Salesian Sisters South Pacific Region

From the Word of the Day

Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow.  Though they be crimson red, they may become white as wool.
                    Isaiah 1: 18

How should we live this Word

Thinking of the abundant snow this winter, I almost seem to see the image Isaiah refers to!  ‘They may become white as snow.’  He is talking about our sins!  When it snows here, the mountain lives a stupendous hour of transfiguration.  The earth is dressed in candor, like a bride.  However under this mantle, all is as it was before; rocks, dried shrubs, twigs, and leaves burned by the gelid winter.

What happens to us through God’s forgiveness is very different.  It is not only a moment of exterior transfiguration but a true interior transformation.  When we ask forgiveness, the Lord really creates something new and beautiful within us.  He uses even our sins as an occasion for grace, for truth about ourselves, and for abandonment to Him.  It is true that what was as red as scarlet becomes candid like the snow, a deeper source of knowledge of God’s love for us, and of our poverty as creatures.  It is evident that in this way the converted heart, ‘contrite and humbled’, seriously takes up a spiritual journey.  No longer does it consider appearances or what others will say or think, or cutting a good or bad figure.  No longer will it say something so as not to lose face.  This pharisaical way of being and acting, stigmatized by Jesus in today’s Gospel, will be alien to those who have been forgiven and reconciled and now walk in newness of life.

Today as I pause for silent contemplation, I will visualize the beauty of a panorama candid with snow and illumined by the sun.  I will ask the Lord to give me a full awareness of His forgiveness that renews my life from within.

Jesus, You have destroyed my sin and not only covered it because You have used the formidable detergent of the blood of Your crucifixion.  Lord, grant that I may experience the joy of forgiveness.  Help me begin anew to become authentic, in being, not in appearing, in serving out of love.

The voice of St. Augustine, Church Father

Only sin separates us from God.  We can be purified of it in this life, not with our strength, but only through divine mercy; through His indulgence and not through our power.  In fact, whatever strength we may call our own, is given us through His goodness.

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House of Prayer “San Biagio” – 00028 SUBIACO RM     casale 106    
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