think of this. If long continuance makes even pleasure painful, how intolerable must not pain itself be when it lasts long? It is painful to have a bad tooth drawn; yet it is not difficult to console the patient in such a case. Have courage, you say to him; it will soon be over; the whole thing will be done in a moment, and you will have no more pain to suffer. If it took one, two, or three hours to perform the operation, who would submit to such torture? And not only is the actual suffering of a long agony intolerable to us, but the mere sight of such agony in others fills us with pity and terror. A robber or murderer is condemned to the gallows or to the sword; if the executioner bungles in his work, and keeps the poor wretch suffering a long time, how the bystanders murmur and express their disapproval of him! Make haste! they all cry out, and put the poor fellow out of pain; do not torture him so long. Now, I ask myself, if the pain of having a tooth drawn, or of dying by the rope or the sword, is rendered so acute by being lengthened that we cannot even behold it in another person without being horrified at the sight, what must be the state of one who has to live for a long time in a burning fire? How must it be with him who has to spend not one or two hours, nor one or two days, nor one or two years, but a whole endless eternity in the terrible and most painful fire of hell?
We cannot describe eternity. O eternity! exclaims St. Augustine; what art thou? "Say what you will of it, and you will never have said enough." Say that it includes as many millions of years as there are stars in the firmament, grains of sand on the sea-shore, leaves on the trees, drops of water in all the rivers in the world, "you will never have said enough;" when you have counted up that im- mense number, you are still far from the total of eternity. Why? Because all those things bear some measure and proportion; thus, so many drops make a gallon, so many gallons a cask, so many casks a stream, so many streams a great river, so many rivers a sea; and the drops, no matter how small they are, can be so increased and added to that they will make an ocean. But no time, no matter how long, has any proportion to eternity. Add millions of years to it and it will not become greater; take away millions ​from it and it will not grow less. Cain is now in hell for some thousands of years, but lie has not lessened his eternity by a moment; he can say: I have now been burning in hell for so many thousands of years; but he cannot say: now I have one hour less to suffer. Eternity remains just as long as it was when he first entered hell.
Explained by similes. O my God! what is this that I hear? Is it then irrevocably fixed with Thee never for all eternity to release a lost soul out of hell? Allow me to propose some conditions to Thee. How long does it not take a snail to crawl a mile? Now do Thou, O Lord! keep a snail alive for the necessary time, allow him to change his position only once a year, and let him continue that until he has wandered over the whole earth; how many years he would take to do that Thou alone canst tell. But when all these years are at an end, will not the lost soul have suffered enough in hell? No; not enough yet. Create, O Lord! a heap of millet-seed as large as heaven and earth; let an ant come once every thousand years and take away one grain from the heap (ah, unhappy Cain, only five grains would now be taken away since you have been in hell!); how many years would elapse before a heap of grains as large as this church would be thus carried off, to say nothing of a heap great enough to fill heaven and earth? And yet, suppose it all carried away to the last grain, and it should come to an end some time; gracious God! even then shall there be no end to the fire of the damned? No: even then there shall be no end, and that fire shall burn as it did in the beginning. Mercy, O God! At least when the soul has suffered as long as it takes a sparrow, that is allowed merely to wet his beak but once in a hundred thousand years, as long as it takes him to drink dry all the rivers and seas in the worlds at least then, I say, Thy justice will be satisfied? No; there is no mercy to be hoped for! That soul must burn forever! Yet permit me once again; I will make eternity long enough for Thee! Suppose the whole earth to be one vast brazen ball, and Thou canst make it bo with one act of Thy will; let the lost soul come once in a million of years with a small hammer, and strike one blow at this ball, and continue that until he has worn away the whole mass; wilt Thou allow that soul to burn all that time? Truly I will! But when that time is at an end, will not that suffice? Hear, ye reprobate, at the end of that long period you will be released! Are you satisfied? Ah, would that even that hope ​were left us! But what dost Thou say, O Lord? No! even then there shall be no end to their eternity; nor shall they have an hour less to suffer. Have done with those foolish conditions; they are but halting similes that can give no idea of eternity. The reprobate shall burn in hell forever, that is, always, without end, unceasingly, as long as I am God. O “always”! O long eternity! as long as God is God! Here my mind stands amazed, my understanding is baffled, my reason is nowhere! Well may I cry out with Thy Prophet, O Lord! “Who knoweth the power of Thy anger: and for Thy fear Thy wrath can number?” How terrible it is to fall into the hands of an eternal, living God, who is always embittered against the dead sinner, always taking vengeance on him, and whose punishments are at the same time most just!
Folly of the sinner in choosing eternal fire for the sake of worthless things. O sinners! who are actually in the state of sin, and are not yet earnestly minded to make a good confession and to amend your lives, what are you thinking of if you refuse to consider this truth? What have you to be afraid” of if you do not fear hell? If an eternal fire cannot hold your bad passions in check, nor help you to deny yourselves a momentary pleasure, and to serve for a short time a God worthy of all love that you may gain heaven; what help is there for you then? Are you not foolish, senseless, mad, wantonly to sin and put yourselves in such a woful state, that if you die therein you will have to burn in hell forever without any mercy? Tell me, any one of you, if wealth or pleasure were offered yon on the condition that you should lie for a whole day on a glowing gridiron like St. Lawrence; how much would you ask as compensation for that torture? Would ten thousand pounds suffice? or ten years spent in all kinds of pleasure? Eh! you would exclaim; I would not suffer such torture for all the riches and joys of earth! But if you had to suffer for only one hour, would you then agree? No, you think; even that short time would seem too much for you. And I believe you, and am certain that if you agreed to accept the condition, you would repent the very first moment, without waiting to feel the pain of the tire, and you would take back your word, and renounce all riches and pleasures, rather than stand such a martyrdom even for a quarter of an hour. O man! where is your human reason? For all the goods of the world you would ​not spend one quarter of an hour in a temporal fire; and for the sake of a miserable coin that you gain or keep unjustly, you choose the eternal fire of hell! You would not spend an hour in a temporal fire for all the joys of earth; but for a wretched, brutal pleasure, that often consists merely in the imagination and vanishes in a few moments, you choose the eternal fire of hell! For all the honors of the world you would not spend one hour in a temporal tire, but you would rather burn forever in hell than restore the injured honor of another; you would rather be in hell forever than honestly disclose your sins in confession; rather burn in hell than forgive your enemy or beg his forgiveness; rather be in hell than abandon that person who is a proximate occasion of sin to you; rather be in hell than give up that unlawful intimacy; rather be in hell than remove that stumbling-block; rather be in hell forever than give up the habit of cursing and drunkenness? Where is your reason, I ask you again; or where is your faith? Do you not believe in hell? Then you need not believe in God; for one as well as the other is an article of our faith.
No one can undertake to endure that fire. Would that I had lungs of iron and a voice of thunder, that I might go to all the towns and countries of the world, and cry out in the ears and hearts of all men those words of the Prophet Isaias: “Which of you can dwell with devouring fire? which of you shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” Would that I might impress those words on all, so that no one might be hurled into the fire of hell! “Which of you can dwell with devouring fire?” Can you, O luxurious man! who cannot bear the least inconvenience, who cannot endure to hear a dog howling, a child crying, or a fly buzzing round your ears? How will you be able to hear, and at the same time to feel the crackling and rattling of your bones in the lake of boiling brimstone; and that forever? You who cannot bear the approach of a poor beggar, how will you stand the intolerable stench of your body and the bodies of others burning in sulphur; and that forever? “Which of you can dwell with devouring fire?” Can you, O woman! brought up in every comfort and luxury, who so carefully avoid all that might occasion you the slightest pain? A trifling headache or tooth-ache seems intolerable to you; you cannot kneel an hour in church before the Blessed Sacrament, or stand for ​an hour to hear a sermon, you must sit down to rest; to fast and abstain for forty days seems almost an impossibility to you; an ill-fitting shoe, an ill-made feather-bed, a dish not prepared exactly to your taste, a soup too hot or too cold, is enough to excite your anger; how will you be able to hold out on a bed of fire in hell; and that forever? “Which of you can dwell with devouring fire?” Can you, O unchaste man! who spend day and night in seeking sensual gratification, and pass your time in a round of dissipation? Will you be able to stand that hellish oven, in which your body, penetrated through and through by fire, shall become fire itself? And that forever? “Which of you can dwell with devouring fire?” Can you, O vain and delicate maiden! who cannot now bear the prick of a needle without screaming; who could not bear a spark of fire, or even a drop from a burning candle on those shoulders that you expose as a source of temptation and scandal to souls? How will you be able to lie on, and hide yourself, and wallow in those burning coals of hell fire, not for a day, or a month, or a year, or a hundred thousand years, but for all eternity? Which of you, my dear brethren, can dwell with devouring fire?
Therefore we will do penance and amend our lives. Mercy, O God, mercy! No; there is not one of us who can do that; not one of us who can make up his mind to it! We will do penance, and that at once for our past sins. Ah, we want no hell! no fire! no eternal fire! We are ready for any other punishment, O angry God! only save us from eternal fire! From this moment we renounce sin and begin to lead new lives, so that we may escape this fire, and come to Thee in eternal joys. Such should be the thoughts, the resolutions, the actions of all, if there are any such here present, who are in the state of sin. If in future any occasion, temptation, passion, or inclination, no matter what it may be, should try to lead us into sin, let us at once ask ourselves in thought, can I then burn forever in devouring fire? But if I now choose to commit this sin, I prepare that fire for myself. No, no; I will not be so cruel to myself. Or if we find that thought fruitless, we might imitate the pious hermit who, when he was tempted to carnal sins, ran at once to the fire, put his hand into the flame, and said to himself: see how yon can stand fire and flame; and if you cannot bear it for a short time, how will you bear to have your whole body burning forever in hell? Are you still inclined to sin?
A lesson for Think of the same fire, too, O you troubled and oppressed souls! ​the afflicted. when your crosses and trials seem too hard for you, and you are on the point of losing patience and giving way to cursing or desperation; think and say with Father Nierenberg, ah, this is net fire! It is not the fire of hell! It is not an eternal fire! How well God means with me in punishing me as a father here by this cross, so that He may spare me hereafter in eternity. Shall I then, by my impatience, turn this temporal suffering into an eternal one? No, Lord! whatever Thou sendest me, I shall willingly receive from Thy hand, and readily suffer it; I have deserved much more! “Here burn, here cut, that Thou mayest spare me in eternity!”
Conclusion for the Just who formerly sinned grievously. And finally, you just and pious souls, who have probably in the past committed grievous sins for which you have done sincere penance, think and say with me: O good Lord and God! what do I not owe Thee? I had at that time, as Thou well knowest, deserved that terrible everlasting fire! How many are burning therein who have committed the same, and perhaps fewer sins than I have! Why am I not burning with them? If Thou hadst allowed me to die while in that miserable state, alas, I should now be with them in hell! Oh! “The mercies of the Lord I will sing forever.” With Thy Prophet David I will praise that great mercy which has spared my life, given me time for grace and repentance, and saved me from everlasting fire. If, O Lord! Thou wert to do what Thou never wilt do, and release a lost soul from hell, and bring it again to life, how grateful would not that soul be to Thee! No penance so great, no punishment so severe, no torment so long that he would not endure it with joy until the last day. And how he would praise, bless, honor, and love Thee! How carefully and exactly he would guard against offending Thee again by even the least sin! How humble he would be even towards the lowliest! How zealously he would serve his beneficent God and Saviour! Ah, my Lord and my God! am I less bound to Thee now? Hast Thou not released me, and that often too, from hell, which I have merited as well as any lost soul? Can I then dare to be in the future cold and tepid in Thy service? Should I not shudder at the thought of offending Thee even by a deliberate venial sin? Should I ever complain that the crosses Thou sendest me here on earth are too heavy and severe? Should I not love Thee above all things with my whole heart? Yes, I acknowledge it, O God of mercy! My ​whole life long and for all eternity I will never forget this clemency of Thine. In all circumstances, at all times, in adversity as well as in prosperity, this thought shall impel me to remain faithful to Thee, to fulfil Thy holy will zealously, to further Thy honor and glory whenever I have the opportunity, until, as I hope and desire, I shall see and praise Thee, my Saviour, in everlasting joys. Amen.
Another introduction to the same sermon for the second Sunday of Advent.
Text.
Mortui resurgunt.—Matt. xi. 5.
“The dead rise again.”
Introduction.
The raising of the dead was well enough in the days when Our Lord was still on earth as a mortal Man, when at the prayers of sorrowing friends and relations He caused the dead to come to life. But how will it be on the last day, when the terrible trumpet shall sound forth the command: “Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment!” Sinners, what will be your feelings, when, having risen from your graves, you will hear the awful sentence by which God shall banish you from His sight for all eternity: “Depart from Me, you cursed,” as we have considered on the last occasion? But still more awful will be the other part of that final sentence: whereto shall you be condemned? etc. Continues as above.
* ↑ Descendant in infernum viventes.—Ps. liv. 16.
* ↑ Fumariola quædam, et ignis æterni missllia.
* ↑ Uram eos sicut uritur argentum.—Zach. xiii. 9.
* ↑ Misericordta enim et ira est cum illo…Secundum misericordiam suam, sic correptlo illius.—Ecclus. xvi. 12, 13.
* ↑ Ignis arcani subterraneus ad pœnam thesaurus.
* ↑ Cadent super eos carbones, in ignem dejicies eos.—Ps. cxxxix. 11.
* ↑ Flatus Domini sicut torrens sulphuris.—Is. xxx. 33.
* ↑ Pones eoe ut cilbanum ignis in tempore vultus tui: Dominus in ira sua conturbabit eos, et devorabit eos ignis.—Ps. xx. 10.
* ↑ Omnis enim igne salietur.—Mark ix. 48.
* ↑ Gehenna ignis: ubi vermis eorum non moritur, et ignis non extinguitur.—Mark ix. 46, 47.
* ↑ Discedite a me maledicti in ignem æternum!—Matt. xxv. 41.
* ↑ Quidquid de æternitate dixeris, minus dicis.
* ↑ Quis novit potestatem iræ tuæ: et præ timore tuo iram tuam dinumerare?—Ps. lxxxix. 11, 12.
* ↑ Quis poterit habitare de vobis cum igne devorante? Quis habitabit ex vobis cum ardoribus sempiternis?—Is. xxxiii. 14.
* ↑ Misericordias Domini in æternum cantabo.—Ps. lxxxviii. 2.
* ↑ Discedite a me maledicti.—Matt. xxv. 41.