God’s will is to save us, and nothing pleases Him more than our coming back to Him in true repentance. The heralds of truth and the ministers of divine grace have told us this from the beginning, repeating it in every age. Indeed, God’s desire for our salvation is the primary and pre-eminent sign of His infinite goodness. Precisely in order to show that there is nothing closer to God’s heart than this, the divine Word of God, with untold humility, lived among us in the flesh. He suffered beyond what we suffer. He told us all that was necessary to reconcile us to God the Father, when we were at enmity with Him, and to restore us to the life of blessedness from which we had been exiled. He healed our physical infirmities by miracles. He freed us from our sins, many and grievous though they are, by suffering and dying, taking them upon Himself as if He were answerable for them, sinless though He was. He also taught us in many different ways that we should wish to imitate Him by our own kindness and genuine love for one another.
So it was that Christ proclaimed that He had come to call sinners to repentance, and that it was not the healthy who required a physician, but the sick. He declared that He had come to look for the sheep that was lost, that it was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel that He had been sent. Speaking more obscurely in the parable of the silver coin, He tells us that the purpose of His coming was to reclaim the royal image marked on our soul, which had been coated with the filth of sin. “You can be sure there is joy in heaven”, He said, “over one sinner who repents.”
To give the same lesson, He revived the man who, having fallen into the hands of brigands, had been left stripped and half-dead from his wounds. He poured wine and oil on the wounds, bandaged them, placed the man on His own mule and brought him to an inn, where He left sufficient money to for his care. And He promised to repay any further expense on His second coming.
Again, he told us of how that Father, who is goodness himself, was moved with pity for His profligate son who returned and made amends by repentance; how He embraced him, dressed him once more in the fine garments that befitted the dignity of the son of the Father, and did not reproach him for any of his sins.
So too, when He found, wandering in the mountains and hills, the one sheep that had strayed from God’s flock of a hundred. He brought it back to the fold, but He did not exhaust it by driving it ahead of him. Instead, He placed it on his own shoulders and so, compassionately, restored it to the safety to the flock.
So, also, He cried out: ‘Come to me, all you that toil and are heavy of heart’. ‘Accept my yoke’, He said, by which He meant his commands, or rather, the whole way of life that He taught us in the Gospel. He then speaks of a burden, but that is only because repentance seems difficult. In fact, ‘My yoke is easy,’ He assures us, and ‘My burden is light.’
Then, again, He instructs us in divine justice and goodness, telling us to be like our heavenly Father, holy, perfect, and merciful. Forgive, He says, and you will be forgiven. Behave toward other people as you would wish them to behave toward you.
May God bless you always, as He has promised He would, and may you have a holy and restorative Lent.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!