Blessed are those servants!
Life is short; death is
certain and the world to come is everlasting.
Year passes after year silently; Christ's coming is ever
nearer than it was. O that, as he comes nearer earth, we may approach nearer
heaven! O, my brethren, pray him to give you the heart to seek him in
sincerity. Pray him to make you in earnest. You have one work only: to bear
your cross after him.
Resolve in his strength to do so. Resolve to be no longer
beguiled by "shadows of religion", by words, or by disputings, or by
notions, or by high professions, or by excuses, or by the world's promises or
threats.
Pray him to give you what Scripture calls "an honest
and good heart", or "a perfect heart", and, without waiting,
begin at once to obey him with the best heart you have. Any obedience is better
than none - any profession which is disjoined from obedience is a mere pretence
and deceit. Any religion which does not bring you nearer to God is of the
world.
You have to seek his face; obedience is the only way of
seeking him. All your duties are obediences. If you are to believe the truths
he has revealed, to regulate yourselves by his precepts, to be frequent in his
ordinances, to adhere to his Church and people, why is it, except because he
has bid you? And to do what he bids is to obey him, and to obey him is to
approach him.
Every act of obedience is an approach - an approach to
him who is not far off though he seems so, but close behind this visible screen
of things which hides him from us. The day will come when he will rend that
veil, and show himself to us. And then, according as we have waited for him,
will he recompense us. If we have forgotten him, he will not know us; but
"blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he comes, shall find
watching.... He shall gird himself, and make them sit down to meat, and will
come forth and serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in
the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants." May this
be the portion of every one of us! It is hard to attain it; but it is woeful to
fail. Life is short; death is certain and the world to come is everlasting.
Blessed John Henry Newman (d. 1890)
established the English Oratory in Birmingham,
and was a preacher of great eloquence.
established the English Oratory in Birmingham,
and was a preacher of great eloquence.