In order, then, to understand what is meant by union with God, it must be known that God dwells and is present substantially in every soul, even in that of the greatest sinner in the world. And this kind of union is ever wrought between God and all the creatures, for in it he is preserving their being: if union of this kind were to fail them, they would at once become annihilated and would cease to be.
To you who are coming to baptism, Scripture says, “Bear fruits that befit repentance.” Do you want to know what fruits befit repentance? Love is a fruit of the Spirit. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. So are peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control, and the others of this sort. If we have all of these virtues, we have produced “fruits that befit repentance.”
You are one of God’s people, of God’s family, a virgin among virgins; you light up your grace of body with your splendor of soul. More than others you can be compared to the Church. When you are in your room, then, at night, think always on Christ, and wait for his coming at every moment.
Advent is about waiting and wanting. All of the Advent people are waiting: Zechariah and Elizabeth are waiting, Mary and Joseph are waiting, Simeon and Anna are waiting. We are invited to wait, to want.
One could certainly ask whether it is really true that the Savior has kindled such a light in the world, whether we are not in complete darkness in spite of the Savior. Are there honest and upright people at all?
The certainty of Christian hope lies beyond passion and beyond knowledge. Therefore we must sometimes expect our hope to come in conflict with darkness, desperation and ignorance. Therefore, too, we must remember that Christian optimism is not a perpetual sense of euphoria, an indefectible comfort in whose presence neither anguish nor tragedy can possibly exist.
I. Let your preparations in secret and in your family on the beginning of the Lord’s days, be such as conduce to fit you for the public worship. Run not to church as ungodly people do, with a carnal heart, that never sought God before you went, nor considered what you go about; as if all your religion were to make up the number of the auditors; and you thought God must not be worshipped and obeyed at home,
He here announced greatness, not of body but of soul. Greatness of soul before the Lord is greatness of virtue, and smallness of soul is childhood of virtue. . . . Thus John would be great—not through bodily virtue but through magnanimity.
The precursor of Christ—the voice of one crying in the wilderness—preaches in the desert of the soul that has known no peace. Not only then, but even now, a bright and burning lamp first comes and preaches the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Then the true Light follows,
Curb for wild horses,
Wing for bird-courses
Never yet flown!
Helm, sage for weak ones,
Shepherd, bespeak once,
The young lambs thine own.