307 part i: sunday meditations for the entire year 3. “Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything” (Mt 18:26). This is how it is, my Lord, my Savior: I acknowledge that I have contracted an incredible debt, that is, I have sinned numerous times before you, and I am insolvent. But, O goodness! O mercy! What good would it do for You, if You would condemn me? “What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to eternal corruption?” (cf. Ps 30:9). If I shall be punished by eternal torments, I shall never be able to repay my debt to You. Therefore, I have found a different way to appease your justice: forgive me my debts or at least postpone them. Nevertheless, falling down most humbly at your feet, and with as much tears as I can manage, I ask that my debts, namely my sins, be forgiven. Forgive me, forgive, O Jesus! Father of mercy! Forgive the debtor who shall serve You henceforth in a holier manner and with greater fidelity, “the sins of my youth, or my transgressions,” and my wicked deeds, “remember not” (cf. Ps 25:7). Remove the heavy burden of my faults that I may run more lightly, more quickly, and more joyfully after the scent of Your ointments (cf. Cant 1:3), the scent caused by Your footsteps. I regret that I have behaved badly, and from now on I desire to behave well. O Lord, “deliver therefore not to beasts the soul that confesses to You; and forget not to the end the soul of Your poor” (cf. Ps 74:19). After Holy Communion 1. “And out of pity for him the Lord of that servant released him and forgave him the debt” (Mt 18:27). Consider that the most merciful Jesus was moved with pity for you and made you exempt, through the consumption of His Body (if you have consumed it appropriately), from the eternal prison in which you were about to be thrust because of your enormous evil deeds. If you were to examine attentively your conscience, you would truly find there something deep down that either breathed death or produced it. Although [f.88r] you treat your daily imperfections lightly because they seem very unimportant
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