Thursday, February 15 : Saint John-Mary Vianney

To know the price of our soul, we only have to consider what Jesus Christ did for her. Who of us, my brothers, can never understand how good God considers our soul, since he did everything that was possible for a God to do, to make a creature happy. To feel more inclined to love her, he wanted to create her in his image and likeness ; So that by contemplating it, he contemplated himself. So we see that he gives our souls the most tender names showing love to the point of excess. He calls him his child, his sister, his beloved, his wife, his only, his dove. But it is not enough: love is still much better by actions than by words. See his eagerness to come from heaven, to take a body similar to ours; And espousing our nature, he espoused all our infirmities, if not sin: or rather he wanted to take care of the justice that his father asked for us. See its annihilation in the mystery of the incarnation. (…) Isn’t it there, my brothers, a love worthy of a God who is love? It is certainly there, my brothers, that he shows us the esteem he has for a soul? Is it enough to make us understand what it is worth and the care we have to take of it? Ah! My brothers, if we had the happiness, once in our life, to understand the beauty and value of our soul, would we not be ready, like Jesus Christ, to make all the sacrifices to keep it? Oh ! That a soul is beautiful, that it is precious in the eyes of God itself! How can it be that we have so little of her, and that we treat it harder than the vile of animals?

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team