Remissionem Peccatorum

I remember you’ve forgotten:
All my sins you’ve cast aside.
Eternal Word, the one Begotten,
Purifies His precious Bride
	With the holy Blood and Water
	Flowing from His piercéd side,
	Flowing from His piercéd side. 

I remember you’ve forgotten
When I take the Wine and Wheat.
Our sinfulness, a harvest rotten,
Transformed by your “Take and eat:”
	My medicine, the Bread from Heav’n,
	Saving me in my defeat,
	Saving me in my defeat.

I remember you’ve forgotten:
Light of Christ dispels the dark.
You see my sins now white as cotton,
Reconciled to His heart.
	The rainy floods are rising higher;
	Keep us safely in the Ark,
	Keep us safely in the Ark.

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I wrote this short poem¹ last week. God has given “all that we need for life and godliness”.² He has remembered his promises: to forget.

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah… For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” —Jeremiah 31:31-34

Divine mercy is a mystery. It is impossibly good news for sinners, but with God all things are possible.³ Each stanza of this poem explores a different facet of that mystery, facets which I trust my readers to identify.

Sophie Anderson, 1924

That God should promise to forget the sins of those in the new covenant is at the heart of the good news: for if all-seeing Heaven should remember each of our sins, “who could stand?”⁴ But with Him there is the opportunity of forgiveness. Let the one who thirsts come and drink from that fountain.⁵

"The Church, though shaken by the tumult of the world, is not submerged, because she is founded on the Lord’s doctrine and on His mercy. She drinks from the fountain of forgiveness, to be the channel of that forgiveness." —St. Augustine⁶

Lord, have mercy.

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1. More poetry here.

2. 1 Peter 2:1

3. Matthew 19:26

4. Psalm 130:3-4

5. Isaiah 55:1

6. Augustine, Sermon 213