'Come to mine assistance, O God! O Lord, make haste to help me!'
These words are at the beginning of Mass tomorrow, and come at the Introit. We hear about helping others in the Gospel, and we need to copy this example. We are all in need of God's mercy, and fall short of the glory of God. But God will have mercy on us if we are sincere in our repentance. A book I am currently reading is by St. Bede, who was born in A.D. 673. He wrote down the history of the Church and what was going on in the world at that time. He had a Letter from Pope Gregory to St. Augustine when the saint was converting new Christians, who had questions for him. He, in turn, wrote to the Pope. I thought it was pertinent for the readings, so am inserting it into these thoughts. Pope Gregory wrote: "For all sin is consummated in three ways, that is, by suggestion, pleasure, and consent. Suggestion comes through the devil, pleasure through the flesh, and consent through the will. The Serpent suggested the first sin, and Eve, as flesh, took physical pleasure in it, while Adam, as spirit, consented; and great discernment is needed if the mind, in judging itself, is to distinguish between suggestion and pleasure, and between pleasure and consent. For when the Evil Spirit suggests a sin, no sin is committed unless the flesh takes pleasure in it; but when the flesh begins to take pleasure, then sin is born; and if deliberate consent is given, sin is complete. The seed of sin, therefore, is in suggestion, its growth in pleasure, and its completion in consent. It often happens, however, that what the Evil Spirit sows in the mind and the flesh anticipates with pleasure, the soul rejects. And although the body cannot experience pleasure without the mind, yet the mind, in contending against the desires of the body, is to some extent unwillingly chained to them, having to oppose them for conscience sake, and strongly regretting its bondage to bodily desires."
Paul tells us tomorrow that anything we have is from God, and nothing is ours. This includes our conscience. If we think that we can sin because we can just go to Confession and have it erased, this thinking is WRONG! We don't sin because we love God, and know it's wrong to do what we ought not.
Our beloved Abbot Gueranger tells us about God's mercy, and this is just a short blurb.
'Oh! if we did but know the gift of God! if we did but understand the super-eminent dignity reserved, under the law of love, to every man of good will! Then, perhaps, our cowardice and sluggishness would, at last, go; then, perhaps, our souls would get fired with the noble ambition which turns men into saints. At all events, we should then come to realize that Christian humility, of which we were speaking on the last two Sundays, is not the vulgar grovelling of a low-minded man, but the glorious entrance upon the way which leads, by divine union, to the only true greatness. Are not those men inconsistent and senseless who, longing by the very law of their nature for glory, go seeking it in the phantoms of pride, and allow themselves to be diverted, by the baubles of vanity, from the pursuit of those real honours which eternal Wisdom had destined for them! And those grand honours were to have been heaped upon them, not only in their future heaven, but even here in their earthly habitation; and God and His saints were to have been admiring and applauding spectators!...'
We need to beg for God's forgiveness, and not incur His anger anymore. He will be our Judge soon enough!
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