Catholic during the Great Apostasy

The Cross shows us God’s infinite love for his creatures. O my dear children, Jesus Christ says to us from the Cross: Look, will you find love equal to mine, could I have done more for you? Oh, if we were to look at the Cross with the eyes of faith, would we not then have to cry out with St Paul: O holy Cross, O cross of love, how many blessings you bring us!

You will never be able to love God as He deserves. Yes, my dear listeners, if we truly loved God, we would live only for Him, i.e. we would take Him as our model and rejoice in humiliation and contempt, we would not seek revenge, we would regard suffering as a precious gift from God’s hand.

If you want to follow Jesus Christ, you must avoid parties, balls, dances, taverns, because Jesus Christ rejects all this by the example of his penitential life.

Follow Jesus Christ and you will not fear death; indeed, it will be a happiness for you, for it will unite you with God. When you pray, do not attach your heart to earthly things, let it be all for heaven.

[…] The cross constitutes the whole consolation of the Christian if he carries it willingly throughout his life. Indeed, where will you find help in this terrible moment which determines your eternal destiny? To what will you turn your gaze if not to the Cross? To whom will you offer your prayers, if not to the cross? What else will they show you, what will they give you in their hands, what will they put in your mouth? Nothing else, my dears, but the cross! What name will they make you pronounce at this moment? The name of Jesus – and of Jesus crucified!
Oh, what a consolation for a Christian when, dying, he holds in his hands the cross which all his life has been the object of his meditation and his love! Then he will be able to say to the Judge: “Lord, Thou knowest that I have never shunned or despised Thy Cross, I have borne it willingly, the humiliations, insults and sufferings have filled me with joy and gladness!”. O God, if we could understand this, what a great boon to us the crosses from Thy hand are! Let us never forget this truth that the cross at death will be our only help.

But, on the contrary, what doubt will overwhelm in the last hour of him who despised the cross during his life and was ashamed of it for fear of mockery! What despair will overwhelm the sinner when Jesus Christ compares his life with his life, when he contrasts his humility and contempt with his pride, his poverty with his greed, his chastity with his shameful deeds, his love of his enemies with his desire for revenge, his penances and tears with his pleasures, his fasting with his gluttony! What then will become of these poor sinners, who will not have a scratch of resemblance to their Saviour?

O my God, can one think of this and not die of sorrow….God lives
and dies in sufferings, and the Christian, though burdened with sins, wants to suffer nothing… Oh, how painful sorrow will overwhelm him in the hour of death! But then it will be too late!

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St John Mary Vianney, Sermons, Sandomierz Diocesan Publishing House, Sandomierz 2010, pp. 184-185.