I would like to ask you if it is correct to say that God, being perfect charity, forgives all people even before their repentance 

Dear Father Angelo, 

I am writing to you today, the day of your departure for the pilgrimage to Lourdes and the Dominican places in southern France, and the octave of the Assumption of Mary (as well as the feast of her Immaculate Heart), to ask you a question which you will obviously answer when you return and when you will have the time (I ask you the question now to avoid forgetting the question in detail). I would like to ask you if it is correct to say that God, being perfect charity, forgives all people even before their repentance (even those who do not believe in Him) and that therefore the damnation of souls is due to their refusal to be saved. Let me explain better. From what I have been able to conclude, I believe that part of the value of a valid confession is the affirmation of a will on the part of the penitent, which is to unite with God and therefore to be saved. Those who are conscious of right and wrong sin (and perhaps refuse to confess) do so because they allow their inclination to sin to prevail over their willingness to unite with God. Following such a decision, God himself decides to respect everyone’s free choice, definitively separating from himself those who wanted to separate themselves from him.

 I thank you and I wish you a happy pilgrimage full of devotion Assumpta est Maria in caelum: gaudent Angeli, laudantes benedicunt Dominum.

 Matteo 

Priest’s answer 

Dear Matteo,

1. Thank you first of all for the heavenly joy that you wanted to communicate on the occasion of Our Lady assumed into heaven and made queen of heaven on earth. ‘Assumpta est Maria in caelum: gaudent Angeli, laudantes benedicunt Dominum’ (Mary is raised into heaven: the angels rejoice and praise the Lord). In those two blessed days we are particularly associated with the joy and jubilation of the angels. It should be two days of paradise for everyone. I hope they were for you. And since Heaven’s gifts and graces fill you with joy, I also hope that you have been enriched with many graces.

2. Now I come to your question and I immediately say that the answer is affirmative. God has already forgiven everyone in advance for two reasons. The first because God is essentially mercy. Saint Thomas, after referring to the words of the psalm, “The Lord is merciful patient” (Ps 110:4) writes, “Mercy is especially to be attributed to God, as seen in its effect, but not as an affection of passion. In proof of which it must be considered that a person is said to be merciful, as being,so to speak, sorrowful at heart; being affected with sorrow at the misery of another as though it were his own. Hence it follows that he endeavors to dispel the misery of this other, as if it were his; and this is the effect of mercy. To sorrow, therefore, over the misery of others belongs not to God; but it does most properly belong to Him to dispel that misery, whatever be the defect we call by that name. Now defects are not removed, except by the perfection of some kind of goodness; and the primary source of goodness is God” (Summa theologica, I, 21, 3). Further, St. Thomas adds that God is mercy because the perfections and graces he gives us eliminate deficiencies (cf. Ib.). 

3. The second reason why God is essentially mercy and has already forgiven everything in advance is due to the sacrifice of Christ, who made a superabundant atonement for our sins. 

4. Are we all safe in advance with this? No. If the sun by its nature is light and heat (it always is and always will be), it doesn’t mean that everything is illuminated and heated by the sun. I am only the reality that opens up to him. Similarly, God is by nature goodness and mercy. But to welcome his goodness and his mercy it is necessary to open ourselves to him. Just as a room remains dark if doors and shutters are kept tightly closed and locked, and it remains dark even if the sun is very splendid outside, so in the same way one can be separated from God, despite the fact that God is by nature mercy and forgiveness.

5. Saint Thomas writes, “Grace is caused in man by the presence of God, like light in the air by the presence of the sun” (Summa theologica, III, 7, 13). Now God is always present. He is in heaven on earth everywhere. He is immense. Even if in our way of speaking we say that God distances himself from man, in reality he is always and only the man who distances himself from God. By moving away, he deprives himself of his mercy and of the forgiveness deserved by Christ. This forgiveness is always alive. It is like the Burning Bush seen by Moses on Sinai, which burns and is not consumed. 

6. In this regard I like to report the testimony of our Holy Father Dominic who spent the night praying for the conversion of sinners and said, groaning, “My God, my mercy, what will become of sinners”. He did not pray to inform God about the existence of sinners. Rather, he prayed and spent the whole night in prayer to make God present and active in the hearts of sinners. He acted as an intermediary between God, who is forgiveness and mercy, and sinners. Charity kept him simultaneously united with God and with sinners. And for this very reason, he was able to make God’s forgiveness and mercy present and effective in their hearts. Indeed, we must not forget that the conversion of hearts is only the work of God.

7. I am also pleased to report the beautiful testimony of Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus who offered herself as a victim to God’s merciful love. With this act she intended to offer God every action of her to make God’s mercy present and operative in the hearts of sinners, with whom she was united through her charity.

 8. Your reflection is therefore correct and deserves to be done as the Holy Father Dominic did and as Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus did. The only expression I would change is this, “Following such a decision, God himself decides to respect everyone’s free choice, definitively separating from himself those who wanted to separate themselves from him”. Instead of saying “by definitively separating from himself those who have wanted to separate themselves from him”, I would say, “accepting that those who have wanted to separate themselves from him are definitively separated from himself”. Although your expression is biblically correct because the sacred text says that in the Last Judgment Jesus Christ will separate one from the other as the shepherd does who separates the sheep from the goats (found in Mt 25:32). 

I sincerely thank you for the good wishes you gave me. I would have liked the pilgrimage to be “full of devotion”, as you wished me. It was certainly full of graces. I wish you well, bless you and remember you in prayer. 

Father Angelo 

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