Mirror of Sinners on the Contempt of the World

perform penance

go, you cursed, into eternal fire

What, therefore, must be done so that we may avoid hell? I say that God, who according to the Apostle wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of His name, has proposed two words for us in the Gospel. One He spoke while remaining in the flesh; the other He is to speak at the final judgment. In these words, He proposes to us good and evil, life and death, blessing and curse. Choose, therefore, O man, one of them, for whether you will it or not, you must follow one of them. Choose, therefore, whichever you wish; one of these two you must choose.

The first is written in Mark 1: "Repent" original: "Penitentiam agite", and such true penance can be called a religious life virtuously led. The second will be said at the strict judgment on the last day, and is written in Matthew 25: "Go, you cursed, into eternal fire" original: "Ite maledicti in ignem eternum". If, therefore, you accept the first by doing penance, you will securely avoid the second. But if you despise the first, you will undoubtedly fall into the second. Concerning these words joined together, Bernardus Bernard of Clairvaux says: "The lovers of the world answer us when we persuade them to do penance, and they say, just as the hardened and blinded have said: 'This is a hard saying; who can hear it?' You are insane, and you err; why does it seem hard to you when it is said, 'Repent,' and so on? You are about to hear a harder one, namely: 'Go, you cursed into eternal fire,' where you will eternally endure a harder torture: which may God avert."

If inspiring penance and all the horrible and terrible things predicted do not induce the servants of the devil and lovers of the world to the conversion of their life and to doing penance, nothing remains but that they attend to the immensity of the celestial joys. Of these, the Psalm says in the eighty-third Psalm: "For better is one day there than a thousand days in this life." Whence he says elsewhere: "For a thousand years before your eyes are as yesterday, which has passed," namely, spent joyfully in this life. Concerning these joys, Gregorius Pope Gregory the Great also says: "There is peace without discord, will without command, justice without injury, youth without old age, beauty without deformity, life without death, joy without perturbation; songs are not lacking, and rewards do not fail."

Concerning the immensity of celestial joys, which leads lovers of the world to do penance