Vigils Reading

THE GREATNESS OF DIVINE MERCY

From the maxims of Stephen of Muret2

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Blessed are you when none but God and you yourself see your own sins; this is one of the superlative mercies of God. He rarely rids you of any of your mortal flaws totally while you live on earth. Rather he covers them, like one covers embers with ash, so that only you and he perceive them. If you are a servant of God, knowing your sins are still with you will produce conflict within, and this disharmony is the first step toward inner peace…

If we could see other’s thoughts, no one would be considered good. Often something is seem where it is not, and unnoticed where it is. You might see a person’s body engaged in doing good, though their heart be not in it. So, consider it a huge kindness shown you if God keeps you ignorant of other’s thoughts.

When God shows mercy to anyone, the very same kind of compassion is being shown, whether its object be one who has lived long years in doing good, or a sinner who has just turned to God at the end of life. If you question this state of affairs and insist that a sinner, who has never bothered to labor at a good life, must then be more tenderly loved by God than the decent person who has worked hard to be so, I will answer you in this way: If you have been enabled to live a dutiful sort of life all these years, you do not merely have an equal share with the sinner in God’s compassion, but yours is a greater share. For had you not been held safely in the hands of God, be quite sure that you would have fallen into the same sins, perhaps sinking even lower!

Where wrongdoing is concerned, we are all infected with the same rot. So then, if you are one of the favored ones who were not only made whole, but for whom moral goodness has long been a source of joy, consider yourself twice as tenderly loved by God. Is it not a greater advantage, therefore, to be able to endure the fire and heat of any passion without being burnt thereby, than it is to have escaped the fire altogether? After all, you were given a certain freedom from your sinfulness, while others will have to suffer for theirs, either in this life or in the fiery purification of death.

Here is another token of compassion which turns out to be a greater favor for those whom God saves early in life. The more upright your life, the more intense will be your felt need and desire for the wholeness God alone accomplishes. Indeed, God can more lovingly care for those who know their need and poverty (when they choose it) than for any who think they need nothing. It is a mark of a genuinely shameless person to experience neither aspiration nor interest toward receiving salvation; whereas one who is dutiful can be heard sighing and weeping when that grace is yet far off. When this is so, God, with the tenderest pity, fulfills that desire..