Page 39 - pastoral-letters-sjm

St. Joseph Marello - 1893

Unfortunately, there is an increase of those Christians who,
without renouncing the faith, lead a life in conflict with its
teachings and its laws; believers in their hearts and unbelievers
in their works: Christians who, if religion is held in honor and
those who profess it are honored, they make it their glory and
boast of practicing it; but as soon as it no longer has the homage
and protection of the great and powerful of this age, and is no
longer useful for their temporal interests, they immediately turn
their backs on it and are ashamed for having once been its
faithful followers. Have these Christians changed with the
changing times their intimate conviction and ceased to believe
the truth of the faith? Generally not. In their heart they think and
feel the same about their obligation of conscience, but since they
would need a little courage to show themselves openly as
Christians, and practicing Christians, they find it more
convenient to lie, even to themselves, and to show themselves to
be worse than they are. Now we ask those unhappy slaves of
human respect: how come the world has such power over you?
how can it lead you to the point that, in order not to lose its fa-
vor, you sacrifice you faith? Is it its strength that leads you to
this, or your weakness? Are you thinking of what your are
doing? Therefore, are the vain censures, the mockery and scorn
of an evil world to be feared more than the laws and
punishments of Almighty God?
Weak and uncertain Christians who tremble at a mocking
word, at the scornful smile of a libertine, what would have
happened to you in those centuries when it was necessary to seal
your profession of faith with your blood? Your faintheartedness,
painful to say, would have made apostates of you. Does not your
present conduct, dominated by human respect, lead you also to
that end, to apostasy? Today you blush at this or that practice of
piety, at this or that law imposed upon you by God or the
Church; and tomorrow? Tomorrow perhaps you will also be
ashamed of believing, and thus plunge into the abyss. St. Paul

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