Sunday Sermon

That is a time when one requires help, when one is at the point of death. But it is also a time when great skill is required to help; and it is a certain sign that a disease is incurable when nothing but a miracle on the part of God can cure it. With reason, then, did the ruler, in to-day’s Gospel, beg of our Lord to come: “Lord, come down, before that my son dies;” there is no time for delay, because he has already begun to breathe his last. A malady of that kind is impurity, and it is an incurable and desperate malady, so that he who is infected with it has already begun to die an eternal death. For when it has once become deep-rooted it can hardly be cured, unless by a miracle of divine grace.