Chapter 116
The Son speaks: ”I will give you a figurative description of three men.
The first of them might say: 'I do not believe in you either as God or as man.' Such a one is a pagan Gentile. The second, who is a Jew, believes in me as God but not as man. The third, who is a Christian, believes in me as God and man but does not trust my words.
I am the one over whom the voice of the Father was heard to say: 'This is my Son.' In my divine nature I lament that men do not want to listen to me. I cried out and said: 'I am the beginning: If you believe in me, you will have eternal life,' but they scorned me. They witnessed my divine power when I raised the dead and did much else, but they gave it no consideration.
On behalf of my human nature, too, I lament that nobody cares about the things that I established in the Holy Church. I placed, as it were, seven vessels in the church by means of which everyone was to be purified. I established baptism for the purgation of original sin; chrism as a sign of divine reconciliation; holy unction for strength in the face of death; penance for the remission of all sins; the holy words with which the sacred offerings are consecrated and established; the priesthood in appreciation, recognition, and remembrance of divine charity; matrimony as the union of hearts. These ought to be received with humility, kept in purity, celebrated without avarice. Nowadays, however, they are received with pride, kept in impure vessels, celebrated with avarice.
Moreover, my lament is that I was born and I died for the salvation of humankind in order that, even if people refused to love me because I created them, at least they would love me because I had redeemed them. Nowadays, however, they cast me out of their hearts as though I were a leper, and they shun me as though I were an unclean rag. In my divinity, I lament again that they refuse the consolation of my divinity and give its charity no consideration.”
God himself runs out to meet those who truly desire him; he comforts them like a loving father and makes difficult things easy for them.
Dostları ilə paylaş: |
