March 28

will not pardon the sin in you, I will punish it severely, but I myself will suffer the penalty for you. I will not forgive your debt at no cost, but I myself shall pay it for you. The Lord will repay me, that he might oblige me more. Surely it is a greater mercy of God, a greater clemency of God, a greater generosity of God to pay the price, rather to give himself as the price, than it is to remit the debt. Surely you could have done otherwise, Lord, but you paid the cost that you might commend your love to me in your death for me, that all my heart and my soul might be moved by you, that amazed, trembling, and fainting, I might consider how you died on my behalf.

O love! O charity! O goodness! O kindness of my God! Oh how much you love me, my love, how much you love me! Impress your death on my heart, for this is the heat lifting my soul to you; this is the fountain of water rising up and lifting my soul to eternal life. Your other works, Lord, move me to love you, but your passion leads me to ecstasy, it seizes me and inflames me above myself, so that I am completely dissolved in your love. And you have loved me in such a way that when I will have given all of myself to you, I will have given nothing, because you have given me your full self, my entire God.

From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.

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