The Abundant Joy in Heaven Over Sinners’ Fervent Repentance. Meditationes e Sanctis Patribus

The Abundant Joy in Heaven Over Sinners’ Fervent Repentance. Meditationes e Sanctis Patribus

10 June 2020

Regardless of much we would write and talk about God and the multiple revelation of His infinite and unconditional love in our lives, the topic would remain inexhaustible. This article is intended to be an assertion of the loving calls of All-Merciful God to those who do not know Him and, consequently, do not love Him, to respond to His love with love, to return to the true nature of man by discovering Him and His love, in other words to return home. Repentance for sins and, implicitly, love for God is man’s response to God’s love for him. Repentance takes place as a break with everything that has happened before, it focuses on the present and leads to a new beginning. There is much joy in heaven over the sinner who repents as our Saviour Himself assured us (Lk. 15:7). God loves all of us not only because we are good, devoted or because we deserve His love; He has loved us since the beginning, unconditionally, commending His love for us ‘in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8). He wants us to turn back to Him, because only this way we may become the recipients of His gifts. The author does not intend to exhaust the topic proposed, to be thoroughgoing, but merely illustrative. He approaches the foolishness for the divine love and the fact that the multitude of man’s sins does not exceed God’s love for him and eventually emphasizes, as far as possible, the unutterable joy of ‘heaven’ over the fervent repentance of sinners, starting from the parables in the New Testament about the lost sheep, the lost drachma and the prodigal son.