Friday, March 11 : Saint Augustine

“All the ways of the Lord are love and truth toward those who keep his covenant and decrees,” (Ps 25 [24],10). What this psalm says about love and truth is of first importance… It speaks of love because God pays no regard to our merits but to his own kindness so as to forgive us our sins and assure us of eternal life. It also speaks of truth because God never fails to hold good his promises. Let us acknowledge this divine example and imitate the God who has shown us his love and his truth… Like him, let us fulfil works full of love and truth in this world . Let us show goodness to the weak and poor and even towards our enemies. Let us live in truth by avoiding wrongdoing. Let us not increase our sins since whoever presumes on God’s kindness lets the will to make God unjust insinuate itself within him. He imagines to himself that, even if he persists in his sins and refuses to repent, God will come in any case to give him a place among his faithful servants. But would it be just for God to set you in the same place as those who have renounced their sins while you continue in your own?… Then why do you want to bend him to your will? Submit yourself, rather, to his. In this respect the psalmist rightly says: “Who will seek beside him the mercy and truth of the Lord?”… Why say “beside him”? Many seek to learn about the love of the Lord and his truth in the holy Scriptures. But once they have found them, they live for themselves, not for him. They are looking for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. They preach about love and truth but do not practice them. But he who loves God and Christ, when preaching about the divine truth and love, seeks them for God’s sake and not for his own interests. He is not preaching about them so as to draw material advantages from them but for the good of Christ’s members, namely the faithful. He distributes what he has learned among these in the spirit of truth “so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died,” (2Cor 5,15). “Who will seek the love and truth of the Lord?”

maronite readings – rosary,team