A Romanian priest found himself overhearing the confession of a hardened criminal to an old priest-monk in a crowded Communist prison cell.
As he listened he noticed the priest-monk begin to cry.
He did not say a word through his tears until the man had finished at which time he replied,
“My son, try to do better next time.” Yannaras writes that the message of the Church for humanity wounded and degraded by the ‘terrorist God of juridical ethics’ is precisely this: “what God really asks of man is neither individual feats nor works of merit, but a cry of trust and love from the depths.”
The cry comes from the depth of our need to the unfathomable depth of God’s love; the Prodigal Son crying out,
“I want to go home” to the Father who, seeing his advance from a distance, runs to meet him. (Luke 15:11-32)