God’s will is to save us, and nothing pleases him more than our coming back to him with true repentance.
[...] Indeed, God’s desire for our salvation is the primary and pre-eminent sign of his infinite goodness.
Precisely in order to show that there is nothing closer to God’s heart than this, the divine Word of God the Father, with untold condescension, lived among us in the flesh.
And 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 had been exiled.
[...] 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.
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 passions.
“You can be sure there is joy in heaven”, he said, “over one sinner who repents”.
[...] 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”.
St Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662) Letter 11 from the Office of Readings for Wednesday of the 4th week of Lent @ Crossroads Initiative.
