Page:SermonsFromTheLatins.djvu/22

 tian truth,  as  St.  Paul  says,  see  God  in  part  only  but hereafter face  to  face. Our time,  therefore,  is  the morning, the  time  to  rise  from  sleep. For all  of  us the  night  is  past,  and  for  many  or  all  the  day  is  at hand. We should  awake,  therefore,  spiritually,  and even as  the  aurora  develops  into  the  brightness  and warmth of  the  perfect  day,  so  should  we  advance  from one light  of  virtue  to  another,  from  fervor  to  fervor, until we  arrive  even  at  the  everlasting  day  of  God's heavenly  presence. Worldly Christians  and  bad Catholics, on  the  contrary,  go  down  from  the  twilight, from  darkness  to  darkness,  until  they  are  finally swallowed up  in  the  everlasting  darkness  of  hell. "The path  of  the  just,"  says  Solomon,  "is  like  a radiant  dawn  that  advances  and  increases  to  a  perfect day,  but  the  way  of  the  wicked  is  dark  and  its  end unknown."

His second  reason  for  our  spiritual  awakening,  St. Paul  takes  from  the  nearness  of  the  end:  "  For  now," he says,  "  our  salvation  is  nearer  than  when  we believed." Before Christ's  coming,  belief  in  the future Messias  was  the  key  to  salvation,  but  it  was only hundreds  and  thousands  of  years  after  their death that  heaven  was  opened  to  the  patriarchal saints of  God. Now, however,  it  is  but  a  step  from life through  death  into  eternity,  so  that  the  world's salvation,  now  that  it  has  seen  Christ,  is  nearer  than when men  merely  believed  in  His  coming. And hence, just  as  the  aerolite  falls  the  faster  the  nearer  it approaches  its  resting  place  on  the  earth;  as  the  racer makes his  supreme  effort  on  the  home  stretch;  as  the