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

closer to God’s heart than the divine Word of the Father. With untold

condescension, he 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 – 1976.15

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