Thanks to the folks at Daily Gospel Online, here is a meditation by Blessed Charles de Foucauld that seems particularly timely as we draw closer to Lent. I found his turn of phrase “a little good will” evocative and reassuring: he makes salvation seem easy to reach, and it makes the Ash Wednesday call to “turn away from sin and believe the Gospel” less daunting.
God has not made salvation depend on knowledge, intelligence, wealth, long experience, special gifts that not everyone has received : no ! He has made it depend on what lies within the hands of everyone, absolutely everyone, young and old, people of every age and class, all levels of intelligence and fortune. He has made it depend on what everyone, absolutely everyone, is able to give him; what every person, whoever he may be, can give him with a little good will. A little bit of good will! This is all it takes to win the heaven Jesus attaches to humility, to making oneself small, to taking the lowest place, to obeying, and that he attaches too, besides, to poverty of spirit, purity of heart, love of justice, the spirit of peace and so on (Mt 5,3f.). Let us have hope, since by God’s mercy salvation is so near to us, in our hands, and since a little good will is all it takes to obtain it.
—Meditations on the passages of the holy Gospels relating to the fifteen virtues, no.69, Nazareth 1897-98
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