The Lord performed that miracle once for all in the body which much
more blessedly he performs every day in the souls of penitents. He
restored life to Lazarus, but it was a temporal life, one that would
die again. He bestows life on the penitent; life, but it is life
that will remain, world without end. The one is wonderful in the
eyes of men; the other is far more wonderful in the judgment of the
faithful; and in that it is so much the greater, by so much the more
is it to be sought. This is written of Lazarus, not for Lazarus
himself, but for us and to us. "Whatsoever things," saith the
Apostle, "were written of old, were written for our learning." The
Lord called Lazarus once, and he was raised from temporal death. He
calls us often, that we may rise from the death of the soul. He said
to him once, "Come forth!" and immediately he came forth at one
command of the Lord. The Lord every day invites us by Scripture to
confession, exhorts us to amendment, promises the life which is
prepared for us by him who willeth not the death of a sinner. We
neglect his call, we despise his invitation, we contemn his promise.
Placed between God and the devil, as between a father and a foe, we
prefer the enticement of the enemy to a father's warning. "We are
not ignorant," says the Apostle, "of the devices of Satan,"--the
devices, I say, by which he induces us to sin, and keeps us back
from repentance. Suggesting sin, he deprives us of two things by
which the best assistance might be offered to us, namely, shame and
fear. For that which we avoid, we avoid either through fear of some
loss, or through the reverence of shame.... When, therefore, Satan
impels any one to sin, he easily accomplishes the object, if, as we
have said, he first deprives him of fear and shame. And when he has
effected that, he restores the same things, but in another sense,
which he has taken away; that so he may keep back the sinner from
confession, and make him die in his sin. Then he secretly whispers
into his soul: "Priests are light-minded, and it is a difficult
thing to check the tongue. If you tell this or that to them, it
cannot remain a secret; and when it shall have been published
abroad, you will incur the danger of losing your good character, or
bearing some injury, and being confounded from your own vileness."
Thus the devil deceives that wretched man; he first takes from
him that by which he ought to avoid sin, and then restores the same
thing, and by it retains him in sin. His captive fears temporal, and
not spiritual, evil; he is ashamed before men and he despises
God. He is ashamed that things should come to the knowledge of men
which he was not ashamed to commit in the sight of God, and of the
whole heavenly host. He trembles at the judgment of man, and he has
no respect to that of God. Of which the Apostle says: "It is a
fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God"; and the
Truth saith himself, "Fear not them that kill the body, and after
that have no more that they can do; but fear him rather who can cast
body and soul into hell."
There are diseases of the soul, as there are of the body; and
therefore the Divine mercy has provided beforehand physicians for
both. Our Lord Jesus Christ saith, "I came not to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance." His priests now hold his
place in the Church, to whom, as unto physicians of the soul, we
ought to confess our sins, that we may receive from them the
plaister of satisfaction. He that fears the death of the body, in
whatever part of the body he may suffer, however much he may be
ashamed of the disease, makes no delay in revealing it to the
physician, and setting it forth, so that it may be cured. However
rough, however hard may be the remedy, he avoids it not, so that he
may escape death. Whatever he has that is most precious, he makes no
hesitation in giving it, if only for a little while he may put off
the death of the body. What, then, ought we to do for the death of
the soul? For this, however terrible, may be forever prevented,
without such great labor, without such great expense. The Lord seeks
us ourselves, and not what is ours. He stands in no need of our
wealth who bestows all things. For it is he to whom it is said, "My
goods are nothing unto thee." With him a man is by so much the
greater, as, in his own judgment, he is less. With him a man is as
much the more righteous, as in his own opinion he is the more
guilty. In his eyes we hide our faults all the more, the more that
here by confession we manifest them.