We who were made in the form of God but have been deformed by sin can ‘return and be converted to the Word to be reformed by him and conformed to him’. ‘Who would not be amazed at the love of God in recalling someone who has spurned him?’ —and yet God does just that, over and over again.
God has the words of eternal life, and the hour is coming —if only it were already here!—when the dead shall hear his voice, and those who hear him shall live, for life is in his will. And if you want to know, his will is our conversion. Listen to him then: ‘Is it my will that the wicked shall die’, says the Lord ‘and not instead that he should be converted and live?’ From these words we realize that there is no true life except in conversion and that there is no other means of entering into life, as the Lord likewise says: ‘Unless you are converted and become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven’.
Bernard of Clairvaux1°
