The famous sermon on hell in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man exposes a schoolboy’s soul tortured by sins of lust, convinced that his sins are beyond forgiveness, because God is great and stern.

He has, however, a glimmer of hope: his failure has not offended our Lady. So he prays, in the words of Newman:

God once had meant to come on earth in heavenly glory, but we sinned; and then he could not safely visit us but with a shrouded majesty and a bedimmed radiance, for he was God. So he came himself in weakness, not in power, and he sent thee, a creature, in his stead, with a creature’s comeliness and lustre, suited to our state. And now thy very face and form, dear Mother, speak to us of the eternal: not like earthly beauty, dangerous to look upon, but like the morning star which is thy emblem, bright and musical, breathing purity, telling of heaven and infusing peace. O harbinger of day! O light of the pilgrim! Lead us still as thou hast led. In the dark night, across the bleak wilderness, guide us on to our Lord Jesus, guide us home.

His eyes dimmed with tears, he looks humbly up to heaven, and weeps for the innocence he has lost. Later he finds a chapel and emerges from the confessional, a contrite young man of sixteen now at peace with God