On avoiding the terrible wrath of the coming Judge. Much fear concerning the end, dearest brethren, the Lord has struck into us in the foregoing through the Gospel and through Paul. What refuge is there for us after such dread testimonies of the divine canon? With what tears, with how great sighs is there need? With what kinds of compunctions must the hard and stony heart be crushed, that we may be able to escape so great a wrath of the Judge? which God, the creator of the universe and our Lord, threatens through himself and through the Apostle and the prophets, who do not keep silent about these same threats, saying: Behold, the day of the Lord comes, burning like an oven, and it shall consume them: and all the aliens and all who work iniquity shall be like stubble;
and that day which comes shall set them on fire, says the Lord almighty; and it shall not leave root or shoot (Mal. 4:1). Likewise another prophet says: Behold, the Lord almighty comes: and who shall endure the day of his coming? Or who shall bear the sight of him? For he himself shall enter in like the fire of the smelter (Mal. 3:1-2). But to him Isaiah says: Behold, the day of the Lord shall come, incurable, a day of wrath and of fury, a day of cloud and of mist (Zeph. 1:15). And a little after: For the heaven shall be shaken, and the earth shall be moved from its foundations, because of the fury of the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day when his fury shall come upon it (Isa. 13:13). And again he says:
The foundations of the earth shall be moved, the earth shall be utterly disturbed with disturbance, the earth shall be utterly astonished with astonishment, the earth shall be utterly bowed down with bowing, and the earth shall be utterly shaken with commotion: like a drunken and surfeited man it shall be shaken (Isa. 24:19-20). Asaph also speaks similar things: God shall come manifestly, our God, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall burn in his sight, and round about him a mighty tempest (Ps. 49:3). And David speaks in harmony with this, saying: A fire shall burn before him, and shall set aflame his enemies round about (Ps. 96:3). After these things, I say, such dread proclamations of the Old and New Testament, of which yesterday and today we have recalled a few; let us see by what satisfaction we may be able to escape the wrath of so great a Judge.
We must remember our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who says: He who wishes to save his soul shall lose it: for he who shall lose his soul for my sake, shall find it (Matt. 16:25). Whatever therefore we love besides Christ must be willingly lost for Christ: first the life by which the body is quickened by the fellowship of the soul, if it be so necessary, must be given up by those who suffer martyrdom for Christ; or if the occasion of such blessedness be lacking, yet the mortification of our wills shall not be lacking; that he who lives may live not to himself, but to him who died for him (2 Cor. 5:15). Let us therefore live to him who, when he dies for us, is life; and let us die to ourselves, that we may live to Christ:
for we cannot live to him, unless first we die to ourselves, that is, to our own wills. Let us be Christ's, not our own: For we are not our own, for we were bought with a great price (1 Cor. 6:19-20), and truly a great one, since the Lord is given for the servant, the King for the minister, God for man. What ought we to render, if the creator of the universe, undeservedly, for us impious ones (yet his own creature), died? Do you think you ought not to die to sin? Surely you ought. Let us die therefore, let us die for life, because life dies for the dead, that with Paul we may be able to say: I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me (Gal. 2:20), he who died for me: for this is the voice of the elect.
No one indeed can die to himself, unless Christ live in him: but if Christ be in him, he cannot live to himself. Live in Christ, that Christ may live in you. But you ask how the mind may live in him, so that he may teach you to die to yourself and to live to Christ: or, as it should more truly be said, to live to yourself: for he who dies for Christ, himself lives; and he who lives to himself, dies. For he is mortal, if he lives to his own wills, according to that of the Apostle: For if you live according to the flesh, you shall die (Rom. 8:13). You see therefore, dearest ones, that we dwell in things not our own, since even our life is not our own: and we ought not to live to ourselves;
and great is the violence, to seek through labor, and to have through study, what a corrupted nature has not preserved. But yet the choice of free will, though blessedness be lost, it has not lost. Thence now by force and violence we seize the kingdom of heaven, and we are in a manner dragged away from the midst, as if from the midst of the enemies' hands, out of the field of conflict, and from the bloody soil of the contest, while we are more harshly assailed not only by our adversaries, but by our very selves, while each one loves himself wrongly, and in that which he loves harms himself: for he loves himself well who hates himself wholesomely, that is, afflicts himself; but he who consents to his own adversaries is not said rightly to love himself.
Great therefore is the misery of him who, harming himself, does not feel it. For when a man is himself contrary to himself, it does not belong to all so to pacify him, as one who truly loves himself. We must therefore here fight and contend with our vices, that we may be crowned elsewhere. For this time is a time of war; therefore let no one suppose there is security in war, because no one sleeps in war, and no one enters the battle-line secure. Let our battle-line therefore be directed against everything vicious, voluptuous, wickedly flattering. But it suffices for those who fight to conquer their adversaries: if you conquer yourself, you are the conqueror of all; but if you are the conqueror of yourself, being dead to yourself, you are proved alive to God;
but when you hear of the dead one, with what boldness, about to enter to the judgment of Christ, each one makes himself the advocate of his own cause, and the suggester of his own desire, and the avenger of his own contempt, suffering martyrdom for Christ. For if he had truly taken up the cross of Christ, he would observe that none of these things were permitted to him, because Christ also gave an example in this, that no one should seek what is his own, saying: Not as I will, but as you will (Matt. 26:39), and: I came down not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me (John 6:38). Let each one consider himself, lest free and alive he be found in the place of a servant and the crucified; and let each one remain with God in that in which he was called, and as the Apostle said:
Whether free, or subject (1 Cor. 12:13) under the yoke of humility, let them be as servants in Christ. Let each one of us therefore, dearest ones, come against himself: for if we live not against ourselves, but against our brethren, and if we speak as we please, our religion is not true, but false. Nothing therefore should be free among the servants of Christ, and nothing should be lofty in the humility of Christ. Let us therefore not be proud, not be insolent, not be free; but let us be humble, gentle, affable, sharing in common, that the humble King—yet another—Christ, may reign in us. But that we may love this wholesome death with a certain sweetness of hope, let us hear its end.
For who in truth is happier than he whose death is life, whose life is Christ, and the Savior is the reward; for whom heaven is humbled and paradise lies open; for whom earth is heavenly, and hell is shut; for whom the gate is opened and life is not ended; for whom God is Father, and an angel is minister; who from the brief acquires the long, from the wretched the blessed, from the perishable the eternal, from the sad the joyful, from the humble the lofty, from earth heaven, from the mortal God, by a happy exchange? If therefore we despise things present and seek only things to come, we exchange all these aforesaid things for the better. But if (which God forbid) we set the better things behind the lower, without doubt we shall lose both.
Wherefore, if with Jesus we would frame our life, let us first have his mortification in ourselves; which may God Christ deign to grant us, who with the Father always and the Holy Spirit is one God unto the ages of ages. Amen.