Except ye repent, ye shall all like­wise perish

Thurs­day. [II Thess. 2:13-3:5; Luke 13:1-9] Pi­late min­gled the blood of Gal­i­le­ans with their sac­ri­fic­es — the Lord said: ex­cept ye re­pent, ye shall all like­wise per­ish; the tow­er of Si­lo­am fell and killed 18 peo­ple — the Lord again said: ex­cept ye re­pent, ye shall all like­wise per­ish. This gives an un­der­stand­ing that when some mis­for­tune be­falls oth­ers, we must not rea­son a­bout why it hap­pen­ed, but rath­er look at our­selves and ex­am­ine wheth­er there are any sins on us de­serv­ing tem­po­rary pun­ish­ment for the in­struc­tion of oth­ers, and has­ten to wipe them out with re­pen­tance. Re­pen­tance cleans­es sin and re­moves the cause which at­tracts a ca­tas­tro­phe. While a per­son is in sin, an axe is laid to the root of the tree of his life, read­y to cut it down. It does not cut be­cause it waits for re­pen­tance. Re­pent and the axe will be taken a­way, and your life will flow to its end in the nat­u­ral or­der of things; if you do not re­pent — ex­pect to be cut down. What man can know wheth­er he will live to the next year? The par­a­ble a­bout the fruit­less fig tree shows that the Sav­iour prays that Di­vine jus­tice spare each sin­ner in the hopes that he will re­pent and bring forth good fruits. But it some­times hap­pens that Di­vine jus­tice no long­er hears the in­ter­ces­sions, and per­haps He will on­ly a­gree to al­low some­bod­y one more year to re­main a­live. How do you know, sin­ner, that you are not liv­ing your last year, your last month, day and hour?