And you will find people who do not go to the sacraments regularly, who, in fact, have not been for a long time, and who make a similar excuse for staying away--that is, that they are not in good dispositions to receive absolution. These people also think that they should not go to confession till in some way or another they have got in good dispositions. It is natural enough, perhaps, that both these kinds of people should think as they do. They want, of course, to make a really good confession. They would not like to receive absolution feeling just as they do now; so they put it off till some time when their dispositions will be improved; but they make a great mistake, and lose a great deal of time by doing so. {389} The mistake which they make is in not understanding that the preparation for confession which they could make with their present dispositions is the best way for getting them into better ones. They might learn a salutary lesson from the Gospel of to-day. You will have noticed, if you have listened to it carefully, that the poor men whom our Lord cured were simply told by him to go and show themselves to the priests, and that they set off, with the defilement of the leprosy still upon them, to obey his commands. They might very well have excused themselves by saying that they were not fit to go before the priests; and it would have been very true that they wore not. For, according to the law of the Jews, it was only lepers who had already been cured who were to show themselves to the priests; just as now it is only sinners who are penitent who can ask for absolution. The priests of the Old Law could not cure the leprosy, any more than those of the New Law can absolve a sinner before he repents. But, nevertheless, they went, though it seemed to be of no use for them to go. And what happened to them on the road? Why, it happened, as the Gospel tells us, that as they went they were made clean. Now, this, as I have said, has a lesson and a meaning for such as now are laboring under any spiritual disease or disorder, be it small or great, which is keeping them from the sacraments. The remedy for them, as for these men of whose cure we read in this Gospel, is to set out to show themselves to the priests; that is, to prepare themselves for confession. If they do they also will be cured on the way. {390}