¹ Our Lord, dearest brethren, has instilled great fear in us through the Gospel and Paul concerning the end times. After such dreadful testimonies of the divine canon, what refuge remains for us? With what tears, what sighs do we need? With what compunction must our hard and stony hearts be broken so that we may escape such great wrath of the Judge, which the Creator of the universe and our Lord Himself, through the Apostle and the Prophets, threatens? These same threats are not left unspoken, as it is said: “Behold, the day of the Lord comes, burning like a furnace, and all the proud, yes, and all who do wickedly will be stubble; and the day that is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch”. Likewise, another prophet says: “Behold, the Lord Almighty comes, and who shall be able to endure the day of His coming? Or who shall stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire”. And Isaiah also says: “Behold, the day of the Lord shall come, cruel with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate”. And a little further on: “For the heavens shall be shaken, and the earth shall be moved out of her place, at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of His fierce anger”. And again he says: “The foundations of the earth shall be shaken, the earth shall be moved exceedingly, the earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a tent”. Asaph also speaks similarly: “God shall come openly, our God shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous around Him”. And David speaks in agreement, saying: “A fire goes before Him and burns up His enemies round about”.

² After these dreadful proclamations of both the Old and New Testaments, of which we recalled only a few yesterday and today, let us consider by what means we may escape the wrath of so great a Judge. We must remember the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it”. Therefore, we must willingly lose whatever we love apart from Christ for the sake of Christ. First, if necessary, let us surrender our life, by which the body is enlivened through union with the soul, for Christ’s sake, even to martyrdom. Or, if such a blessed opportunity is lacking, at least let us practice the mortification of our desires, so that he who lives may not live for himself, but for Him who died for him. Let us therefore live for Him who, though He died for us, is life itself; and let us die to ourselves, that we may live for Christ. For we cannot live for Him unless we first die to ourselves—that is, to our own desires. Let us belong to Christ, not to ourselves. “For you are not your own; you were bought at a great price”—and indeed, at a truly great price, when the Lord is given for the servant, the King for the minister, God for man. What should we render in return, if the Creator of the universe, though we were unworthy sinners (yet still His creatures), died for us? Do you think you should not die to sin? Certainly, you must. Let us die, therefore—let us die for life, because Life Himself died for the dead, so that we may say with Paul: “I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me”, He who died for me. This is the voice of the elect. No one, however, can die to himself unless Christ lives in him; and if Christ is in him, he cannot live for himself. Live in Christ, so that Christ may live in you.

³ But you ask how the mind may live in Him, so that it may teach you to die to yourself and live for Christ—or rather, to live truly for yourself. For he who dies for Christ lives, and he who lives for himself dies. For if a man lives according to his own will, he is mortal, as the Apostle says: “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die”. You see, dearest brethren, that we dwell in what is not our own, since even our own life is not ours, and we ought not to live for ourselves. And it is a great struggle to seek, through toil and effort, what our fallen nature has not preserved. Yet, even though blessedness has been lost, free will has not been. Therefore, we now seize the kingdom of heaven by force, and in a way, we snatch it as if from the midst of enemies, from the very battlefield of struggle and the blood-stained ground of combat. For we are assailed not only by adversaries but even more severely by ourselves, since each man loves himself wrongly and, in what he loves, harms himself. He truly loves rightly who wisely hates himself—that is, who afflicts himself. But he who consents to his adversaries cannot be said to love himself rightly. It is a great misery for a man to harm himself and not realize it. When a man is his own enemy, no one else can reconcile him with himself so that he truly loves himself. We must therefore fight here and struggle against our vices, that we may be crowned elsewhere. This time is a time of war; no one should expect security in battle, for no one sleeps in war, and no one enters the battlefield with a sense of safety. We must therefore set ourselves in battle against all that is vicious, pleasurable, and deceitfully enticing. It is enough for a warrior to overcome his enemies; if you conquer yourself, you are the victor over all. If you conquer yourself, you will be found dead to yourself but alive to God. But if you remain enslaved to yourself, how dare you stand before Christ’s judgment? Each one who suffers martyrdom for Christ makes himself his own martyr. For if he truly bore Christ’s cross, he would recognize that none of these things are permitted to him, since Christ Himself gave this example, saying: “Not as I will, but as You will”, and: “I have come down not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me”.

⁴ Let each one examine himself, lest he be found free and alive in the place of a servant and the crucified. Let each one remain in the calling in which he was called before God, as the Apostle said: “Whether free or subject”, let them be as servants in Christ under the yoke of humility. Therefore, dearest brethren, let each of us fight against himself. For if we live against our brethren and speak as we please, our religion is not true but false. Nothing should be unrestrained in Christ’s servants, and nothing lofty should be found in Christ’s humility. Let us not be proud, stubborn, or self-willed, but humble, gentle, affable, and charitable, so that Christ, our humble King, may reign in us. But that we may love this saving death with a certain sweetness of hope, let us consider its end. Who indeed is happier than the one whose death is life, whose life is Christ, whose reward is the Savior? Who gains heaven as his inheritance, paradise as his home, the earth as celestial, and hell as shut against him? Who finds the gates of eternity opened and life unending? Who has God as his Father and an angel as his minister? Let us despise the present and seek only the future, that we may gain all these things. May Christ our God grant this to us. Amen.