Vigils Reading – Friday after Ash Wednesday

THE UNBOUNDED LOVE

OF GOD

From “Seasons of Celebration” by Thomas Merton

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If we look carefully at the famous contrast made by St Paul between the

“law of God in his mind” and “the law of sin in his body” we will see a little more

in it than just these two. It is true, St Paul says he is “delighted with God’s law

according to the inner man,” with his “mind he serves the law of God but with

his lower nature the law which allures him to sin”. Ordinarily this text is not

interpreted fully. Very often for instance, we take it to mean that there is nothing

else for us but to accept this inevitable conflict, to try to keep the law of God in

spite of the bias of concupiscence that draws us toward sin. To accept the

conflict in a spirit of Christian resignation is all that is required of us as

Christians.

Do we not see that this leaves us purely and simply captives of the Law? If

this is all there is to it, then Christ’s victory is not complete in our lives. There is

a third possibility, and this is the right one. It is the grace of God in Christ our

Lord or, to be more succinct, it is Christ himself in us. It is our new life in Christ.

By our life of love and hope in Christ we rise above the dilemma and thus resolve

it. The Christian solution is not merely to continue struggling against

temptation in order to live according to the Law. This is nothing new. It is

exactly what had to be done before the coming of Christ. The Christian is no

longer bound by the law of the flesh, and he is no longer obliged in a spirit of fear

to keep the Law of God considered as a formal code imposed on him from

without.

He may still be tempted by the flesh. He resists temptation and is saved

not by various practices and stratagems but by the spiritual force of love itself,

and of the new life that is in him. He lives by the “Spirit of him who raised Christ

Jesus from the dead,” and by that Spirit he “puts to death the deeds prompted

by the animal instincts, and so lives. In other words, it is not dutiful observance

that keeps us from sin, but something far greater: it is love. And this love is not

something which we develop by our own powers alone. It is a sublime gift of the

divine mercy, and the fact that we live in realization of this mercy and this gift is

the greatest source of growth for our love and for our holiness.

This gift, this mercy, this unbounded love of God for us has been lavished

upon us as a result of Christ’s victory. To taste this love is to share in his victory.

To realize our freedom, to exult in our liberation from death, from sin and from

the Law, is to sing the Alleluia which truly glorifies God in this world and in the

world to come.