Untitled - Saints' Books

98 Material for Sermons. [PART i.
graces and special helps. Hence, when he exercises
his ministry with negligence, amid defects and faults,
without even detesting them, God pronounces a male
diction against him. Cursed be he that doth the work of the
1
Lord deceitfully. This malediction consists in abandon
ment by God. "God,"
writes St. "is
Augustine, ac
2
customed to abandon the negligent."
The Lord, says
the saint, usually abandons souls favored by his special
graces, when after all his gifts they neglect to live
according to the perfection to which they are called.
God, observes a certain author, wishes to be served by
his priests with the fervor with which the seraphim serve
him in heaven; otherwise he will withdraw his graces
and permit them to sleep in tepidity, and thence to fall,
first into the precipice of sin and afterwards into hell. 3
The tepid priest, weighed down by so many venial sins
and by so many inordinate attachments, remains, as it
were, in a state of insensibility. Hence the graces re
ceived and the obligations of the priesthood make but
little impression upon him, and therefore the Lord shall
justly withhold the abundant helps that are morally
necessary for the fulfilment of the obligations of his
state; thus he shall go from bad to worse, and with his
defects his blindness shall increase. Perhaps God is
bound to make his graces abound in those that are par
simonious and ungenerous to him ?
No, says the Apos
tle, he who sows little shall reap but little. 4
The Lord has declared that to the grateful that pre
serve his graces he will multiply his favors, but from the
ungrateful he shall take away the gifts that had been
bestowed upon them. For to every one that hath shall be
" 1
2 "
3 "
Maled ictus, qui facit opus Domini fraudulenter." Jer. xlviii. 10.
Negligentes Deus deserere consuevit." In Ps. cxviii. s. 10.
Deus vult a seraphim s ministrari; tepido gratiam suam subtrahit,
sinitque eum dormire, itaque ruere in
"
4
Qui parce seminal, parce et metet." 2. Cor. ix. 6.