FOOL!
“But
God said to him: Thou fool, this night your soul will
be required of you! And the things you have acquired, whose will they
be?”
(St. Luke 12.20)
To whom is God speaking?
For some who read this now … yes, at this very moment … the answers
is — you! Certainly it will one day be you. 100%.
Your priorities suddenly become quite
different, yes?
All your pretensions about the question
of God’s existence — about Heaven and Hell — and about the way you have
lived your life — have come to this: the betrayal of reality by pretensions
that what must be will not be — and will not come
to your door. Not this night.
The obituaries are filled, row by row,
each day by those whose pretensions — like yours — came to an abrupt
end and reality could be eluded no longer. Don’t believe me? Open
tomorrow’s paper — if you are not in it.
There will be an accounting — and
you think that somehow you alone will be exempt from it.
Fool!
Do I say this to frighten you?
No.
God Himself said it
— to save you!
Think on it for a moment — and return
to God from Whom we should have never strayed. He is the only
One to save you from the Lake of Fire that is called the
Second Death 1 which
many of us so richly deserve. Return to the Church that baptized you,
that nourished you with the Sacraments, and that
one day will bury you.
The hour
is appointed, and however untimely death is, she is never late
— and, strange to say, neither will you be.
I tell you nothing new, nothing that you
have not already known — or at least suspected — and for all your bravado
you move inexorably toward it.
“Tomorrow” is a conjecture at best.
Think on that, too.
God is waiting. The next move is yours
— and it may be your last.
You will not hear this from the pulpit.
Sadly it is likely that you have not heard it since Vatican II. But
let it be said, that we may be without excuse: “Now is
the acceptable time.” (2 Cor. 6.2)
For Heaven’s
sake — and yours — seize it!
Fools that
we are, let us not despair
To despair of the saving love of
God is to deny God “for Whom all things are possible”
(Saint Matthew 19.26) This is the Parable of the the Vineyard
(Saint Matthew 20. 1-16): — even unto the last moment of our lives on
earth God’s mercy and forgiveness is open to us — but we must remember,
only until the moment of death ... but not
beyond it. Once we have crossed that bourne, our wills remain
as they were at the time of death: what we had decided in the way of
our relationship to God (either to ignore Him, dismiss Him, or to pretend
that He does not exist) we enter into a new reality called eternity.
But for that reason, do not be guilty
of the sin of presumption: thinking that God will save you no matter
what, and therefore do as you will without fear of consequences.
God is loving, but God is
also just.
Let us, then, love God: it is for that
end that we were created. Not to be successful or powerful or admired
by the world; not to be happy in this life (we will never be) or free
from suffering. Our reason for being is to love God and to
do His will — not ours.
Yes, let us fear Hell — from which Christ delivered all who turn to
Him; those who for His sake deny themselves daily, take up their
Cross, and follow Him (Saint Luke 9.23) against the raging winds
of the world and unseen powers that incessantly call us to deny Him.
This we must not do, for He has warned us that
those who “deny Me before men, I will also
deny him before My Father who is in Heaven.” (Saint Matthew 10.33)
Yes, Hell is frightfully real —
but so is Heaven where dwells the One Who tells us, “though
your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they
are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Isaiah 1.18).
If only we turn to Him, for “The blood
of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (Saint John 1.7) and “Jesus
Christ, Who is the faithful witness, the first begotten of the dead,
and the Prince of the kings of the earth, Who hath loved us, and washed
us from our sins in His own blood” (Apocalypse 1.5)
We have nothing to fear — except sin
Avoid it as the
deadliest poison that it is, and hope in the mercy of God. Sin is not
only disobedience to God — it is death to the soul.
We have good reason
to fear Hell because we do not fear sin.
Flee it, and
slam the door on the face of Hell, and him who awaits those who
think it folly.
To God, to Heaven
— there let us fly in a hope that will not disappoint us:
“Eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart
of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him.” (1 Corinthians
2.9)
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Totally
Faithful to the Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted
to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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