God’s justice toward the impenitent will be as intense as his mercy has been
4 min • Digitized on April 12, 2024
From The Sinner’s Guide, page 111
By Venerable Louis of Granada
Another consideration which may help us to appreciate the rigor of these sufferings is the greatness of the mercy which the sinner has despised.
What is there more astonishing than that mercy which caused God to clothe Himself in human flesh, to endure innumerable sufferings and humiliations, to take upon Himself the transgressions of the world, and for these transgressions to expire as a malefactor on an infamous gibbet? God is infinite in all His attributes; and, therefore, the justice with which He will punish man will equal the boundless mercy with which He redeemed him.
When God first came upon earth there was nothing in us to excite His mercy; but at His second coming our every sin will be an additional reason for Him to exercise His justice. Judge, therefore, how terrible it will be. “At His second coming,” says St. Bernard, “God will be as inflexible and as rigorous in punishing as at His first coming He was patient and merciful in forgiving. There is now no sinner living who is cut off from His reconciliation; but in the day of His justice none will be received.”
These words of St. Bernard are confirmed by the royal prophet, who tells us; “Our God is the God of salvation; and of the Lord, of the Lord are the issues from death. But God shall break the heads of His enemies; the hairy crown of them that walk on in their sins.” Behold, then, how great is God’s mercy to those who are converted to Him, and how great is the rigor with which He punishes obdurate sinners.
The same truth is manifested by God’s patience with the world, and with the vices and disorders of every sinner in particular. How many there are who, from the age of reason to the end of their lives, continually offend Him and despise His law, regardless of His promises, His benefits, His warnings, or His menaces! Yet God does not cut them off, but continues to bear with them, unceasingly exhorting them to repentance. But when the term of His patience will come, and His wrath, which has been accumulating in the bosom of His justice, will burst its bounds, with what terrible violence it will be poured out upon them! “Knowest thou not,” says the Apostle, “that the benignity of God leadeth thee to penance? But according to thy hardness and impenitent heart, thou treasurest up to thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the just judgment of God, Who will render to every man according to his works.”
The meaning of these words is not difficult. A treasure of wrath is a terrible figure. Just as the miser adds coin to coin, riches to riches, so the wrath of God is daily and even hourly increased by the transgressions of the sinner. Were a man to let no day or hour pass without adding to his material fortune, consider what an immense amount he would have accumulated at the end of fifty or sixty years. Alas! then, for thee, unhappy sinner, for there is hardly an hour in which thou dost not add to the treasures of God’s wrath which thy sins are accumulating against thee. Thy immodest glances, the evil desires of thy corrupt heart, and thy scandalous words and blasphemies would alone suffice to fill a world. If to these are added the many other grievous crimes of which thou hast been guilty, consider the treasure of vengeance and wrath which a long life of sin will heap up against thee.