The Ember Days of Lent draw the soul into compunction. They are days of fasting, recollection, and humble return. Holy Mother Church gathers us today around two grave and luminous truths: personal responsibility for sin and the inexhaustible mercy of God toward the repentant.
In the prophet Ezechiel (18:20–28), the Lord speaks with divine clarity:
“The soul that sinneth, the same shall die… But if the wicked do penance for all his sins… he shall surely live, and shall not die.”
Here the Lord rejects the false security of inherited righteousness and the false despair of inherited guilt. Each soul stands before God in personal accountability. As St. Jerome comments on this passage, God “weighs not the ancestry, but the will; not the lineage, but the conduct.” The justice of God is neither arbitrary nor collective—it is precise, searching, and personal.
Yet the prophet does not leave us trembling before justice alone. The passage crescendos toward mercy:
“If the wicked turn himself away from all his sins… he shall live.”
St. Gregory the Great, reflecting on repentance, writes: “The justice of God would not be perfect unless He permitted Himself to be moved by mercy.” God does not delight in the death of the sinner but in his conversion. Even long habits of sin do not chain the soul irreversibly; what binds us most firmly is not our past, but our refusal to turn.
This theme unfolds vividly in the Gospel of St. John (5:1–15), where Our Lord approaches the paralytic at the pool of Bethsaida. Thirty-eight years the man had lain in infirmity—almost a lifetime. The Fathers see in this number a symbol of Israel under the Law, laboring yet unable to attain healing without Christ.
St. Augustine observes: “The pool was disturbed, and one was healed; but many remained. The grace of Christ is not so limited—He heals whom He wills.” The paralytic had no man to help him into the waters. Yet the true Man—the New Adam—stood before him. The healing does not come through the troubled water, but through the sovereign word: “Arise, take up thy bed, and walk.”
How fitting this Gospel is for Ember Friday, when we examine our lives with penitential sobriety. Perhaps we too have lain spiritually paralyzed for years—confined by resentment, impurity, sloth, or despair. We may say inwardly, like the paralytic: “I have no man.” Yet Christ approaches first. Grace precedes our movement.
But the Gospel does not end with healing. Later, Jesus finds the man in the Temple and warns him:
“Behold thou art made whole: sin no more, lest some worse thing happen to thee.”
St. John Chrysostom remarks that Christ reveals here that bodily affliction had been medicinal—a remedy permitted for the salvation of the soul. Healing, then, is not permission for complacency. It is a call to perseverance.
Thus both readings converge: repentance restores life; but perseverance preserves it. God forgets the sins of the penitent, yet the justified must remain vigilant. As Ezechiel warns, if the just man turn away from justice, his former righteousness shall not save him.
In this holy tension between justice and mercy, we commemorate today St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. The young Passionist, aflame with devotion to the Sorrowful Virgin, understood that repentance is not mere fear of punishment but love wounded by Love. His life was marked not by dramatic public penances but by hidden fidelity, purity of heart, and tender compassion for the Passion of Christ. He shows us that conversion must ripen into devotion.
The paralytic was healed near a pool; St. Gabriel was healed at the foot of the Cross, beside the Mater Dolorosa. In her sorrows we see both the gravity of sin and the magnitude of redemption. She stands as witness that God’s justice is real—her Son truly suffered—and that His mercy is greater still.
On this Ember Friday, the Church invites us to three movements:
- Examination – “The soul that sinneth…” Each of us must answer for himself.
- Conversion – “If the wicked do penance…” No past sin is stronger than divine mercy.
- Perseverance – “Sin no more…” Grace once received must be guarded.
Let us fast not only from food but from excuses. Let us arise from whatever spiritual paralysis holds us. And let us walk—steadily, humbly—toward Easter, strengthened by repentance, sustained by mercy, and sheltered beneath the mantle of Our Lady of Sorrows.