How Redemption Works
In Matt's bible study class on Thurs nights, we are reading Paul's Letter to the Galatians, and in particular this week, his arguments why salvation is found through faith, not through the law. One of his arguments is that law convicts everyone because no one has, or can, fully conform to it. So, law only condemns; it cannot save. Only Christ who is love saves. I saw a very nice poem by George Herbert dramatizing this truth. Let me share it with you:

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin,
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd any thing.

A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, sayest Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, sayest Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

I also read that Simone Weil memorized this poem, thinking at first that she liked it for its aesthetic qualities, its beauty, but soon realizing that it had become for her a form of prayer. Four years after this experience she recounted it to Father Perrin, a Dominican monk, and said that as she recited the poem, "Christ himself came down and took possession of me." (From Human Goodness, Yi-Fu Tuan, p. 179.).

Nice thought: In beauty as in prayer we do not possess but are possessed - saved - by Love, by Christ.