11 Let us not then faint, my Brethren: an end there will be to all earthly kingdoms. If that end be now, God knows. For perhaps it is not yet, and we, through some infirmity, or mercifulness, or misery, are wishing that it may not be yet; nevertheless will it not therefore some day be? Fix your hope in God, desire the things eternal, wait for the things eternal. You are Christians, Brethren, we are all Christians. Christ did not come down into the flesh that we might live softly; let us endure rather than love the things present; manifest is the harm of adversity, deceitful is the soft blandishment of prosperity.
Fear the sea, even when it is a calm. On no account let us hear in vain, “Let us lift up our hearts.” Why place we our hearts in the earth, when we see that the earth is being turned upside down? We cannot but exhort you, that you may have something to say and answer in defence of your hope against the deriders and blasphemers of the Christian name. Let no one by his murmuring turn you back from waiting for the things to come. All who by reason of these adversities blaspheme our Christ, are the “scorpion's” tail.
Let us put our egg under the wings of that Hen of the Gospel, which cries out to that false and abandoned city, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen her chickens, and you would not!” Let it not be said to us, “How often would I, and you would not!” For that hen is the Divine Wisdom; but assumed flesh to accommodate Itself to its chickens. See the hen with feathers bristling, with wings hanging down, with voice broken, and tremulous, and faint, and languid, accommodating herself to her little ones. Our egg then, that is, our hope, let us place beneath the wings of this Hen.
Source: Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament (New Advent)