Reading: Saturday After Ash Wednesday

The Mercy of God to a Penitent 7
From a Letter of St Maximus the Confessor

God’s will is to save us, and nothing pleases him more than our coming back
to him with 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 preeminent sign of his infinite goodness. It is
precisely in order to show that there is nothing closer to God’s heart than the divine
Word of the Father, with untold condescension, lived among us in the flesh, and
did, suffered and said 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 as they were, 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, not the righteous, and that it was not the healthy who required a doctor,
but the sick. He declared that he had come to look for the sheep that was lost, and
that it was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel that he had been sent.

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 have him cared for, and
promised to repay any further expense on his return.

Again, he told of how that Father. Who is goodness itself, 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 his own
dignity, 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, he restored it safely 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, however, “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”.

7 The Liturgy of the Hours – vol II – pg 304 – Catholic Book Publishing co – 1976