Abbey-Roads2

A  brother who had sinned was turned out of the church by the priest.  Abba Bessarion got up and went out with him, saying, “I, too, am a sinner.”  - Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Merciful love.

Today is the feast of an early desert father, St. John the Dwarf.    His story is the same one St. Therese of Lisieux found so edifying and which expressed her sentiments of confidence and love in her ‘little way’.  She urged her sisters to make this story known.  (Little Therese knew that simple souls would better understand her ‘doctrine’  of surrender to merciful love through this story.)

“John the Dwarf sought the conversion of a woman named Paesia, who had fallen into great sin.  Going to the woman, John asked her, “What reason can you have to complain of Jesus that you should abandon him?”  Moved by John’s words and by his tears, she asked him, “Father, is the path of penitence still open to me?”  “It is,” he answered.  Paesia thereupon set out with him to become a penitent.  When they stopped for the night, John beheld in a dream the soul of Paesia taken up into heaven as a voice told him that her contrition was perfect in the sight of God.  Awaking, blessed John found that Paesia had indeed died, at peace with God.” - October Magnificat

“And so do not cease to pray for all other people, for there is hope of their conversion and of their finding God.  Give them the chance to be instructed, at least by the way you behave.” - St. Ignatius of Antioch