of justification and sanctification. This grace of justification enables man to love God still more. Thus love is, at the same time, the cause and the effect of the forgiveness of sins.
The Pharisee's pride and hardness of heart. It is a great and noble thing to repent of and acknowledge our sins. The proud Pharisee, however, despised the penitent woman, and was unmoved by her tears of contrition. x And because Jesus showed Himself to be a true Saviour, and had compassion on the penitent sinner, Simon refused to believe in Him. Thus, even the divine love and compassion of Jesus served as a pretext for unbelief.
Application. Magdalen was not ashamed to do public penance, and in the midst of a joyous banquet to come forward as a penitent sinner. And yet are not you ashamed to own your sins in secret to God’s representative, who is bound to silence, and make a good and sincere confession? Where is your contrition? You should say with St. Alphonsus: “Oh that I could weep for ever to think that I could have sinned against Thee, O God — to think that I should be faithless and ungrateful — to think that I should be a traitor!”
Chapter XXVI.
JESUS HEALS ON THE SABBATH THE MAN LANGUISHING
THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS, AND PROVES HIS EQUALITY
WITH THE FATHER.
[John 5. 1— 47.]
At the time of a certain festival Jesus went up again to Jerusalem, Now there was at Jerusalem a pond called Probatica, which in Hebrew is named Bethsaida[1]. It was surrounded by a great building which had five porches, under which lay, at times, a great multitude of the sick, the lame, the blind and the infirm, waiting for the movement of the water. For, at certain times[2], an angel came down into the pond and moved the water; and he who first went down into the pool after the angel’s visit, was cured of his disease.
Among the crowd of those who wished to be healed there was a man who had been infirm thirty-eight years. Jesus, seeing
