Opening appeal: let us hear like wax, for the drought is God's warning

A lion roars, and who will not be afraid? The Lord God has spoken, and who will not prophesy? (Amos 3:8). Let us make the opening of this discourse prophetic, and let us take the God-inspired Amos as our partner for the need before us, since he healed sufferings like the evils now troubling us. We set out his counsel and judgment about what is beneficial. For this same prophet, in the course of the times above, when the people had abandoned their ancestral piety, trampled the exactness of the laws, and slipped away into the worship of idols, became a herald of repentance: urging them to turn back, and holding before them the threat of punishments.

For my part, let it be granted by prayer that I may draw on the old history as an example up to a point—but may I no longer see the outcome of what happened then follow in the same way. For the people disobeyed, and like a hard and unbridled colt biting the bit, they were not drawn toward what was beneficial. They turned aside from the straight road and ran so wildly, and snorted against the charioteer, until they fell into pits and over cliffs and endured total destruction as the worthy reward of their disobedience. May that not happen now among us, my children, whom I have begotten through the Gospel, whom I have swaddled through the blessing of my hands.

But let there be a receptive ear, a compliant soul, receiving the exhortations softly, yielding to the speaker, as wax to the one sealing—so that through this one effort I may receive a fruit that gladdens my labors, and you may praise the exhortation given when the time of deliverance from these terrors comes.

What then is it that the discourse points to, but still holds your souls suspended in hope of hearing, delaying to make public what is expected? We see the sky, brothers: impervious, bare, and cloudless, producing this gloomy clear weather, and grieving us by the very clarity that we once desired so much, when it was covered for a long time with clouds and made us dark and sunless. The earth, dried up to the extreme, is unpleasant to look at, barren for farming and unfruitful, split into cracks and receiving the blazing ray into its depths. The rich and ever-flowing springs have failed us, and the streams of great rivers have been used up. The smallest children trample them underfoot, and women pass over with their loads. For most of us even drinking water has failed, and we stand in perplexity about how to live.

Young Israelites seek a new Moses and a rod that works wonders, so that rocks may be struck again and heal the need of the thirsty people, and marvelous clouds may rain down unaccustomed food—manna—upon human beings. Let us beware lest we become a new story for later generations about famine and punishment.

I saw the fields, and I wept much over their barrenness. I poured out lamentation, because no rain was poured out upon us. Some of the seeds dried up before they sprouted, remaining in the clods just as the plow had hidden them. Others, after peeping out a little and sprouting, were pitifully withered by the burning heat. So now one might fittingly reverse the Gospel saying: The workers are many, but the harvest is not even a little (Matthew 9:37).