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The words of Jesus in today's Gospel, "Fear not," were
often on his lips. There are some scrupulous people who can have
the chimerical fear of having sinned and need to hear Jesus say,
"Fear not." For example, our new Doctor of the Church,
St. Therese of the Child Jesus, once read these words in a letter
from her sister, Celine, who visited the Paris Exposition of
1889: "I am suffering so much, Paris was not made for scrupulous
people: I no longer know where to turn my eyes. If I flee from
one scene, I meet another. It's enough to make you die of sorrow.
It seems to me that I do this out of curiosity. I have to be
looking everywhere. It seems to me that it is to see evil. The
demon does not fail to bring to my mind all these evil things
that I saw during the day -a subject of torment. I am obliged
to abstain from Holy Communion, a great trial for never have
I felt such love for Holy Communion. I would feel fortified if
I could have God in my heart. Oh, what a city Paris is; I am
most joyful in Church where I can rest
my eyes on the tabernacle. I feel at home and all the rest is
not made for me. I don't know how one can live here. This is
a veritable hell."
Therese, the future Doctor of the Church, who as an adolescent
of 15 had visited Paris and Rome, wrote her sister. "I understand
everything, everything, everything, everything. You haven't committed
the shadow of an evil. I know what these temptations are so well.
Jesus tells me that we must despise all these temptations and
pay no attention whatsoever to them. It saddens me that you have
given up Communion, what sorrow this has caused Jesus! The evil
one knows that he can't make a soul that wants to belong totally
to Jesus commit a sin and so he tries to make it believe that
it has. My darling, think then that Jesus is there in the tabernacle
for you, for you alone: go without any fear to
receive Jesus in peace and in love. You say: "I really do
it on purpose; it pleases me; so I would commit a sacrilege."
I do know. I have passed through the martyrdom of scruples (it
lasted for a year and a half) but Jesus gave me the grace to
receive
Communion even when I believed that I had committed great sins.
No, it is impossible for a heart which rests only at the sight
of the tabernacle to offend Jesus to the point of not being able
to receive him; what wounds his heart is lack of confidence,
receive communion often, very often."
Twenty-one years later in 1910, in the Vatican, the postulator
for the cause of the canonization of Therese asked Pope St. Pius
X to read
Therese's letter to her sister: "Holy Father, this little
saint has made a
commentary in advance on your recent decree encouraging frequent
Communion." On reading the letter the Pope said: "This
is most opportune! It's a great joy for me. We must hurry the
cause of Therese."
St. John in his First Epistle says: "Love casts out fear.
As for us we
love, we do not fear." St. John then speaks even of those
who may have sinned. "Even if the heart knows something
prejudicial to us, God knows everything and know our faults better
than our heart knows them and still he forgives for he is greater
than our hearts." Whether God's children have sinned and
repented or have not really sinned, they can have confidence
before God. That is: the God who knows everything is greater
than a heart which even recognizes wrong and accuses us.
Now sometimes parents who from love will receive back into
the
home youngsters who are leading a wayward life may still be anguished
at the thought that these children are going to hell. What this
means is that they only believe that God because he is just,
will not be as forgiving as they are. But the God who judges
his sinful children is not a vindictive and punitive judge but
the saving God whose love for sinners drives him to die for them.
In this Church of the Holy Family, there is besides the image
of the Crucified One over the altar, that other essential image
of Christ - the Mother holder her tender Child. St. Therese of
the Child Jesus tells u "How can I fear him who became so
small for me?" |
