Vigils Reading

HE CAME TO CALL SINNERS

From a letter by St Maximus the Confessor7

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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 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, and it was precisely in order to show that there is nothing closer to

God’s heart that the divine Word of God the Father, with untold condescension,

lived among us in the flesh, and that he 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 have 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.

Thus he 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. 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, which had been coated with the filth

of sin. You can be sure that there is joy in heaven, he said, over one sinner who

repents.

To 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 the 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.

Then there was the time when one of the hundred sheep in God’s flock

went astray. When he found it wandering in the mountains and hills he did not

exhaust it by driving it back to the fold, but placed it on his own shoulders, and

so in his compassion restored it safely to the flock.

His teaching was the same when 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. Treat other people as you would wish them to treat you.

7 A Word in Season – Monastic Lectionary – vol. II – Lent – Exordium Books – 1982 – pg. 14.15