God Saves Us, Always

I've watched Paolo Sorrentino's shows The Young Pope and The New Pope and enjoyed them a great deal, though there are provocations aplenty in the shows, along with strong erotic content. The shows are tonally messy as they lurch from the sacred to the blasphemous. My theological take on the shows is that they are Augustinian meditations on love and the disorders of love--from sex, to power, to family, to the love of God. But in the midst of all the twisted and disordered loves on display, there are moments in the shows that are truly transcendent.

No spoilers, but one of those moments comes from Episode 7 of The New Pope, a scene in a confessional. After hearing a very sad confession, full of shame, guilt, failure, secrets, and weakness, the confessor shares these words of comfort, words I immediately wrote down because I didn't want to forget them:

God saves us, always. God does not deny anyone the grace of salvation. It is the most beautiful thing there is. We love vanity, and sin. We love depravation and wickedness. So we believe that God has abandoned us. That God does not like us. But God does not manage our lives. He does not correct our weaknesses. God does not stop our hand when it plunges into sin. No. All He does is save us. In the end, God saves us. And He saves us with a kiss.