As we near the end of the liturgical year and the Sunday readings are more and more about judgment, I find myself remembering little Thérèse’s thoughts about God’s judgment: “What a sweet joy it is to think that God is Just, i.e., that He takes into account our weakness, that He is perfectly aware of our fragile nature. What should I fear then? Ah! must not the infinitely just God, who deigns to pardon the faults of the prodigal son with so much kindness, be just also toward me who “am with Him always?” (Luke 15:31)
We must remember the mercy and love that drove Jesus to come to us then and to still come to us at every moment. Gregory of Narek gives us the example of boldly reminding Christ of his total love for us.
Refuge for my broken spirit lies in your
living, incorruptible, constant hope,
that looking on me with mercy,
as one condemned to perdition,
when I present myself before our heavenly beneficence,
empty-handed and without gifts,
brining with me the evidence of your untold glory,
I will remind you
who never slumbers in forgetfulness,
who never shuts your eyes,
never ignores the sighs of grief,
That with your cross of light
you may lift away from me, I beg you, the peril that chokes me,
with your comforting care, the vacillating sadness,
with your crown of thorns, the germs of my sin,
with the lashes of the whip, the blows of death,
with the memory of the slap in the face, the neediness of my shame,
with the spitting of your enemies, my contemptible vileness,
with your sip of vinegar, the bitterness of my soul.
Witnesses to Hope 