Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

Rev. P.J. Michel Excerpt

God, who is the tender Father of all His creatures, has taken every means to remove that excessive fear which would draw them from Him. To prevent the soul that has become sensible of its ingratitude and terrified at the view of its repeated relapses into sin, after so often obtaining pardon for them --to prevent such a soul from losing all hope and daring no longer cry out to Him from the abyss into which it has again fallen, not only does He assure it, by the mouth of the Psalmist, "That those who hope in Him shall never be confounded," but He expressly declares the positive law of His mercy, and commands us to hope in Him.

Ah! we little know the boundless tenderness of that divine Heart, if we judge of it by our own, or if we imagine that it ever ceases to care for us. So long as we are in this life we are under the law of mercy, and of that mercy we can ever avail ourselves.

Let us then never fear to have recourse to the merits of Jesus Christ. We honor them when we make use of them to obtain that which helps which we need, since it was for this that Jesus Christ vouchsafed to acquire them and to give them over to us...It would be a singular way of honoring them, the not daring to make use of them; it would be going directly against the end which our divine Savior proposed to Himself. In turning from His gifts as useless, we should not be evincing our esteem for them, but only proving our indifference.