O God, we are one with you.

You have made us one with you.
You have taught us that if we are open to one another, you dwell in us.
Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts.
Help us to realize that
there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection.

O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly,
fully, completely, we accept you,
and we thank you, and we adore you,
and we love you with our whole being, because our being is your being,
our spirit is rooted in your spirit.

Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as
we go our diverse ways,
united in this one spirit which makes you present in the world,
and which makes you witness to the ultimate reality that is love.

Love has overcome.
Love is victorious.

~ Thomas Merton ~

~ St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) ~

Excerpt from the Book of Fr Michael Gaitley:

“Consoling the Heart of Jesus” 

According to St. Therese, it’s precisely the little souls who will become the kind of great saints de Montfort foresaw. For Therese taught that Jesus wants to work some of his marvelous miracles of mercy in our day, miracles in which he takes the littlest of souls and forms them into the greatest saints. Therese could teach that because she understood three things exceedingly well: our modern times, God’s amazing mercy, and the teaching of St. Paul.

According to St. Paul, where evil and sin seem to prevail, God sends his grace in greater abundance (see Rom 5:20). This Pauline principle applies especially to our day that, in many ways, is marked by unprecedented evil. Because of such unprecedented evil, God graciously offers unprecedented mercy. Thus, our time truly can be called a “time of mercy,” a time when God especially wants to demonstrate that his “power finds perfection in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9), a time when it’s easier than ever before to become a saint.