Dear heart,
I’m so sorry. I know how you’ve suffered and I know how you haven’t let yourself suffer because you feel you brought it on yourself. I know you’re miserable and ashamed. I know you feel that you’re a lost cause. I know because I’ve been there. But I need you to know that there is hope. There is mercy and grace pouring out from the cross. There is new life in Christ.
My brother, my sister, he wants you back. Whatever you did, he’s still there, waiting for you, running after you, standing before you even as you mock him and spit on him. And the tears running down his face aren’t tears of pain or disappointment. He weeps because he longs for you. He weeps not because you’ve hurt him but because you’ve hurt yourself. He wants to heal you. Not just to forgive you but to help you forgive yourself.
And this, I think, is what’s hardest. It’s not enough to repent. It’s not enough to fall on your knees before the throne of mercy and to stay there. You have to let him raise you up. You have to look in his eyes and see that his judgment has been wiped away by his mercy. You have been made new,1 my friend, and Christ sees in you not what you were but what you are: a child of God, washed clean by grace.
You are not an adulterer, an addict, or an apostate. You are not a gossip or a blasphemer. You are not a murderer or a temptress or a drunk or a bully. You are a new creation. The old has passed away.2 Whatever the world may tell you about your sin, it’s not yours anymore. It’s been nailed to the cross and you bear it no more. Praise the Lord!3
And it’s not just that he loves you despite your sin. I think he loves you the more, somehow, because of your sin. Jesus has always been particularly fond of sinners. He cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene and then loved her so deeply that he appeared to her first. Before John or even his mother. By the well he sought out a woman, a Samaritan and an outcast entrenched in her sin.4 He didn’t go to the well-respected leaders of the town; he found a sinner. Jesus chose tax collectors and zealots and fools. He looked with love at the worldly5 and the weary6 while the wise were left to fend for themselves. Don’t think he won’t take you back. There’s nothing he wants more.
He is the father running to the son who first ran from him.7 He is the shepherd desperate for his lost sheep. He is the king calling heaven and earth to celebrate the return of one sinner. “For the sake of the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross.”8 You are the joy that lay before him. He suffered for you, desperate for you, willing to go to hell and back—literally—in the hopes that you would let him love you.
He has written your name on his pierced hands.9 Nothing you do can change that. His love will never leave you.10 He will come for you.11 Again and again he will come for you until finally you look up from the mess you’ve made of your life and see his compassionate eyes saying “Come to me and I will give you rest.12 Your sins are forgiven.”13
Dear heart, you are forgiven. You are loved. You are made new. Please come home.
Yours in hope,
A fellow sinner and sister in Christ
- Rev 21:5 [↩]
- 2 Cor 5:17 [↩]
- “It Is Well” [↩]
- Jn 4 [↩]
- Mk 10:21 [↩]
- Mk 5:25-34 [↩]
- Lk 15:20 [↩]
- Heb 12:2 [↩]
- Is 49:16 [↩]
- Is 54:10 [↩]
- Jn 14:18 [↩]
- Mt 11:28 [↩]
- Mt 9:2 [↩]
Thank you.
Oh Meg, finding your blog, finding you is such an incredible blessing. I am struck to the core with gratitude to Our Lord for leading you to write and travel and just be his Spirit to so many.
Thank you for sharing God’s love. After reading your post, my heart is bleeding and I long to be close to Him again. Your letter was given to me, a lost and hurting sinner, to bring me back. God works in so many ways that we don’t always see. Thank you again.
Meg, this post was so timely…….exactly what I needed to hear today! Thank YOU
Hi ok so I just got home from church with you there and I just want to say thank you! Your speech was awesome and you are so funny! I hope you can come back to sacred heart soon!
Btw have fun at Hawaii!! 😉
This is lovely, Meg, as is so much else on your blog (new to me except for that awesome post on kids at mass)…but as someone with an M.A. from my own M.A. and Ph.D. alma mater and dept. I am disappointed to see you perpetuate sexist and inaccurate views of Mary Magdalene, apostle to the apostles, and Photini (the enlightened one, as our Orthodox sisters and brothers call the woman at the well). Having seven demons does *not* mean Mary Magdalene was exceptionally sinful and the church has removed the story of the sinful woman in Luke from her feastday to move away from the false picture of her as a sexual sinner/prostitute (who aren’t sexual sinners either, for the most part, but exploited abuse victims). It means, in her own time’s worldview, that she was oppressed by evil spirits, i.e. their innocent victim, and, in our own, suffering from a severe form of mental illness–perhaps dissociative identity disorder, formerly called multiple personalities, generally caused by abuse. And in a patriarchal culture where people died young and woman could be divorced at whim a woman who had had five husbands had likely either been very unlucky in repeatedly being widowed or cast off by men, and unable to support herself and hence dependent on a man who apparently used her sexually and didn’t feel like marrying her. Poor Christian theology and preaching on women as temptresses –like the negative purity culture Elizabeth Smart critiques so powerfully for keeping her in captivity–has helped contribute to slutshaming and rape culture. So we need to be very careful in our exegesis as we do spiritual writing, I believe. Thanks for listening!
Thanks so much for your thoughts, Laura. I agree with you that we have to be very careful in the way we speak of sexual sin which is one reason I never talk about Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. I do think that the title of penitent that the Church bestowed on her indicates that she was a sinner in some capacity–as are we all. I suppose my approach to the apostle to the apostles comes from an attitude that takes into account the role she’s played in the Church as well as the brief account we have in Scripture-a Scripture and Tradition kind of perspective. I feel certain that she would agree that she was a sinner and that she lived as a penitent. As far as the woman at the well, Jesus’ attitude to her strikes me as one that is convicting as well as merciful and I think the tradition supports me on this as well.
Part of the trouble with a blog, of course, is that it has to be brief and often make broad statements. Obviously there are greater sinners in the Gospel than these two, but they’re two who speak to me. I’ve never imagined Mary Magdalene’s sin to be sexual, and while the woman at the well’s clearly was, that doesn’t say anything about her culpability, which I agree may have been largely mitigated by her culture. The fact remains that both were sinners (being people after the Fall who aren’t Jesus or Mary) and that Jesus loved them and set them free–what he’s trying to do for all of us.
I very much appreciate your input and your kind tone. Your comment has given me a lot to think and pray about!