St. John Vianney “We Are For The World” sermon excerpt

If someone cheats us once, we say: “We will not trust him any more–and with good reason.” The world cheats us continually and yet we love it. “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world,” St. John warns us. Ah, my dear children, if we gave some thought to what the world really is, we should pass all of our lives bidding it farewell. When one reaches and age of fifteen years, one has said farewell to the pastimes of childhood; one has come to look upon them as trifling and ephemeral, as one would the actions of children building houses of cards or sand castles. At thirty, one has begun to put behind one the consuming pleasures of passionate youth. What gave such intense pleasure in younger days is already beginning to weary. Let us go further, my dear children, and say that every day we are bidding farewell to the world. We are like travelers who enjoy the beauty of the countryside through which they are passing. No sooner do they see it than it is time fore them to leave it behind. It is exactly the same with the pleasures and the good things to which we have become so attached. Then we arrive at the edge of eternity, which engulfs all these things in its abyss.

It is then, my dear brethren, that the world will disappear forever from our eyes and that we shall recognize our folly in having been so attached to it. And all that has been said to us about sin!…Then we shall say: It was all true. Alas, I lived only for the world, I sought nothing but the world in all I did, and now the pleasures and joys of the world are not for me any longer! They are slipping away from me–this world which I have loved so well, these joys, these pleasures which have so fully occupied my heart and soul!…

Now I must return to my God!…How consoling this thought is, my dear children, for him who has sought only God throughout his life! But what a despairing thought for him who has lost sight of God and of the salvation of his soul!

Saint John Vianney, The Sermons of the Curé of Ars, pg 24