Meditations

Make Me Worthy Dear God, how good You are to make me love Your peace! But it is not enough for me to love and desire it. Make me worthy of it by crushing my pride. Bring down my mind as well as my body. Let my pride be able to breathe no longer. Complete the work You have begun in taking me out of the worldly fellowship with those who neither know You nor love You. Quench in me even the last vestiges of my fierce shame. Break the bonds that keep me a prisoner, and forge new ones that attach me to You alone. What have I done to You, dear God, to be worthy of such undeserved mercy? The grace You showed me in the past I trampled underfoot. I have repaid with ingratitude all Your former goodness toward me. So the only merit that I have in Your sight is this, I am in such a wretched condition that You are moved to show mercy. Knowing that, will I still hesitate between the world which wants me to be lost and You who want to save me? Will I push away the cross You offer me with such love to deliver me from the sickness of my soul, a sickness more terrible than illnesses of the body? O Lord, I throw myself on Your mercy. I am worthy only to be handed over to Your eternal justice. Chasten me, Lord, chasten me. Do with me according to Your good pleasure. I want no other will than Yours. I will praise You in all my sufferings. I will kiss the hand that chastens me. I believe that I will yet be spared. Lord, I stand ready for anything You send me, whether that means living separated from the world, confessing aloud the good news of Your gospel, or dying on the cross with You. O Jesus, You are my love and my life.