Wednesday, April 16 : Saint Augustine

“Did I not choose you twelve? Yet is not one of you a devil?” (Jn 6:70). Our Lord should have said: “I have chosen eleven of you”. Did he choose a devil? Is a devil among his elect?… Shall we say that, when he chose Judas, our Savior desired to accomplish through him – against his will and without his knowing it – so great and good a deed? This is the characteristic of God…: to make the evil deeds of the wicked work for good… The wicked make all God’s good works serve evil purposes but the person of good will, to the contrary, makes the evil doings of the wicked serve good purposes. And who is so good as the one God? Our lord himself says: «No one is good but God alone» (Mk 10:18)… Who could be worse than Judas? From among all the Master’s disciples, from among the Twelve, it was he who was chosen to hold the purse and have a care for the poor (Jn 13:19). Yet after such an honor it was he who extracted money to deliver up the one who is Life (Mt 26:15); he persecuted, as though he were an enemy, the man he had followed as a disciple… Yet our Lord made so great a crime serve for the good. He accepted to be betrayed to redeem us: this is how Judas’ crime was turned to good. How many martyrs has Satan not persecuted? But if he had not then we would not be celebrating their victory today… The wicked cannot thwart God’s goodness. He may well be a worker of mischief; the supreme Workman would not allow evil to exist if he had not known how to make use of it to make everything work together for good.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team