How good and just is the God of the law and the prophets, who keeps quiet and remains silent before the sins of the fathers and gives back to those who have not sinned!

It was this new covenant that was prophesied about when it was said by Ezekiel that the children should not bear the iniquity of the parents, and that it should no longer be a proverb in Israel, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. Here lies the necessity that each person should be born again, that he might be freed from the sin in which he was born. For the sins committed afterwards can be cured by penitence, as we see is the case after baptism.

For the last and supposedly strongest argument for your case, you refer to the prophetic testimony of Ezekiel, where we read that there will no longer be a proverb in which they say the parents have eaten sour grapes and the teeth of the children are on edge; the child will not die in the sin of his parent or the parent in the sin of his child, but the soul that sins shall die. You do not understand that this is the promise of the New Testament and of the other world. For the grace of the Redeemer ensured that he cancelled the paternal decree, so that each person should account for himself.

It is not possible, if one person has sinned, for another to be punished. Besides, if we grant this, we shall assent to that other supposition as well, namely, that he committed sin before his birth. Therefore, just as by saying neither has this man sinned, he did not mean that it is possible for anyone to sin before birth and be punished for this; so by saying nor his parents he did not imply that it is possible for anyone to be punished on account of his parents. Now, I say this because he removed this erroneous suspicion through Ezekiel.

The soul dies to the Lord, not through natural infirmity but through the sickness caused by guilt. This type of death is not the release from this life but is the fall resulting from sin.

There are three kinds of death. One is the death due to sin, concerning which it was written, the soul that sins shall itself die. Another death is the mystical, when someone dies to sin and lives to God;^[1] concerning this the apostle likewise says, or we were buried with him by means of baptism into death. The third is the death by which we complete our lifespan with its functions—I mean the separation of the soul and body. Thus we perceive that the one death is an evil, if we die on account of sins, but the other, in which the deceased has been justified of sin, is a good, while the third stands in between, for it seems good to the just and fearful to most people; although it gives release to all, it gives pleasure to few.^[2]

The spiritual penalty always pertained only to the sinner.

This whole passage is so constructed as to show that bad children are not given relief because of good parents or good children oppressed because of bad parents. So having first established this absolutely true and rock-firm principle on our own account, we go on now to examine what our obligations are in our relations with others; and here we must be very careful to distinguish between the effect of salvation, which we must seek for ourselves, and the consideration that we must show to our neighbors. If you are good, you are good with your own goodness, not with someone else’s. And yet through that goodness of yours with which you are good you also rejoice over another’s goodness together with him, not by exchanging goodnesses but by exchanging love.

Show me a body that has never been sick or one that is sure of enjoying good health forever after sickness, and I will show you a soul that has never sinned.

The soul therefore that has not sinned shall live. Neither the virtues nor the vices of parents are imputed to their children. God takes account of us only from the time when we are born anew in Christ.

This bread the just person gives to the hungry, of whom it is said in Scripture, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.^[1]

Let us give the garment of Christ to those who are naked in faith and virtues, about which it is written, as many are baptized into Christ put on Christ.^[1]

Therefore, dearly beloved, let us shed our tears every day and ask this teacher of virtues to teach us to be devout to these profitable wounds. May he show us how to expose our breast in this warfare and sustain every onset of injury. It is not hard to enter a fight where you see that a victory has already been won. That which is taught by example quickly lodges in our minds.

Repentance, then, means life, since it is preferred to death. You must, as a sinner like myself —yes, and a lesser one than I, for I recognize my eminence in evil—lay hold on it and grip it fast, as one who is shipwrecked holds to a plank of salvation. It will buoy you up when you are plunged into a sea of sin and bear you safely to the haven of divine mercy.

Sin is a terrible thing, and the most grievous disease of the soul is iniquity, which corrodes the fiber of the soul and makes it liable to eternal fire. It is an evil freely chosen, the product of the will.

Behold how God advises and arouses you so that you may be converted from your sins and be saved, though late. Behold how he urges one liable to death to live; how gently, how kindly he calls, not refusing his fatherly devotion even to sinners. He continues to call children those who have lost God their Father by their sins.

There are people who, as soon as they begin to think about the evil things they have done, assume that they can not be pardoned; and on the assumption that they can not be pardoned, they give their souls over to destruction from that moment. . . . They perish from despair, whether before they come to believe at all or whether they are already Christians and have fallen by evil living into various sins and vicious forms of behavior.

Since no one makes a fool of the Lord,^[1] he deceives himself if having led a wicked life for a long time he arises to seek life when he is already half-dead. He should listen to the prophet say, If the sinner turns away from his sins —if he turns away, he says, not if he only talks about it—he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced. Surely you have noticed that healing medicine of this kind must be asked with the lips, but it must be brought to completion by deeds. That gift of repentance that is received at the end of one’s life should be believed to be profitable if it is accepted with a sublime intention, much crying and groaning, and is further enhanced by more abundant almsgiving. However, there must be as much piety on the part of sinners in healing the wounds as the intention of the mind was quick and active in doing evil.

A person who is always uncertain of his life is also swift to apply the remedy of his salvation. The same one who gave us assurance by the words, On whatever day the sinner is converted, all his iniquities will be forgiven, also wanted to make us careful when he said, Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day.

The person who believes that even if he does penance for his sins the divine mercy will not forgive him wrongly despairs, while one who defers the remedy of repentance to a much later day is presumptuous. Just as it is said to those who despair, On whatever day the sinner is converted, all his iniquities will be forgotten, so it is said to the presumptuous, Delay not to be converted to the Lord.^[1]

Once the mind is lent brightness at the very beginning of good works and begins to recognize the truth, you are not to imagine that after sinning a delay ensues by reason of which it is enabled to be heard.

Do not doubt the mercy of God. Only perform in your heart your pact with God not to practice the worship of demons any more, or to worship anything except the God of heaven, or to commit homicide, or to be involved in adultery or fornication or theft or to swear falsely. And when you have promised God this with your whole heart and have not committed these sins again, hope confidently for pardon from God. . . . True repentance consists of a person not doing again the evils that he did but asking pardon for past sins and watching in the future not to fall into them again.

The sins of the parents do not fall on the children, nor does a wicked parent burden a just child, nor are some punished for the crimes of others. One alone who was wrong and sinful before, if he afterwards becomes penitent and turns to better things, wipes out his former sins and is not judged by what he had done wrong, but he is received into my flock with a renewed virtue.

I will not allow those punishments that the parents avoided to be repeated by their children, since I am the Lord of both of them and have the same care for all of them. For all souls are mine, and the soul that sins pays the penalty. Thus God teaches us forms of justice, and the way people can delight in life and be released by prayer and become free.

It is the will of God who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.^[1] For everywhere that the purpose of God appears to be severe and stern, it is not the people but the sins that he condemns.

See, then, how God instructs and incites you, so that you may be converted from your sins, late though it is, and come to salvation. See how he exhorts you, doomed to death as you are, so that you may live; and with what sweetness and gentle compassion he cajoles you, so that he does not deny a father’s love even to the sinner.

You have wished to die by sinning; he wishes you to live by being converted. O foolish, irreverent and ungrateful sinner, you do not yield in this respect to God, who wishes to have mercy on you, who prefers to save you because of his own goodness than to destroy you because of your sins.

Dearly beloved, if you are good, you must put up with the bad; if you are bad, you must imitate the good. The fact is, on this threshing floor grains can degenerate into chaff, and again grains can be resurrected from chaff. This sort of thing happens every day, my dear brothers and sisters; this life is full of both painful and pleasant surprises. Every day people who seemed to be good fall away and perish; and again, ones who seemed to be bad are converted and live. God, you see, does not desire the death of the wicked but only that they may turn back and live.

One person prays to the Lord almost all his life, another is converted in middle age, another is saved at his life’s end. . . . God with merciful patience awaits the hour of our conversion at any time, and so he bears with the guilty and awaits sinners with the words, It is not my will that a sinner should die, but that he be converted and live. The only requirement is that in this life we confess all our sinning, for here we fail through human frailty.

If it had not been his will that they should hear and be saved, he ought to have been silent, not to have spoken in parables. But now by this very thing he stirs them up, even by speaking under a veil.

I mean, surely I seek nothing else than a mere end of their wickedness and a stop to their evil? Surely I look for no accounting of past deeds if I see them willing to change? Do I not cry aloud each day, Surely I have no real wish for the death of the sinner as for his conversion and life? Do I not take every means to snatch from destruction those ensnared in deceit? Surely, after all, if I see them changing I will not hesitate? . . . Surely I do not bring you from nonbeing for the purpose of destroying you? It is not in vain that I prepared the kingdom and the countless good things beyond description, was it? Did I not also make the threat of hell for the purpose of encouraging everyone by this means also to hasten toward the kingdom?

He takes delight in the conversion of sinners, for he desires the conversion that follows their sins. Surely, he himself is the only sinless one.

A petition for pardon is a full confession; because one who begs for pardon fully admits his guilt. So, too, penitence is demonstrated as acceptable to God, who desires it rather than the death of a sinner.

O such strictness toward the righteous! O such abundant forgiveness toward the sinner! He finds so many different means, without himself changing, to keep the righteous in check and forgive the sinner, by usefully dividing his rich goodness. And listen how. If he frightens the sinner who persists in sins, he brings him to desperation and to the exhaustion of hope. If he blesses the righteous, he weakens the intensity of his virtue and makes him neglect his zeal, since he considers himself already blessed. For this reason he is merciful to the sinner and frightens the righteous.

Observe every one of the sins for which the Lord makes threats; you will at once see that they are current ones. But if someone’s past righteousness is not beneficial to the righteous individual in the time of his sin, then neither will the sin that has been forsaken harm the wicked individual in the time of his righteousness.

As a sinner who is now just is not harmed by his earlier offenses, so previous righteous deeds do not help a sinner who was once righteous; as each is found, so will it be judged in him.