What Will the Wicked Say?

Oh, how happy that departure of ours will be, when Christ receives us into his own dwelling after we have been cleansed from the stains of sin through a better way of life! Martyrs and prophets will meet us, apostles will join us, angels will be glad, archangels will rejoice; and Satan, defeated, will turn pale, though he will still keep his cruel face, because he will lose all the advantage he had won for himself in us from our sins. He will see glory given to us through mercy, and merits honored with glory. We will triumph over our defeated foe. Where now will the wise men of the world appear? Where will the greedy man, where the adulterer, where the ungodly, where the drunkard, where the slanderer be found? What will these wretched people say in their own defense? “We did not know you, Lord; we did not see that you were in the world. You did not send the prophets; you did not give the law to the world. We did not see the patriarchs; we did not read the lives of the saints. Your Christ was never on the earth. Peter was silent; Paul refused to preach; no evangelist taught. There were no martyrs whose example we should follow. No one foretold your coming judgment; no one commanded us to clothe the poor; no one told us to restrain lust; no one urged us to fight against greed. We fell through ignorance, not knowing what we did.” [a]