ONCE YOU ARE FREED FROM SIN, LIGHT WILL TAKE THE PLACE OF THE DEEP SHADOWS THAT REIGNED IN YOUR SOULS

This is the conclusion of the sermon: a moving invitation to experience God’s love in the sacrament of confession. Having thundered at his listeners to make them aware of the seriousness of sin and provoke them to conversion, he now concludes by enthusiastically speaking about the joy of liberation that they will experience. It has echoes of the Gospel of Luke chapter 4: “I have come to bring Good News to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind…”

Yes, my brothers, come, and you will see with what joy we will help you to take up your yoke that will seem too heavy only for the first few moments of your conversion,
for when once you are freed from sin, light will take the place of the deep shadows that reigned in your souls,
God will seem so lovable to you, he will fill your hearts with so great a consolation,
he will invest you with so great a strength that, like new Samsons, you will pull down with vigorous arms the gates that held you captive,
and loaded with these precious spoils, you will fly to the summit of the mountain, from where you will taunt your enemies who will then seem to you as contemptible, as odious as today them seem seductive.

Instruction at the Madeleine, preached in Provencal, on the fourth Sunday of Lent
O.W. 115: XV

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