Sermon 352

SERMO 352

On the Benefit of Doing Penance

An occasion for the sermon given from the reading.

The voice of the penitent is recognized in the words with which we respond to the psalmist: “Turn your face away from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.” Hence, when we did not prepare a speech for your Charity, we knew that by the Lord's command we should treat of this matter. For we wished today to leave you in contemplation, knowing how abundant a feast you have received. But because you healthfully accept what is offered, you hunger greatly every day. Therefore, may the Lord our God grant both sufficient strength to us and profitable listening to you. For we are not ignorant that we must serve your good and useful will. Let us then be helped by you both in prayer and in effort; in prayer to God, in effort towards the word; so that we may say what He himself judges to be useful for you, who feeds you through us. Therefore, the voice of the penitent is recognized in these words: “Turn your face away from my sins, and blot out all my misdeeds.” Consequently, we are divinely ordered to say something about penitence. For we did not command this psalm to be chanted by the reader, but what he deemed useful for you to hear, he also commanded to the heart of even a child. Let us say something about the benefit of penitence, especially since the holy annual day is now approaching, with the approach of which it is fitting to humble souls and to tame bodies more diligently.

Repentance before Baptism.

There are threefold considerations of doing penance found in Holy Scripture. For no one approaches the baptism of Christ, in which all sins are erased, rightly unless by repenting of their former life. For no one chooses a new life unless he regrets the old one. We also ought to prove this by the authority of the divine books, whether those who are to be baptized have done penance. When the Holy Spirit, who had been promised beforehand, was sent and the Lord fulfilled the faith of His promise; receiving the Holy Spirit, the disciples, as you know, began to speak in all languages, so that in those who were present, each recognized his own language. Terrified by this miracle, they sought advice for their life from the Apostles. Then Peter announced to them that they should worship Him whom they had crucified, so that, believing, they might now drink His blood, which they had shed in their rage. When our Lord Jesus Christ had been announced to them, and they acknowledged their guilt, that it might be fulfilled in them what the prophet had predicted beforehand: “I turned in my affliction, while the thorn was fastened”; they were pricked to the heart. For they turned in affliction of sorrow when the thorn of remembrance of sin was fastened. For they had thought they had done nothing evil, as the thorn had not yet been fixed. But while Peter was speaking, so that you may recognize the thorn as fixed, Scripture said: “While Peter was speaking, they were pricked to the heart.” Consequently, in the same psalm, when it is said: “I turned in my affliction, while the thorn was fastened;” it follows: “I acknowledged my sin, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’; and You forgave the iniquity of my heart.” Therefore, when they were pricked by that thorn of remembrance and said to the Apostles: “What then shall we do?” Peter said to them: “Do penance, and let each one of you be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; and your sins will be forgiven.” Therefore, in the meantime, now if some are present from that number, who are preparing to be baptized (for we believe they are more eagerly present for the word as they are nearer to forgiveness), we first address these briefly, so they may raise their minds in hope. Let them love to become what they are not and hate what they have been. Let them already conceive in desire the new man to be born: whatever gnawed at their past life, whatever troubled their conscience, whatever great or small, whether to be spoken or not, let them not doubt that it can be forgiven; lest, perhaps, human doubt holds against them what the mercy of God wishes to forgive.

Christ is the figure in the things that happened to the Israelites.

Each one should faithfully remember the example exhibited in that first people. For the Apostle says: "All these things were our figures," when speaking of such matters. What did he say? "I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that all our fathers were under the cloud; and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them. The rock was Christ." He said that those were our figures, whom no faithful person ever contradicted. And while he enumerated many things, he resolved one thing only, because he said: "The rock was Christ." By solving one thing, he proposed that the rest should be investigated: but lest the inquirer, departing from Christ, should err, he should firmly seek founded on the rock; "The rock," he said, "was Christ." He mentioned that those figures were ours, and all were obscure. Who would unravel these figurative veils? Who would open them? Who would dare to discuss them? In some very dense thickets and thick shadows, he lit a light: "The rock," he said, "was Christ." Therefore, since the light has been introduced, let us seek what the rest signifies: what is meant by the sea, the cloud, and the manna. For he did not explain these but showed what the rock was. The passage through the sea is Baptism. But because baptism, that is, water of salvation, is not of salvation unless consecrated in the name of Christ, who shed His blood for us, the water is marked with His cross. To signify this, that baptism was the Red Sea. The manna from heaven is openly explained by the Lord Himself. "Your fathers ate," he said, "manna in the desert and died." For how could they live when the figure could only preannounce life, but not be life itself? "They ate," he said, "manna, and died"; that is, the manna which they ate could not free them from death: not that the manna itself was death to them, but because it did not free them from death. He was to free from death who was prefigured by the manna. Surely the manna came from heaven, see whom it prefigured: "I," he said, "am the living bread that came down from heaven." But as diligent and well-watching students, attend to the words of the Lord so that you may profit and learn to read and hear. He said: "They ate the same spiritual food." What is "the same," if not that which we also eat? I see it is somewhat difficult to express and explain what I intend to say: but I will be helped by your goodwill, that I may obtain this ability from the Lord. "They ate," he said, "the same spiritual food." It would have sufficed to say: "They ate spiritual food." He said "the same." How can I understand "the same" except that it is the same food which we eat? What then, someone might say, was that manna the same as what I now receive? Therefore, nothing comes now if it had already been before. Therefore, the scandal of the cross is voided. So how "the same," unless he added spiritual? For those who took that manna in such a way as to think of it only as satisfying their bodily necessity and feeding their stomach, not their mind; they ate nothing great, but their necessity was satisfied. God fed others, and to others, He announced something. Such as these ate bodily food, not spiritual food. Whom then does he say were our fathers who ate the same spiritual food? Whom do we think, brothers, but those who truly were our fathers? Indeed, they were not our fathers but are still. All those live. For the Lord says to some infidels: "Your fathers ate manna in the desert and died." What does it mean: "Your fathers," if not those whose unbelief you imitate, whose ways you follow by not believing and resisting God? In that sense, he says to some: "You are from your father the devil." For the devil neither created any man by power nor generated anyone by begetting; yet he is called the father of the wicked, not by generation, but by imitation. Conversely, it is said of the good: "You, therefore, are the seed of Abraham"; when speaking to Gentiles who did not take their lineage from the lineage of Abraham by the flesh. They were sons not by being born, but by imitating. Abraham is also renounced and alienated by the unfaithful when the Lord says to them: "If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham." And to remove from Abraham's fatherhood those bad trees boasting of their descent from Abraham, children of Abraham are promised from stones. Therefore, just as in this place it is said: "Your fathers ate manna in the desert and died"; they did not understand what they ate; and thus understanding not, they took food only bodily: so also the Apostle says, "Our fathers," not the fathers of the infidels, not the fathers of the wicked, who ate and died; but "our fathers," the fathers of the faithful, ate spiritual food, and therefore "the same." "Our fathers," he said, "ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink. For there were those who understood what they ate: there were those to whom Christ in their hearts tasted sweeter than manna in their mouths. Why speak of others? There was first Moses himself, the servant of God, faithful in all His house, knowing what he dispensed, and how the mysteries of the present should be thus dispensed, closed to the present, open to the future. Therefore, briefly I will say, whoever understood Christ in the manna, ate the same spiritual food as we; but whoever sought only satiation from the manna, ate the fathers of the infidels and died. Similarly, the same drink: "The rock was Christ." Therefore, the same drink as we, but spiritual; that is, which was grasped by faith, not which was drank by the body. You heard the same drink: "The rock was Christ"; for it was not another Christ then, and another now. That rock was different, that stone placed at the head of Jacob was different; that lamb slain to eat the Passover was different, that ram caught in the thicket to be sacrificed, when Abraham, commanded, spared his son by God's order; that sheep and that sheep, that stone and that stone, yet the same Christ; therefore, the same food, the same drink. Finally, that rock was struck by a rod so that water flowed: for the rod was struck. Why by a rod, not iron, unless because the cross approached Christ to bestow grace upon us? Therefore, the same food, the same drink, but to those understanding and believing. But to those not understanding, it was only that manna, only that water; that food to the hungry, this drink to the thirsty; neither that nor this to the believer: to the believer, the same as now. For Christ was to come, Christ has come. "To come" and "has come" are different words, but the same Christ.

The figurative doubt of Moses.

Something also, since the matter has come up, I want to say about the doubt of God's servant Moses. For this too was a figure of the saints of old. Moses doubted at the water, when he struck the rock with the rod so that water might flow; he doubted. However, anyone reading about his doubt might just pass over it and not understand, because he would not dare to ask. But the Lord God was displeased with that doubt, and noted it, not only by reprimanding but also by punishing. For because of this doubt, it is said to Moses: You will not lead this people into the land of promise. Go up the mountain and die. Here indeed God appears angry. What then about Moses, my brothers? All his effort, all his fervor for the people, and that love saying: If you forgive their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of your book, is condemned by this sudden and unexpected doubt? And what was concluded by the reader when he read the Apostle: Love never fails? As I was about to propose certain points for discussion, your eagerness led me to propose another, which perhaps you would not have asked. So let us see, and still try to penetrate the mystery as much as we can. God is angry, declares that Moses will not lead the people into the land of promise; he commands him to go up the mountain and die. And yet he enjoins many tasks upon this same Moses: orders him what to do, how to organize the people, how not to leave them disordered and neglected. He would never deign to impose such tasks on one condemned. Consider something even more astonishing. Since it was said to Moses (for it pleased God for the sake of a certain mystery and dispensation) that he himself would not lead the people into the land of promise, another was chosen, Joshua son of Nun; and this man was not called by this name, but by the name Hoshea. And when Moses entrusted the people to him to lead, he called him, changed his name, and called him Joshua: so that not by Moses, but by Joshua, that is not by the law, but by grace, the people of God might enter into the land of promise. Just as Joshua was a figure and not the true one, so also that land of promise was not the true one, but a figure. For that first people had a temporal land: the one promised to us will be eternal. But the eternal was promised and foretold by temporal figures. So just as Joshua was not the true Jesus, nor that land of promise the true land, but a figure, so the manna was not truly the heavenly food, but a figure; the rock was not truly Christ, but a figure, and all things so. What then does the doubt of Moses demand of us for consideration? Lest perhaps some figure also was expressed there, and it hinted to the understanding and provoked the mind to inquiry. For I see that after that doubt, and after God's anger, and after the threats of death, and after being removed from leading the people into the land of promise, God still speaks to Moses in many ways, as to a friend, just as he spoke before: so much so that Joshua son of Nun is presented to obedience as an example from Moses, and God advises him in this way, to serve as Moses served; and he promises to be with him as he was with Moses. Evidently, dearest ones, God himself constrains us not to reproach indiscriminately, but to understand the doubt of Moses. The rock lying there was a figure, the rod striking was a figure, the water flowing was a figure, and Moses doubting was a figure. And he doubted when he struck. Hence the doubt of Moses arose when the wood came near the rock. Now let the quick fly ahead, or rather let the slow wait patiently. Moses doubted when the wood came near the rock: the disciples doubted when they saw the Lord crucified. Moses bore their figure. It was a figure of Peter denying thrice. Why did Peter doubt? Because the wood approached the rock. When the Lord foretold the kind of death he was going to die, that is, the cross itself, Peter was terrified: Far be it from you, Lord, this shall not happen. You doubt because you see the rod drawing near to the rock. Therefore the hope they had in the Lord, the disciples then lost: it was in a way intercepted, when they saw him crucified, when they mourned the slain. He found them after the resurrection talking among themselves about this matter, with sad conversation; and withholding their eyes so that they might not recognize him, not removing himself from believers, but deferring his doubting ones, he mingled himself as a third interlocutor in their conversation and asked them about what they were speaking. They were amazed, because he alone was ignorant of what had happened to him who was asking. Are you the only one, they say, who is a stranger in Jerusalem? And they recall the events concerning Jesus. And immediately they reveal the depths of their despair, and show the wound to the doctor unknowingly: But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Behold, doubt arose because the wood approached the rock: the figure of Moses was fulfilled.

Moses dying on the mountain, what he prefigured.

Let us also consider this: "Go up into the mountain and die." The bodily death of Moses symbolized the death of his own doubt; but on the mountain. O wondrous mysteries! Surely this, when explained and understood, is sweeter than manna? Doubt was born at the rock, it died on the mountain. When Christ was humble in His passion, He lay before the eyes like a rock: rightly, doubt surrounded Him, that humility pretended nothing great. Rightly, through that humility, He became a stone of offense: but by the resurrection, being glorified, He appeared great, He is now a mountain. Therefore now let that doubt, which was born at the rock, die on the mountain. Let the disciples recognize their salvation, let them call back their hope. Notice how that doubt dies, notice how Moses dies on the mountain. He does not enter the promised land: we do not want doubt there; let it die. Let Christ show us it dying. Peter trembled: and denied three times. For the rock was Christ. He has risen, He has become a mountain: He strengthened Peter too. But doubt dies. How does it die? "Peter, do you love me?" The inspector of hearts, the knower of hearts asks; and He wants to hear that He is loved, and once is not enough. He asks this, he hears it almost to Peter’s weariness: for Peter marvels that he is asked by the one who foreknows, but also that he is asked so many times when it would suffice to respond once even to someone who did not know. But it is as if the Lord said to you: I wait, let the legitimate number be fulfilled: let him confess love three times, because he denied three times out of fear. Therefore, when the Lord asked so many times, He was killing that doubt on the mountain.

Invites to Baptism. The hands of Moses against Amalek now extended, now lowered.

What then, beloved, if these things are evident? They were not hidden for deceit, but for delight. For they would not be captured so sweetly if they were cheap and easy. Let the one aspiring to Baptism, whom I have begun to address, consider their business. The Red Sea was Baptism; the people crossing were being baptized, and the crossing itself was Baptism, but in the cloud. For what was foretold was still veiled; what was promised was still hidden. But now the cloud has departed; the serenity of manifest truth has come forth: for the veil through which Moses spoke has been removed. This veil also hung in the temple so that the secrets of the temple would not be seen: but on the Lord's cross, the veil was torn, so that they would be revealed. Therefore, come to Baptism: enter the way through the Red Sea without fear; do not be concerned about past sin as if worried about the pursuing Egyptian. Your sins oppressed you with the harsh burden of servitude, but in Egypt, that is, in the love of this world, in a long wandering; they forced you to pursue earthly works, as if making bricks, you worked with clay. Your sins oppress you, come confidently to Baptism: the enemy can follow you up to the water, there he shall die. Fear nothing from past life, believe that none of your sins will remain, if none of the Egyptians remained. I hear the voice of the lazy: I, he says, do not fear past sins, I do not doubt that all were forgiven me in the holy water through the charity of the Church; but I fear future sins. Then does it please you to remain in Egypt? For now, escape the present enemy who has already oppressed and subdued you. Why do you worry about future enemies? What you have already done will be, even if you do not wish it: what you think you will commit, if you do not wish it, it will not be. But the way is perilous: for even after crossing the Red Sea, you will not yet be in the promised land: that people were led through long deserts. For now, liberate from Egypt. Do you think you will lack a helper on the way, He who rescued you from the old captivity? Will He not restrain your new enemies, who freed you from your old ones? Just pass without fear, walk without fear, be obedient: do not embitter that Moses whose type he carried in this obedience. I admit, enemies are not lacking. For just as there were not lacking those who pursued the fleeing, so there were not lacking those who hindered the walkers. Truly, beloved, these were figures of us. For now, do not be something that saddens Moses: do not be the bitter water that the people could not drink after the Red Sea. For there was also temptation there. And yet when such things happen, when the people embitter, we show them Christ, what He bore for them, how He shed His blood for them: and they soften, as if we were throwing a piece of wood into the water. Indeed, you will have an enemy opposing your journey, Amalek. Then Moses prayed, then he stretched out his hands: and when he lowered his hands, Amalek grew stronger; when he stretched out his hands, Amalek weakened. And let your hands be stretched out, let Amalek, the tempter and hinderer of this journey, weaken: be vigilant and sober in prayers, in good works, yet never apart from Christ, for that stretching out of hands was the cross of Christ. The Apostle is stretched out in that when he says: The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. So let Amalek weaken, be conquered, and not hinder the passage of the people of God. If you drop your hands from good work, from the cross of Christ; Amalek will prevail. However, do not think that you will always or immediately be strong, nor completely despair. That alternation of weakness and strength in the hands of God's servant Moses might have been your alternation. Sometimes you falter in temptations, but you do not succumb. He would drop his hands for a little while, but he did not fall completely. If I said: My foot slipped; Your mercy, O Lord, supported me. Therefore, do not fear: a helper is present on the journey, the one who was not absent in Egypt as a liberator. Do not fear, undertake the way, proceed confidently. Sometimes he lowered his hands, sometimes he raised them; yet Amalek was defeated. He could rebel, yet he could not overcome.

The other penance which is daily for everyone.

Therefore, we are now admonished to speak of another kind of repentance. I have proposed that its consideration is threefold in the Holy Scripture. The first is that of those who are competent and eagerly coming to Baptism: I have shown this from the Holy Scriptures. There is another kind, however, which is daily. And where do we show this daily repentance? I have no better place to show it than in the daily prayer, where the Lord taught us to pray, showing us what to say to the Father, and He placed it in these words: "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." What debts, brothers? Since debts here cannot be understood as anything other than sins; the debts which He forgave in Baptism, are we praying again that they be forgiven? Certainly, every Egyptian who followed us is dead. If none of the enemies who pursued us remain, what do we pray to be forgiven, except because of hands weary against Amalek? “Forgive us, as we forgive." He has established a remedy, He confirmed a covenant. Here He dictates prayers, there He responds to the one praying: He knows by what law things are conducted in heaven, how what is desired can be obtained. Do you want to be forgiven? Forgive, He says. For what do you have that you can offer to God, from whom you seek to be granted something? Is Christ the Savior now walking on earth? Is Zacchaeus joyfully receiving Him into his house? Is Martha preparing a lodging and a meal for Him? He needs none of these, for He sits at the right hand of the Father. But when you have done it for one of the least of these, you have done it for Me. This is the extension of hands under which Amalek fell. You indeed give to the poor when you offer something to the hungry: perhaps you will have less of what you give, but in your house, not in heaven. But even here on earth, He who commanded you to give will supply what you gave. When the Apostle spoke of this, he said: "He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness." For you are God’s workman when you give to the needy: you sow in winter what you will reap in summer. Why then do you fear, O faithless one, that in this great house such a great master of the household will not feed His laborer? He will provide there also, but what is sufficient for you. God will give all that is necessary, not to covetousness. Therefore work confidently, extend your hands, let Amalek fall. But from here, as I said, when you give something in your house, you perhaps see less of what you once saw there: but you do not see it there when you give it until God gives again. Tell me, when you forgive from the heart, what do you lose? When you forgive someone who sins against you, what do you have less in your heart? For you forgive from there, but you lose nothing. Truly, a wave of charity was flowing in your heart, and it seemed to gush from an inward spring: you hold hatred against your brother; you have obstructed the fountain. Therefore not only do you lose nothing when you forgive; but you are also more abundantly watered. Charity is not constrained. You place there a stumbling block, and you make tight spaces for yourself. “I will avenge myself, I will take revenge, I will show him, I will act:" you are agitated, you labor, when you can be secure by forgiving, live in security, pray in security. For behold what are you about to do? You are about to pray. What will I say when? Today you are going to pray. Will you not pray? Filled with anger and hatred, you threaten revenge: you do not forgive from the heart. Behold you pray, behold the hour for prayer comes, you begin to either hear or say those words. Having said and heard the previous words, you will come to this verse. Or if you do not come to it, where will you go? Not to forgive your enemy, you will deviate from Christ? Plainly if you deviate in prayer to not want to say: "Forgive us our debts," because you cannot say: "as we forgive our debtors," lest you are quickly answered: "So I forgive as you forgive," therefore because you cannot say this and do not want to forgive, you will deviate from this verse and skip it, and say what follows: "Lead us not into temptation;" there your creditor will catch you, whose face you were avoiding. How, as one encountering someone in the street to whom he owes something, if there is an alley nearby, he stops what he was doing and goes by another path, so that he does not see the face of his creditor. You thought you did this in this verse: you avoided saying: "Forgive, as I forgive;" lest He forgive in that way, that is to not forgive, because you do not forgive; and you did not want to say it, avoiding the face of your creditor. Whom are you avoiding? Whom are you avoiding? Where will you go where you can be and He not be? Will you say: "Where will I go from your spirit? And where will I flee from your face? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I descend to hell, you are there." As much as the debtor can flee from Christ, how can he not go to hell? This creditor is also there. What will you do next, except what follows? "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;" that is, I will meditate on the end of the world with my hope, I will live in your precepts, I will rise with the two wings of charity. Therefore fulfill the two wings of charity. Love your neighbor as yourself; and do not hold onto hatred, from which you flee from your creditor.

A third kind of penance for mortal sins. Pardon should not be despaired of.

There remains a third kind of penance, about which I will briefly speak, so that with the Lord's help, I may fulfill the proposed and promised. It is a graver and more sorrowful penance, in which penitents are specifically called in the Church, even removed from the Sacrament of the altar to participate, lest by receiving undeservedly, they eat and drink judgment upon themselves. That penance, therefore, is sorrowful. It is a grievous wound: perhaps committed adultery, perhaps homicide, perhaps some sacrilege, a grave matter, a grievous wound, lethal, deadly: but an omnipotent physician. Now after the suggestion of the deed and delight and consent and perpetration, the dead four days putrefy: but not even he did the Lord abandon, but cried out: Lazarus, come forth. The mass of the grave yielded to the voice of mercy: death yielded to life, hell yielded to the heavenly. Lazarus was raised, came forth from the tomb: and he was bound, just as men are bound in the confession of sin doing penance. They have already come forth from death: for they would not confess, unless they came forth. To confess itself is to come forth from the hidden and the dark. But what did the Lord say to his Church? "Whatever you bind on earth," he says, "will also be bound in heaven." Therefore, as Lazarus comes forth, because the Lord completed his good work of mercy to bring the dead to confession, latent, putrefying; the rest he leaves to the ministry of the Church: "Unbind him, and let him go." But, dearest ones, let no one propose this kind of penance for themselves, let no one prepare themselves for this: yet if perhaps it happens, let no one despair. Judas the traitor perished utterly not so much on account of the crime he committed, but because of despairing of forgiveness. He was not worthy of mercy, therefore, the light did not shine in his heart, to run to the forgiveness of the one he had betrayed, like those who had crucified him; but despairing, he killed himself, and hanged himself with a noose, suffocated himself. What he did to his body, this also happened to his soul. For the spirit is called even this wind of the air. Just as those who tie a noose around their necks kill themselves from it, because the spirit of this air does not enter them: so those who despair of God's forgiveness, by that very despair suffocate themselves within, such that the Holy Spirit cannot visit them.

The pagans deny that permission for repentance is given, a license to sin.

Pagans are accustomed to mock Christians regarding the repentance that is established in the Church. Against certain heresies, the Catholic Church has held onto this truth about performing repentance. For there were those who would say that repentance should not be granted for certain sins; and they were excluded from the Church and became heretics. In whatever sins, the holy mother Church does not lose her mercy. Therefore, the Pagans are also accustomed to mock us about this, not knowing what they are saying; for they have not yet come to the word of God, which makes the tongues of infants articulate. They say, "You cause people to sin, when you promise them forgiveness if they do penance. This is a dissolution, not an admonition." They exaggerate the words in this sense as much as each person can; whether with a sounding or faltering tongue, they do not keep silent: yet, even when we speak to them, although they are defeated, they do not agree. However, let your Charity briefly understand how they are defeated, because the Lord's mercy has very well established everything in His Church. They say we give license to sins because we promise a harbor of repentance. If the entrance to repentance were closed, would not that sinner add sins to sins all the more, the more he would despair of being forgiven? For he would say to himself: "Behold, I have sinned, behold, I have committed a crime, now there is no place for forgiveness for me; repentance is unfruitful, I am to be condemned: why then should I not live as I want? Since I find no love there, at least here I will satisfy my greed. Why should I refrain? Every place is closed to me there, here, whatever I do not do, I lose; because the life that is to come after this will not be given to me. Why then should I not serve my desires, to fulfill and satisfy them, and do whatever is not lawful but is pleasing?" He would perhaps be told: "But wretch, you will be caught, you will be accused, you will be tortured, you will be punished." Evil men know that these things are said by men and are enforced among men; they observe many living wickedly and criminally without their sins being punished: they can hide them, ransom what they cannot hide; ransom their lascivious, blasphemous, sacrilegious, lost life until old age. They count up for themselves: "What? That man who did so much, did he not die an old man?" Do you not consider that God showed patience in that wicked old man, waiting for his repentance? Hence the Apostle says: "Do you not know that the patience of God is leading you to repentance?" But he, according to the hardness of his heart and his impenitent heart, has stored up for himself wrath in the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each according to his deeds. Therefore, it is necessary that this fear possess minds, it is necessary that he who does not want to sin, considers God present, not only in public, but also at home; not only at home, but even in the bedroom, in the night, on his bed, in his heart. Therefore, if you take away the harbor of repentance, they will increase their sins out of despair. Behold, they say nothing, those who think that sins increase because the harbor of repentance is proposed in the Christian faith. What then? Should God not have provided from the beginning, lest through that hope of indulgence sins might once again increase? Just as He provided that they should not increase through despair, so He ought to have provided that they should not increase through hope. Just as he who despairs truly increases his sins, so too might he who hopes for pardon increase his sins: saying to himself, "I will do what I want; God is good, when I turn, He will forgive me." Thus plainly say to yourself: "When I turn, He will forgive me," if the next day is certain for you. Does not Scripture admonish you for this, saying: "Do not delay to turn to the Lord, nor defer from day to day; for suddenly His wrath will come, and in the time of vengeance He will destroy you"? Behold, God's providence has watched over us in both respects. Repentance is proposed as a harbor so that we do not increase sins through despair: again, so that we do not increase sins through hope, the day of death is given as uncertain.