Conversion
Source: Luke 15:10You are monsters.
Each time you abuse someone, each time you humiliate a human being by your inhuman conduct, you lower yourselves more than the person you have debased.
In treating persons like animals, you yourselves will become monsters.
I am possessed by the light, the light that reveals the horrors of your darkness. It does not penetrate your darkness, but unmasks it. The shadow of a world, where death reigns. You are monsters. And even if you degrade me, even if you destroy my dignity, even if you reduce me to a helpless, dirty, stinking creature, you will only succeed in making me shine with humility.
That is because in my mother's womb I conceived hope, and in the passage of my childhood I tasted the word of God. Not the word like new fire from ashes that can ignite a bush, but the word of scripture like a compass needle that opens a path through the soul.
Looking up and up, with my own eyes I saw the angel of sorrows, regarding you as if in the throes of suffocation, disintegrating into tiny drops over your world. The angel's dumbfoundedness penetrated boundless space, raining down salt and spirit.
You have created too much pain; you have delighted in too much perversity; you have fed on too much wickedness in this world.
Your spirit is only darkness.
A pillar of salt, rigid in the light of the last day, I watched brimstone fall from heaven, changing the breath of your life into a river of fire, and crushing into dust your loathsome acts. In terror I saw the light taken away from every surface of the abyss. And yet my hope remained untouched, because there is no turbulence in the angel of sorrows, whose tears are pure compassion.
Because in the face of the threatening abyss I remained standing, because although vulnerable I was willing to resist you, hope forged for me a new and even more powerful weapon, making me a worshipper of the Most High, refreshing my soul from God's spring. Worshippers call on the Most High by name, a name that is free of all words.
My soul thus filled with mercy, I could watch without flinching as your evil invaded the world. In a flash of insight I saw human beings becoming saints, even as the darkness harmed them; I saw on their lips their prayer to the Most High. They prayed for the salvation of their executioners, so that their own suffering would not be in vain. Lord, my blood will not cry out to you; do not avenge me but save my brother, this assassin.
Now destruction rages. Silent and unseen, it undermines the source of our strength and destroys the foundation of the world. Light alone reveals the powers that be, and the light is not in your favour. You measure your power by the extent of what you destroy, but you will become as nothing, because the suffering of those you annihilate is giving birth to the world to come. The more you destroy, the stronger life will be: the more that has been sacrificed for life, the more life will be sanctified by those blessed tears.
But you whom hardship fills with hope, you who dream of the Christ in the secret depths of your heart: it is in the midst of your desolation that the mighty arm of the Most High will be made known, the Lord's ensign will be planted, God's kingdom will come. This is where, like a father, God will console you, God's child: breathing on you to wipe away your tears, bringing sunshine to your lightness, making a path for you and walking with you each step of the way. Never again will you be alone. You will speak with God, who will open your ears to hear the angels sing God's name, and you will sing with them. You will hear the Christ murmur your name, to write it forever in Christ's light. And you will know that the one who walks beside you is named Truth.
The time of tribulation, the time when salt has lost is saltiness, has come again. But on the cross of Christ, where the beams cross, if two hearts are beating, it is because one of them is yours.
Texts via St. Luke.