Second Coming

Before the first star was kindled, before the first living creature began to sing the praise of its Creator, he loved his Church with an everlasting love. He spied her in the glass of predestination, pictured her by his divine foreknowledge, and loved her with all his heart; and it was for this cause that he left his Father, and became one with her, that he might redeem her. It was for this cause that he went with her through all this vale of tears, discharged her debts, and bore her sins in his own body on the tree. For her sake he slept in the tomb, and with the same love that brought him down he has gone up again, and with the same heart beating true to the same blessed betrothment he has gone into the glory, waiting for the marriage day when he shall come again, to receive his perfected spouse, who shall have made herself ready by his grace. Never for a moment, whether as God over all, blessed forever, or as God and man in one divine person, or as dead and buried, or as risen and ascended, never has he changed in the love he bears to his chosen.

In the first Advent He came to justify the wicked, in the second He will come to condemn the wicked. In the first He came to call back those that were wrested from Him, in the second He will come to glorify those that are converted to Him. In the first Advent Christ was betrayed for the wicked to a death which He deserved not, in the second He will give up the wicked to a death which they deserve. In the first Advent He came to form our hearts again to the image of God. But in the second, He will form again the body of our humility so as to be configured to the body of His glory.

O miserable, unthankful, and most mischievous world! What shall be your condemnation when he, who has so often gently provoked you to obey his truth, shall come in his glory to punish your contempt? What shall hide you from the presence of that lion whom you persecuted in every age? What shall excuse you, who so tyrannously has shed the blood of such as faithfully labored to bring you from blind ignorance and idolatry?