Asking Jesus to Lay His Merciful Hands on Us

We must correct the habit of looking at our dark side instead of the trans figuring light of the Son who can change our dust into pure gold. We too often stop to examine ourselves in stead of plunging ourselves into the purifying furnace of the Sacred Heart, which is open to us with a single act of confidence in his love. We believe all too easily in our wretchedness, but not enough in his merciful love. We have to learn how to take  advantage of our littleness and failures, our incapacities, even our sins, and to transform them into reasons for trusting. If we can learn how to transpose such things into bold self-abandonment, then for us—as for the good thief, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, all the poor, weak, and sinful—the impossible becomes possible.

It is trust and confidence that make what seemed so far away suddenly come within reach. It is trust and confidence that liberate the mercy of God, while a lack of faith constrains it. Our weakness attracts God because it offers him an emptiness that he can fill. Weakness brought in confidence before God becomes, in a sense, the promise of God’s intervention. We must have confidence, not in spite of our weakness but because of it—misery attracts mercy. No matter how deep the abyss of our misery, it cannot be an obstacle to God’s action. Sanctity, says Saint Thérèse, does not consist in this or that practice but in a disposition of the heart which makes us little and humble in God’s arms.