The Sunday Sermon Archive

Dear Friend,

Today our holy mother, the Church takes us back to Holy Thursday when our Lord was preparing His apostles for His departure.

Jesus says to His disciples. "A little while, and you shall not see me; and again a little while, and you shall see me; because I go to the Father."

Many understand this passage as Christ speaking of his impending death and resurrection. But St. Augustine sees this as Christ preparing His disciples for His Ascension and the time when they will see Him in Heaven after their own death.

Our lives are truly but a little while. Many of us can count already forty, fifty, sixty, or more years of life; how quickly have these years past? Do they not appear to us as a moment? And how quickly will the remainder of our life pass! How soon will they say of us: "He is dead, she is dead?" And if we compare our life with eternity, what is it? Not so much as a grain of sand compared with the universe, or a drop of water with the ocean. Thousands and millions of years are not a moment when compared with eternity. There is some relation or ratio between a grain of sand in the universe, infinitesimally small as it is, but between a million of years and eternity there is absolutely no proportion, for the one term is finite and the other infinite. Truly, our life here below is a little while. And this little while of our earthly life is of infinite importance, because eternity depends on it. If we serve God during this little while with fervor and constancy, we shall receive for our reward the everlasting, unspeakable happiness of heaven; but if we serve the world, the flesh, and the devil, eternal inexpressible woe and exile await us in Hell. Oh how the blessed in Heaven rejoice because they have devoted this little while of their earthly life to the service of God! And how bitterly do the damned in Hell regret that they have spent this little while of their temporal life in the forgetfulness of God and in the gratification of their passions!

How transitory and perishable are beauty and symmetry of form. Do they not resemble flowers, which today appear in all their splendor and loveliness and tomorrow wither and fall blighted to the ground? How fickle are riches, money, real estate, and stocks! They take to themselves wings and soar away. They can be taken from us by bad men or lost by many mishaps. And even if fortune smiles upon us all our days, must we not leave all behind when we die? How fleeting and treacherous are honors and dignities. The wheel of fortune ever turns, and he who is in the uppermost place today, tomorrow will be in the lowest. How foolish, then, should we be if we cared more for these vain, fleeting goods than for our souls, or if for their sake we should plunge ourselves into eternal perdition.

Are not the sensual pleasures of eating, drinking, dancing, playing or carnal lusts the most fleeting of all earthly things? Do they not disappear at the very moment when man begins to enjoy them? What do they leave behind but an empty heart, and if they have been sinful, bitter remorse of conscience? How senselessly does not that man act who seeks such pleasure and forgets his soul and eternity.

We must constantly reflect that everything here below lasts but a little while, and that the hereafter, Heaven and Hell, will last for ever. Thus we should go through that which is temporal that we may not lose that which is eternal.

Jesus hides Himself sometimes from us, so that we see Him no more with the eyes of the spirit, and do not feel His sweet presence in our heart, and the result is, that we no longer find pleasure in prayer. All pious exercises leave us cold; faith, hope and charity flag in us. Temptations increase. Despondency and sadness lie on us like a nightmare. Why does God not show Himself to us? Sometimes to punish us for a fault which we have committed, for some negligence of which we have been guilty, and sometimes to draw us more closely to Himself, because we are too much attached to temporal things or have an inordinate love for something in the world. It is sometimes to try us, as He did pious Job, because virtue must be tried in the fire, as gold in the furnace; sometimes to give us an opportunity of increasing our merits for Heaven. If God hides Himself from us, let us humble ourselves, consider ourselves unworthy of His consolations, correct our faults; and let us continue our exercises, as if we succeeded well with them.; Then the time of trial will be an advantage to us and we shall see Jesus again, as the Apostles did, to our sweetest consolation.

Franciscan Benefactor Seraph Subscription Vocations Have you remembered God?