In the day of your affliction it shall be remembered; your sins also shall melt away, as the ice in the fair warm weather.
All Commentaries on Wisdom of Sirach 3:15 Go To Wisdom of Sirach 3
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
"What shall I render to the Lord," that while my memory recalls these things my soul is not appalled at them? I will love you, O Lord, and thank you and confess your name, because you have removed from me these terribly wicked and nefarious acts of mine. I attribute it to your grace and to your mercy that you have melted away my sin as if it were ice. I also attribute whatever of evil I have not committed to your grace"for what sin is there that I would not have committed, loving as I did the sin for the sin"s sake? Yes, all my sins I confess to have been granted pardon to me, including those sins that I committed by my own perversity and those which, by your guidance, I did not commit. Where is the person who, reflecting on his own infirmity, dares to ascribe his chastity and innocence to his own strength? To do so would mean loving you less, as though he were in less need of your mercy by which you forgive the transgressions of those who turn to you. Whoever, therefore, has responded to your call and followed your voice"avoiding those things that he reads me recalling and confessing of myself"should not despise me, who, being sick, was healed by that same Physician who helped him not get sick, or at least less sick than he would have been. This is why he should love you as much, yes, even more than I do since once he sees how I have been restored by you from such a great enfeeblement of sin, he will see that he himself also has been preserved by you from a similar enfeeblement of sins.
