Let us handle our anger as if it were a ferocious beast and our tongue as a sharp sword, and let us extinguish our love of pleasure like a flame. Let us place shutters over our ears that can be duly opened and closed; and let us curb our roving eye; let us control our wanton touch and ravenous taste lest death come up into our windows (this means, I believe, our senses); and let us scorn inordinate laughter… Our one and only fear should be fearing anything more than God and in our wickedness defiling his image. Let us in all things take the shield of faith and let us deflect all the darts of the evil one.

St. Gregory Nazianzen

And they fear when they turn and look within themselves. Here again the truth is terrible. There is the sight of our sins. (Are any of us innocent of sins of egoism, vanity, self-love, sins against charity, sincerity, sins of sensuality, sins of omission?) And there is our frailty. (Without special help from God, what would we have done on a certain day, at a certain hour? What choice would we have made? Without his continuing help, what would we do tomorrow?)

When we stand before these two abysses – the abyss of the infinite purity of God, the only good, inaccessible to the sinner, and the abyss of our own wretchedness and weakness – we are seized with an impulse to retreat, to dread. This is not a matter of distrust, nor of discouragement or despair. It is a piercing, poignant, and purifying view of what we are in very truth before the eyes of God. As log as we have not been purified by this sentiment, we cannot say that we have tasted the Lord. It is fear that first makes us know and experience what God is and what we are. It brings the Infinity of God our of the domain of concepts, words, and naked faith, into the realm of truths that are felt and perceived. Whence the importance of the gift of fear, and the fact that every authentic contact with the divine increases, broadens, deepens, and purifies this gift in us, and makes our faculties for knowing and loving receptive to God’s grace.

Fr. Leonce de Grandmaison, S.J.

It’s a psalm of someone repenting, someone wishing to retrieve the hope he had lost, lying where he had fallen, begging the Lord to give him a hand to raise him up again; like someone quite capable of injuring himself but not of healing himself. After all, we can stab and wound our own flesh whenever we want, but to heal it we look for a doctor; well, in the same way the soul is perfectly able to sin all by itself, but to heal the hurt it has caused by sinning, it implores the helping hand of God.

That’s why he says in another psalm, I myself have said it, Lord. Have mercy on me, heal my soul since I have sinned against you (Psalm 41:5). The reason he says I myself have said it, Lord, is to thrust before our eyes the fact that the will and decision to sin arises from the soul and that we are fully capable of destroying ourselves, while it takes God to seek that which was lost and to save that which had wounded itself. For the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). It is to him that we pour out our prayers and say Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew an upright spirit in me (Psalm 51:12). Le the soul that has sinned say this, or it may perish twice over through despair, having lost itself once already by its delinquency.

St. Augustine of Hippo

What possibility then does exist? Only one: that which the simplest interpretation of the Gospel suggests and which the believing heart must feel. Through God’s forgiveness, in the eyes of his sacred truth I am no longer a sinner; in the profoundest depths of my conscience I am no longer guilty. That is what I wanted – only that! If such complete eradication of my sin cannot be, then it should stand. But it can be; that is the sense of Christ’s message.

Whether or not such forgiveness is possible cannot be determined by you or me according to any ethical or religious principles. The question can be answered by revelation only, which clearly reveals who God is. He is the God of Justice, who not only rejects sin, but absolutely condemns it; the holy one who hates sin with divine hatred; the true one who neither veils nor covers, but penetrates to root and essence. And now, Christian revelation continues, in a mysterious and supremely holy sense infinitely far from mitigating the majesty of virtue, God lives beyond the reaches of good, and therefore of evil. He himself is the good – but in inconceivable freedom; freedom from all ties, even from ties as ultimate as the conception of good. Such freedom renders him more powerful than sin. It is the freedom of love. Love is not only kinder, more alive than mere justice, it is more than justice – higher, mightier, in sense and essence. Such then the love that enables God to rise and, without in the least impairing truth and justice, to proclaim: Thy sin no longer exists!”

Monsignor Romano Guardini

“At the end of life the door to eternity stands open; no one can pass through unless he carries a cross.”

Blessed John XXIII

So, then, my brothers, let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labors. You should sing as wayfarers do – sing, but continue on your journey. Do not be lazy, but sing to make your journey more enjoyable. Sing, but keep going. What do I mean by keep going? Keep on making progress. This progress, however, must be in virtue; for there are some, the Apostle warns, whose only progress is in vice. If you make progress, you will be continuing your journey, but be sure that your progress is in virtue, true faith and right living. Sing then, but keep going.”

• St. Augustine

– St. Vincent de Paul

How reassuring it is to feel surrounded and wrapped in divine love, realizing that our all-loving Father is bringing us to the eternal shores, letting us occasionally breathe in from afar their life-giving scents. And then, if the path becomes more difficult and our guide less visible, we surrender ourselves blindly to his gentle direction, waiting in self-forgetfulness until God’s presence can be felt once more. Earth is not heaven, after all, and were we always surrounded by spiritual consolations, we might find it difficult to understand the difference. We have been given the grace we need to help us reach the joys of our much-desired heaven.”

– Servant of God, Elizabeth Leseur

Each year, as the Church recalls this mystery, she urges us to renew the memory of the great love God has shown us. This holy season teaches us that Christ’s coming was not only for the benefit of his contemporaries; his power has still to be communicated to us all. We shall share his power, if, through holy faith and the sacraments, we willingly accept the grace Christ earned for us, and live by that grace and in obedience to Christ.

The Church asks us to understand that Christ, who came once in the flesh, is prepared to come again. When we remove all obstacles to his presence he will come, at any hour and moment, to dwell spiritually in our hearts, bringing with him the riches of his grace.

In her concern for our salvation, our loving mother the Church uses this holy season to teach us through hymns, canticles and other forms of expression, of voice or ritual, used by the Holy Spirit. She shows us how grateful we should be for so great a blessing, and how to gain its benefit: our hearts should be as much prepared for the coming of Christ as if he were still to come into this world. The same lesson is given us for our imitation by the words and example of the holy men of the Old Testament.”

• St. Charles Borromeo