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| Magdalen |
God cannot cease to love me. That is the most startling fact that our doctrine reveals. Sinner or saint, He loves and cannot help Himself. Magdalen in her sin, Magdalen in her sainthood, was loved by God. The difference in her position made some difference also in the effect of that love on her, but the love was the same, since it was the Holy Spirit who is the Love of the Father and the Son.
Whatever I do, I am loved. Then, if I sin, I am unworthy of love? Yes, but I am unworthy always. He cannot love me for what I am, since in that case I should compel His love and force His will by something external to Himself. In fact, really, if I consider, I should find that I was not loved by God because I was good, but that I was good because God loved me. My improvement does not cause God to love me, but is the effect of God loving me. Consequently, even when I am punished by God, He cannot hate me. It is His very love itself that drives Him (out of the very nature of its perfection) to punish. So, Dante spoke truly when he imagined over the portals of Hell the inscription: “To rear me was the work of Immortal Power and Love.”
Each of us is, therefore, sure that he is loved eternally and that God’s love can suffer no change from God’s side. How, then, is it that we grow evil, or lose the familiar intercourse that we once had with Him? It is because He has given us the terrible power of erecting, as it were, a shield between ourselves and His love. He loves forever the same, but it is we who, by our sins, have the power to shut off that love from effecting anything good in our souls.
