Caught Up in God

“Oh, Mercy! … Wherever I turn my thoughts,
I find nothing but mercy.”
(St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogues 30)

Dear God,

Your mercy is like the air to me. I breathe mercy, I walk through mercy, I get up in the morning and go to bed at night wrapped in your mercy.

While my own hold on you is tenuous, your hold on me is solid and unbreakable. You are merciful when I am unmindful of you. You are merciful when I am clinging, not to you, but to past wrongdoing. You are merciful, even when my heart is filled with violence and vengeance.

Yet if I am unmerciful, does that not mean that I have refused to welcome your divine mercy, which is life to me? When I am unmerciful, am I not then making my own air less breathable? Am in not in danger of asphyxiation?

And so in your presence I breathe deeply, and I continue to pray, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”