MEDITATION OF THE DAY
Hearing Wisdom’s Call
In this world, for as long as it remains, no act of repentance is too late…. The path of approach to God’s pardon remains open and, to those who seek it and understand its truth, access is easy. Though it is at the very exit and sunset of your life that you entreat for your sins, and you call on God who is one and true in confession and by faith, forgiveness is granted to you in response to your confession. Saving pardon is conceded you for your faith from God by his bounden duty as Father, and you pass at the point of death into immortality.
Christ imparts this grace, this gift of his mercy he bestows from his subjection to death in the victory of the cross, by his redemption of the believer at the price of his own blood, by his reconciliation of humanity to his God and Father, by his restoration of mortal man to life through being born again from heaven. Let us all follow him, if we can, let us be enrolled as citizens by taking his oath and under his standard.
This is he who opened to us the way of life, he who makes possible our return to paradise, he who leads us to the Kingdom of heaven. With him we will live forever, having been made through him sons of God. With him we will rejoice forever, having been restored through his own blood. We will be, as Christians with Christ, at once glorified, blessed from God the Father, rejoicing always in God’s sight with an unfailing pleasure, and giving thanks always to God. For no one can be anything other than always joyful and grateful who, though he had been subject to death, has now been made free from its fear in immortality.
Saint Cyprian
Saint Cyprian († 258) was Bishop of Carthage (modern Tunisia) and a martyr. [From On the Church: Select Treatises, Allen Brent, Tr. © 2006, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY. Used with permission. www.svspress.com.]
