Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/203

 truth promises?" Is God like men, who promise, and do not afterwards fulfil their promise, either because in making it they intend to deceive, or because, after having made it, they change their intention? “God is not as a man, that he should lie, nor as the son of man, that he should be changed. Hath he told, then, and will he not do?" (Num. xxiii. 19.) Our God cannot tell a lie; because he is truth itself: he is not liable to change; because all his arrangements are just and holy. 6. And because he ardently desires our welfare, he earnestly exhausts and commands us to ask the graces we stand in need of. ”Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you." (Matt. vii. 7.) Why, says St. Augustine, should the Lord exhort us so strongly to ask his graces, if he did not wish to give them to us? "Non nos hortaretur, ut peteremus, nisi dare vellet" (de Verb. Dom., ser. v.) He has even bound himself by his promise to hear our prayers, and to bestow upon us all the graces which we ask with a confidence of obtaining them. “By his promises he has made himself a debtor." (S. Augus., ibid., ser. ii.) 7. But some will say: I have but little confidence in God, because I am a sinner. I have been too ungrateful to him, and therefore I see that I do not deserve to be heard. But St. Thomas tells us, that the efficacy of our prayers in obtaining graces from God, does not depend on our merits, but on the divine mercy. "Oratio in impetrando non innititur nostris mentis, sed soli divinæ misericordiæ" (2, 2, qu. 178, a. 2, ad. 1.) As often as we ask with confidence favours which are conducive to our eternal salvation, God hears our prayer. I have said, “favours conducive to our salvation ;" for, if what we seek be injurious to the soul, God does not, and cannot hear us. For example: if a person asked help from God to be revenged of an enemy, or to accomplish what would be offensive to God, the Lord will not hear his prayers; because, says St. Chrysostom, such a person offends God in the very act of prayer; he does not pray, but, in a certain manner mocks God. ”Qui orat et peccat, non rogat Deum, sed eludit." (Hom, xi., in Matt, vi.)