Seek Beauty: November 2013

"Those who abandon everything in order to seek God know well that He is the God of the poor. It is the same thing to say that He is the God of the poor and that He is a jealous God-to say that He is a jealous God and a God of infinite mercy. There are not two Gods, one jealous, Whom we must fear, and one merciful, in Whom we must place our hope. Our hope does not consist in pitting one of these gods against the other, bribing one to pacify the other. The Lord of all justice is jealous of His prerogative as the Father of mercy, and the supreme expression of His justice is to forgive those whom no one else would ever have forgiven.

That is why He is, above all, the God of those who can hope where there is no hope. The penitent thief who died with Christ was able to see God where the doctors of the law had just proved impossible Jesus' claim to divinity." -Thomas Merton