upon St. Barbara; we vow a pilgrimage to St. James, to this place
and to that; then we make earnest prayer, have a good confidence
and every good kind of prayer. But when we are in our churches
during mass, we stand like images of saints; know nothing to
speak of or to lament; the beads rattle, the pages rustle and the
mouth babbles; and that is all there is to it.

But if you ask what you shall speak of and lament in your prayer,
you can easily learn from the Ten Commandments and the Lord's
Prayer. Open your eyes and look into your life and the life of
all Christians, especially of the spiritual estate, and you will
find how faith, hope, love, obedience, chastity and every virtue
languish, and all manner of heinous vices reign; what a lack
there is of good preachers and prelates; how only knaves,
children, fools and women rule. Then you will see that there were
need every hour without ceasing to pray everywhere with tears of
blood to God, Who is so terribly angry with men. And it is true
that it has never been more necessary to pray than at this time,
and it will be more so from now on to the end of the world. If
such terrible crimes do not move you to lament and complain, do
not permit yourself to be led astray by your rank, station, good
works or prayer: there is no Christian vein or trait in you,
however righteous you may be. But it has all been foretold, that
when God's anger is greatest and Christendom suffers the greatest
need, then petitioners and supplicants before God shall not be
found, as Isaiah says with tears, chapter lxiv: "Thou art angry
with us, and there is none that calleth upon Thy Name, that
stirreth up himself to take hold of Thee." Likewise, Ezekiel
xxii: "I sought for a man among them, that should make up the
hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should