Christ has compassion upon sinners: He pitied even those that crucified him; and when afterwards many of them, at the preaching of St. Peter, repented and believed the Gospel, they were immediately received into the Church. Our Lord’s prayer for them was answered: they were “forgiven.” Let us then, like them, repent and believe in Christ: no longer let any one, through ignorance of his own good or of the divine mercy, be “alienated from the life of God,” and wander in sin and misery, as one astray who has lost the way of peace; but let us hasten in penitence to our Advocate with the Father, that through him, notwithstanding the number and the magnitude of our past transgressions, we may find both acceptance and assistance for the time to come.

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