How to Overcome Our Defilement
After explaining that the virtue of hope gives us the holy assurance of our salvation, [Thomas Aquinas] proposes this objection to himself: If someone has a revelation that he is going to be damned, what should he do? Nothing more than not believe it, replies the holy doctor, for that revelation is contrary to the virtue of hope, and therefore it cannot come from God. In like manner, I maintain that if an angel should come from God to tell anyone of us, “God no longer loves you; hence do not confide in him,” we must not believe him….
Trust in God does not prevent sin from making us feel sorrowful; for all sin, grave or light, large or small, wounds his divine heart and, since we love him, naturally we should feel great sorrow for having offended him. Thus we have as our portion sorrow on one side, and confidence on the other: we must cast ourselves into the arms of our Savior with our heart torn to pieces by contrition, as Saint Thérèse of Lisieux says. Thus confidence and contrition are not incompatible. On the contrary, both flow from the same fount: love. I feel pain at having offended God because I love him; I confide in him because he loves me, because, as says the saint of Lisieux, “I know to whom to cling by reason of the love and the mercy of Jesus.”…
When a child commits a fault against his mother, there is no doubt that she feels it and is hurt by it. But does the mother cease to love her child because of it?… She will exert herself more in showing her love for him in order to attract him to her motherly embrace and to secure his correction and reform….
Even when we have the misfortune to fall we must not lose confidence and peace. Have I had the ill fortune to sin? I shall repent at once; I shall break my heart in pieces with sorrow; but I shall not lose my peace, for I know that our Lord loves me even though I have fallen. I shall wipe away my sin by contrition; I shall expiate it with penance; but at the same time I shall cast myself into the arms of Jesus and I shall remain at peace.
Let us be very delicate with our Savior [and] carefully avoid not only grave faults, but even all deliberate venial sin. But let us never lose confidence and peace. Rather let us, with our heart filled with grief, cast ourselves into the arms and into the most loving heart of Jesus.
Servant of God Luis M. Martinez
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