228th Meditation
“My love is infinitely greater than your faults” (Inner Word).
Our Father uses even the darkness of sin to make His light shine. Certainly darkness in the soul and in the world can have various causes; but not infrequently it is the result of sin and its consequences. However, God can manifest His mercy in this darkness, if it is opened to Him.
On a personal level, we can easily understand this: when we “hit rock bottom” and experience the abysses of sin, it can happen that we turn to God and that a deep gratitude for His goodness awakens in us.
Let us look, for example, at St. Paul: after his conversion, he worked more than all the apostles, as he himself affirms (1 Cor 15:10). He certainly never forgot that in former times, in persecuting Christians, he himself had persecuted this Jesus whom he now proclaimed with authority. This memory must have been an impetus for his tireless apostolic ministry.
The darkness of his blindness had been dispelled and, by God’s grace, replaced by a shining light to proclaim the Gospel. Thus the relentless persecutor became the great Apostle to the Gentiles, when our Father caused the scales to fall from his eyes (Acts 9:18).
God’s love was greater than his faults! This love brought him out of the darkness and into the light.
Our Father does not leave people at the mercy of their own destiny, even if they themselves are guilty of the darkness in which they live. It is precisely in these difficult times that He calls them to conversion and makes them understand that His love is greater than their faults. In this way, the Lord uses even the darkness of these times to address the world and the Church all the more insistently, to free them from their errors and to make them sharers in His love.