Repentance

Repentance rises to God; it pleases Him more than the smoke of sacrifices and is more precious to Him than the incense spread in sacred precincts. Like the storms that pierce the air, purifying it, repentance is a fruitful suffering, a reactive and active force. Jesus sanctified its virtue, and the tears of Magdalene poured forth like dew upon the hardened hearts that knew nothing of the grace of forgiveness. The sovereign virtue proclaimed the power of repentance, and the centuries echoed, weakening it, the word of the Christ. The hour has come when Spiritism must reinvigorate and revivify the very essence of Christianity. Erase, therefore, everywhere and forever, the cruel sentence that strips the guilty soul of all hope. Repentance is a militant virtue, a virile virtue, which only advanced Spirits or tender hearts can feel. The momentary and burning regret for a fault does not bring with it the expiation that gives the knowledge of God's justice, a justice rigorous in its conclusions, which applies the law of retaliation to the moral and physical life of man and chastises him through the logic of facts, all arising from the good or bad use of free will. Love those who suffer and assist repentance, which is the expression and the sign that God imprinted upon His intelligent creature, in order to elevate it and bring it close to Himself.

John, disciple. ⁿ [1]

[v.

Saint John the Evangelist.]