Ave Maria Meditations
Do you want to give yourself an idea of the goodness of God and the hardness of creatures? Consider how God acts when He is offended and how men act! O how slight is human mercy, even nonexistent! Man pretends to pardon, but in reality he does nothing but treat his offender harshly while always remembering the offense. He forgives when he no longer feels the impact and the anger; he forgives with difficulty. Yet the offender is a being like him, perhaps better than him.
Look how inflexible man is when he punishes. The guilty person repents, begs, weeps, but the law strikes him, obliterates him, they deprives him of freedom and is not placated until he is paid in full.
God is infinite. The offense which He receives is incommensurable, yet God calls the sinner to His heart, He embraces him with the most delicate expressions, He searches for him like a lost treasure, like a little lamb from His own fold, like a beloved son. If God wants him to confess his sin, it is for the benefit of the sinner, so that, by humiliating himself, he may feel free of his weight and deserve forgiveness and may look on this as a blessed right and not a humiliating concession.
God does not despise the sinner, He does not look on him with severity nor reprove him, but embraces him, and riches him with grace, reclothes him with the garments of justice, puts on the ring sonship of on his finger and prepares the solemn banquet of the Eucharist for him. One single sincere word of love, one single sigh of the soul is enough to reconcile him to God even before mildly humbling himself before God’s minister.
O how great is God’s mercy!
The Servant of God, Don Dolindo Ruotolo
