should they be ready but they should accept this lot with happiness.
Christ says to them: "Happy are they that are outraged and persecuted
for the sake of justice!"

Alas, the rudest proof for him who speaks the truth is not to arouse
indignation. That, at least, is a result, and however sad it may be,
it bears witness to him who has spoken. Certain protests, despite
their fury, are a sort of involuntary homage. The supreme trial for
a voice is indifference. When John called himself a voice in the
wilderness, he alluded to that external solitude where his voice was
raised. But this solitude, on certain days was full of life and the
gospel cites for our benefit certain facts which prove that the words
with which it resounded were not lost in the empty spaces. They moved
and struck home from the humblest regions of society to the exalted
spheres, to the royal throne itself. John garnered love and hate,
blessing and curse, the desirable fruits of all energetic action.
Since that time and before, more than one voice has been able,
applying them to itself, to give to those prophetic words, "voices in
the wilderness," another very melancholy significance. The supreme
image of despair is a voice that is lost in the silence, as is lost,
in the bosom of dead solitudes, the call that no one hears, for succor
that will never come.

After having spoken of the different voices, of their power, of their
effects, let us bestow a compassionate remembrance upon the lost
voices, on those who were or who are still, in the most lamentable
sense of that word, voices in the wilderness.--To be a man, a soul, to
have felt the lighting of a holy flame within oneself; to love truth
and justice; to feel the pain of contact with a life ruled over by
falsehood and violence; at the heart of this poignant contrast between