Sermon 335H
SERMON 335/H
ON THE BIRTHDAY OF THE MARTYRS
Contempt for the present life and longing for the future life.
All the celebrations of the most blessed martyrs remind us how much the present life should be despised and how much the future one should be sought. Therefore, our own Lord Jesus Christ, the prince of martyrs, whose passion was the price of the martyrs, who was not born by the condition of mortality but by the dignity of mercy, both willed to die and to rise again. For he would not have died if he had not willed to die; nor would he have risen again if he had not died. Therefore, he willed both for this reason: by dying, he commended to us the contempt of this present life; by rising again, the desire for future life. Behold both of these things in my passion and resurrection, that is, both what you should endure in this life and what you should desire in the future. Therefore, Christ showed us one life full of labors, troubles, temptations, fears, and pains, during which this world passes, through his passions; and the other life, where no one will suffer, no one will be afraid, where no one will die, no one will need to be reconciled because no one will quarrel, he showed us by his resurrection, as if saying: Behold what you should endure and what you should hope for, endure passions, hope for the resurrection. And what kind of resurrection! Not like the resurrection of Lazarus, who would die again. Christ rising, rising from the dead, as the Apostle says, now no longer dies, and death will have no more dominion over him. I know that you desire such a life. For who would not desire it? Even the godless pagans wish to be immortal. But they do not believe they can be immortal. For those who have not received faith have lost the hope of immortality. Therefore, it is not great to desire immortality: for this desire is common even to the ungodly; but it is indeed great to believe that we will be immortal and so to live in such a way that we can come to that immortality. Therefore, every person wishes to have, if they can, the power of an angel, but they do not wish to have the righteousness of an angel. They wish to have immortality, but they do not wish to have piety. They wish to attain where it is, but they do not wish to take the path by which it is attained.
To love and imitate the ways of the martyrs. We will be friends of God by His grace.
Therefore, brothers, I admonish, encourage, and beseech you that as you devoutly celebrate the solemnity of the martyrs, so also you should love the holy ways of the martyrs. They are martyrs, but they were human. They help us with their prayers, but they were what we are. Therefore, do not despair of their merits. For he who granted to them, can also grant to us. We do not worship them as gods, but we honor them for the sake of God, and we worship Him, who is both our Lord and theirs. By his grace, they are his friends, and let us be at least his servants. However, if we truly love the martyrs and follow in their footsteps, why should we not also be friends of God, by his grace, not by our own merit? In our happiness, he is praised, who makes us happy from being miserable. For we were able to make ourselves miserable by ourselves; but making ourselves happy, we cannot. Let us run to him, let us supplicate to him, and what they have received, we will also receive.
Let us all be ready to be reconciled to the will of God.
Yesterday I urged your charity: whoever among you are catechumens, hasten to the font of regeneration, putting aside all delays; whoever among you living in sins, vileness, and impurities, living damnably, change your life, do penance, do not despair of life; whoever among you are already doing penance (and it is not the sweetness of repenting from sins but the licentiousness), change your life and be ready to reconcile to the will of God, because what God wants is better for man, not what we want. Let us indeed pray to Him who is able to free us from all things, and give us peace, as He freed the three youths from the furnace. Those youths, or rather young men, for they are customarily called the three children, since the Scripture calls them...