Page:Ninety-nine homilies of S. Thomas Aquinas upon the epistles and gospels for forty-nine Sundays of the Christian year (IA ninetyninehomili00thom).pdf/45

 43, " I was a stranger, and ye took me not ID." (3) They shall be shut up in an evil habitation S. Matt. xxv. 4, " Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."

IV. On the fourth head it is to be noted that for three reasons we ought to be given to hospitality. (1) By doing this we gain grace, as the woman of Samaria who talked with Christ. (2) By doing this we frequently entertain saints and angels Heb. xiii. 1, " Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." (3) By doing this, we shall be received into an eternal, heavenly, and glorious habitation S. Matt. xxv. 33, 34, "I was a stranger, and ye took me in Come, ye blessed children of My Father, inherit the Kingdom," etc.

FOUR marriages are spoken of in Holy Scripture - the first, historical; the second, allegorical; the third, tropological; the fourth, anagogical. (1) The literal marriage is the carnal union between the man and the woman; (2) the allegorical is between Christ and His Church; (3) the tropological between God and the soul; (4) the anagogical between God and the Church Triumphant. Of the first, Esth. ii. 18, " The King made a great feast with all his princes and servants" on the occasion of his marriage with Esther. Of the second, S. Matt. xxii. 2, " The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a certain King which made a marriage for his son." Of the third, Hosea ii. 19, " I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness." Of the fourth, S. Matt, xxv. 10, " They that were ready went in with Him to the marriage." We now treat of the literal marriage, which, firstly, God sanctioned