psallamTibi

www.benedictine.life

draw me after Thee

in Iubilæum Misericordiæ celebrandum

octava die decembris MMXV

in festo Conceptione Immaculata Beatæ Mariæ Virginis
D
raw me after thee: and we will run towards thee,
led by the fragrance of thy balm. Unto his own
bower has the king led me, and we shall rejoice
and be glad in thee, remembering that to be nourished in
your embrace is more exquisite than wine; so the beloved
love thy love.
(Cant. 1:3)
 Exordium

Draw me, O Lord, for where you lead, I may only follow; my
will alone deficient in its discernment of your loving mercy.
Its mystery one your holy angels barely comprehend, who
stand in awe of the great depth of the divine love that is the
Godhead, given in such perfect fullness even to the least of
your unworthy creatures. It is a mystery with its beginning
and end in the eternity of the very nature of God, glimpsed
but for the blink of his eye, from the moment he first
breathed life into our mortal flesh until the consummation
of his love in the Cross of his Son, and the consummation
of all things still yet to come, when we whom the Lord has
drawn unto himself shall quicken from mortal death to the
immortality of the essence of God in whose image we were
made and in whose love we were created to abide.

For it was on that first of all Fridays, when God breathed life
into man and the divine love first entered the created, that
our souls were given the gift of the divine life, the perfect
love that animates our earthly bodies and sets us apart to
be transfigured in the very love that is God. It is this that
was our destiny from the beginning, not to be spectators
of the divine life but participants in it. A destiny that was
never repudiated even when man failed to return, in love
of his Creator, the fullness of that divine love which set him
at the pinnacle of creation, but instead rendered his own

2
God-given flesh carnal and his eternal destiny ephemeral
through sin.

Yet, although the sin was grave and the ensuing fall
precipitous, we did not lose God’s love but rather, in trying
to contain it, and in the selfish desire to possess it for our
own ends, we were blinded to its origins, and its source was
obscured by the miasma of sin that enveloped the world.
But despite our fall, the memory of that first love never
left us completely, nor did the Creator remove from us the
fullness of the love he first breathed into our souls – leaving
us always the means to seek and find him: our life and our
love. For that ember, dampened but not extinguished, is
the memory of a great fire fuelled by love, which yearns to
live again. Though languishing, it still recalls the passion
with which it once burned; and though fading, it seeks
to preserve something of what it was for the kindling it
instinctively knows will save it from extinction. May this
memory of love draw me after thee, then, and we shall
run towards thee; for that love by which I am drawn is
given to me so completely that it exceeds my frail form and
draws, beyond me, those most in need of your mercy, that
together, we may not just set out to seek the source of your
love but run towards it with the swiftness of your Spirit
that proceeds in eternity between you and the Father: the
perfect union of your love.

For your love is a balm of mercy that heals as it envelops

the tortured wounds of our fallen humanity and revives

3
the flesh of our mortality into life anew in your Spirit. The
affliction of our sin is contagious, but in your mercy the
world is overrun by the panacea of the physician of souls:
one healed by your mercy of his deficiency in love now
loves the other who first afflicted him, and he, the cause of
his pain in turn, until no lesion is left unsalved, and that
cause of all pain, all hatred, all sin, is revealed for whom
he his – the one who would have us doubt, as did Eve, the
fullness of the love we have received from on high, and the
truth that this alone is sufficient for life in this world and
the next. So it is that we flee from the tempter, drawn by
the fragrance of your Spirit to the anointing of its unction,
which consecrates the heart again to your love, its scent
healing from within and its sheen our shield against the
foe.

So draw me after thee: and we will run towards thee, led

by the fragrance of your balm, to none other than the
chamber of your own heart, where, healed of the canker
of our iniquity, we draw our sustenance from the source
of life itself. There to drown in your mercy and be washed
clean in your blood. There to lay claim to your death as our
own, so that your heart may throb in our breasts, the pulse
of each beat echoing through all time, calling to eternity;
its pangs of love-unrequited, felt in our souls for each of
the beloved to return. To return to love of thy love and to
taste of its mercy; a mercy that would take life from Life to
rescue the least from death, and which grieves each loss as
intensely as it rejoices in each return.

4
 Of the nature of love and mercy

From the beginning God has loved, for God is love. From
the moment of our creation in his image, he has loved us
with such fullness as to desire to unite us with himself
in the perfect and infinite exchange of love that is the
Trinity. And even when we failed his love, even our ruinous
disobedience could not diminish the love he bore us. For in
that moment of our fall, when mankind descended into the
depraved depths of sin, and when we deserved of all things
only his anger and retribution, his love became mercy and
what should have been wrath became grief at our loss.

Looking upon the fallen world, upon the people he had

formed with such tender love and for such greatness, “it
grieved him to his heart” (Gen. 6:6) that the demands of
justice would condemn his loved ones to eternal darkness
and that the most beloved of his creatures should be lost for
ever. God was not angered but grieved at the loss of love;
grieved that his gift of love’s life in him had been spurned
on the promise of equality with God when his outpouring
of love had already offered man perfect union with the
divine. And from this grieving heart was born the divine
mercy: that love which, in the fullness of time, would do
the unthinkable for the salvation of souls, and establish
for all men a path of mercy from the jaws of hell to the
loving embrace of God: a path of self-giving that is the

5
most perfect manifestation of love.

Since the days of Noah, God has raised up men of

righteousness, touched by his mercy to reveal, according to
our capacity to understand, the mystery of the divine love
for man and its outpouring in a mercy that always seeks
the conversion and return of man to God. In the deluge
we see the mercy of new beginnings, and beyond it, the
universality of the promise of mercy: that no man should
ever be beyond it; that it stands, obstinate in its love, in the
face of grave insult and wickedness, always imploring the
soul not to depart from the path of life. For what has grieved
the heart of the Most High is the death of his beloved, when
he had created them for life everlasting. Yet they have
preferred death and revelled in it; the mistrust planted by
the tempter compounded in his largesse: ornamenting the
prison of sin and perverting the sensory pleasures given
by God for the consecration of the good, the sinner now
stands at the bars believing he is free, and that it is God
who entraps, enslaves, and punishes.

But it is they who have punished themselves, for punishment

is indeed due for every act that defies love and seeks the
harm of the other and the gratification of self for self’s sake.
They have blamed God for punishing that which brings
pleasure, thinking him one that desires their misery and
anguish. They have seen not mercy but vengeance through
eyes that have lost the vision of love. But their punishment
is not God’s doing but their own, and his mercy not some

6
ruse to entrap mankind in pain and poverty, but the desire
to free him from his anguish and enrich him with his
heart’s desire. A price must indeed be paid for sin, but in
Abraham’s faithfulness God had already shown that his
mercy is the ransom; that he has already made provision
of himself, so that man need not fear the cost that they
could only pay in their blood.

If only they could regain the trust with which they were
endowed in Eden; that childlike trust that abandons the
will to loving providence and yields love to its source.
But this gift, now lost in sin, needs to be relearned, as the
lanes of a hometown long forsaken for the city lights are
retraced with the stirring guide of paled memories. So
were our hearts stirred by the memories of a life once lived
by our parents, and individuals led, by the spark of truth
and God’s words through his righteous ones, into a nation
in search of God and to whom God would impart true
knowledge of his mercy. And they were shown his great
mercy by being given freedom from enslavement in Egypt,
and were taught how to love through his law, and were
led to a land reserved for them, to live secure in his love
and be his light for all nations. And yet his plan was not
yet fulfilled, the fullness of time was yet to come, for he
knew their hearts of stone incapable of true love until their
ransom to death had been paid by a singular act of love
that would bring mercy to end the grief of death and give
to the dead a path to life.

7
So it came to pass that their lost wanderings in the desert
gave way to the itineracy of exile, for they mistook God’s
favour as their own strength and thought his mercy
licence to continue in the way of the idolater. And so was
man stricken by his compulsion to sin; the toll of justice,
perceived as the anger of a jealous God but, in truth, a
consequence of the divine love so perfectly given: for to
disdain it is to spurn life itself. But again and again the fall
Adam repeated itself, with the love of God given through
great wonders and signs never returned in love for the
giver. The mercy that flowed from the grieving heart of
God was again used to scorn him as the message of the
serpent played through the history of God’s people, urging
them to overthrow the oppressor and establish their own
sovereignty above that of their Creator. When they cried
for a king, their heavenly sovereign was not enflamed with
jealousy but ennobled their earthly lineage with the promise
of an eternal kingdom. In his mercy he anointed their kings
to be a sign of his own rule of love, but they loved not the
rule of the just and gloried in kings corrupted by worldly
desires, whose beards, though slickened with his oil, could
not embrace a mouth that spoke his word. So his word
was given to the prophets to proclaim: words that followed
them to Babylon and back, raining down the mercy of God
like the dew that had brought them manna in the desert;
a message of love so undeserved yet so abundant in its
giving, so faithful in the face of their perfidiousness that it
could only be called mercy – misericordia – the outpouring
of grieving love.

8
And this gentle dew of his mercy came to rest upon one
whose trust in his love reversed the faithlessness of Eve;
the one whose fiat welcomed the Word with such intimate
love that it took flesh in her body: Mercy made Man, as if
all the love of millennia of mourning were in her conceived;
herself an act of God’s mercy, so as to become for mankind
a singular vessel of his grace. So it was that with the
Incarnation of Mercy, God’s grief became compassion, as
he no longer mourned over our loss but now mourned with
us, physically in time and space; in no mere perception of
our pain but in its perfect adoption into the eternal life
of the Godhead. So that as God condescends, so might
man ascend through the procession of love, which is
mercy in its giving and true devotion in its return to the
One who is love’s source and summit. And in every action
of the Incarnate One, true compassion is revealed. For it
was from sharing the pain of the sick that divine healing
broke forth. From union with the fear of the lost that he
proclaimed the way to the eternal kingdom. Through
familiarity with anguish that he brought God’s comfort
to the afflicted. And ultimately, through accepting death
that mortality was clothed with divine life. And through
this compassion, willed by God though unfathomable in
man’s debased pattern of human love, was revealed the
true nature of the Creator: The image man had painted for
himself as disfigured as his own notion of love, now made
manifest in an epiphany of mercy no longer unreachable,
unknowable, but seen in the countenance of God made

9
Man; heard in his call to follow; smelled in the coalescence
of frankincense and myrrh; touched by those who believed
and one who would not; and tasted still this day, in the
cup of mercy overflowing, and the bread of life everlasting.
Christ: the love that is the very essence of God; his mercy
through all ages, as palpable as the grief in his tears for
Lazarus, which are the very tears of God for each of his
beloved caught in the tenure of death.

And it was this death that mercy sought to overthrow

through a compassion so tangible that the Divine Word,
now bound inseparably to man in Christ, would die to
achieve it; die a death that could not have taken place
had he not willed it and upon his sinless flesh willed to
bear, on behalf of mankind, their every sin, so that justice
could be exacted upon one man for all, and that mankind,
cleaving to his Cross should never again undergo the
pain of death that is eternal separation from God. His
divine condescension, an abasement incomprehensible
to our minds, in death, was to willingly undertake even
this most harrowing separation that no sin of his own
had demanded, as he cried out from the Cross, “Eloi, Eloi,
lamma sabachthani?” and so vouched safe the remittance
of our sins. For God’s mercy does not forget sin or absolve
it into oblivion. Mercy takes sin and its penalty, death, and
fuses it to the very body of Christ – the burden of his love,
of his mercy, the burden that could alone assuage his grief;
transforming our loss into life.

10
Thus it was for our life that the Saviour died, to complete,
in the surrendering of his, what mankind had refused to
give of theirs: love in its entirety. For as God Incarnate
cried out from the depth of his pain, “Father, into thy
hands I commend my spirit” the unthinkable happened:
God the Son died upon the Cross, and in yielding up his
spirit relinquished all in love. And in this perfect surrender
of love, Christ completed for mankind that bond of love
which leads to participation in the divine life. Yet the true
love that is God yields of itself in its entirety but never
diminishes, for the love that proceeds from its source is
given in eternal fullness. So Christ, in yielding perfectly his
love to the Father in death, rises by the power of that same
life-giving love in the resurrection, and with him all who
take up their cross and follow him.

So it is that in the light of Christ is revealed the countenance

of God, and we see, in our millennia of wandering far
from his law, God’s unabated desire for our return and the
profundity of his plan to effect our conversion to the path
of love and life. For God is life itself, and that eternal life
is his love. And God’s love for fallen man is mercy, and his
mercy, in the Incarnation of his Christ, is compassion. And
in God’s compassion in Christ, which is the outpouring of
his grief at our loss, he took upon himself the affliction, the
suffering, the separation of our sin, in an act of mercy that
frees us from eternal death; restoring us to his life of love
for the Father in the Holy Spirit. This is mercy; the mercy
of the Father, who “so loved the world, as to give his only

11
begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not
perish, but may have life everlasting” (Jn. 3:16). And so all
heaven exults. And from God’s grief at our loss emerges
pure joy at our return; the joy that was in the beginning:
the divine love of creation.

12
 Of the exhortation to be merciful

The call of mercy, by which we are invited to participate

in the life of divine love, though not complicated, is a most
arduous commission because, in the original sense of
the word, it is the steepness of this road to Calvary that
leaves many unable to complete the climb. Yet it is the
very essence of every commandment of the old law and
of Christ’s himself contained in that simple exhortation
to love. For to love God is to ascend Calvary; to kneel at
his feet and be made whole in his love; to receive from his
blood the tender mercy of his love, and in it to be washed
clean of our sin and healed of the wounds of our affliction.
But then from Calvary to proceed, restored in love, to love
our neighbour. For the love of neighbour is nothing if it
does not carry the mercy and compassion of the Cross to
the world.

So at the very start of our Christian duty to be “merciful as

the Father” is the ascent that we must make towards the
throne of his mercy. It is a strenuous climb that can test
even the most faithful because it is one made under the
burden of our own sin. We may set out strident, but as the
gradient increases, the burden we carry becomes heavier,
for the incline is an increasing awareness of our own
sinfulness as we approach God; of our own brokenness and
poverty in the face of the wholesome bounty of the divine
love. It is easy to become burdened to breaking point in

13
this endeavour, as we quite rightly wonder how we could
be worthy of the mercy that awaits us at the summit. Yet
this time of testing is truly a grace, a gift of the Holy Spirit,
a purification that enables us to live in awe of God: that he
should have so great a love for one so unworthy.

The temptation to retreat under the weight of our sin is

always present and can only be fought through prayer that
deepens our understanding of the nature of love. But the
far greater temptation, and one infinitely more perilous,
is to discharge ourselves of our load along the way, when
the great mind of our conscience against our own soul
conspires, and we seek to become our own source of mercy
by deciding for God those sins for which justice is due. In
seeking mercy without truly understanding its nature, it is
easy to become complacent, forgetting that in Christ we are
held to a higher standard than even the legalistic Pharisees,
whom we so often like to highlight Jesus castigating. With
too great an ease do we fail to appreciate that it was not
the law that Jesus criticised but a legalism that undermined
the spirit of the law, by enforcing a minimalistic spirit of
compliance as its summit, or by contriving loopholes and
so taking pride in falling short. So it was that Jesus taught,
“You have heard it hath been said, ‘An eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth’ but I say to you not to resist evil: but
if one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the
other” (Mt. 38:38-39); and again, “You have heard that it
hath been said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate
thy enemy’ but I say to you love your enemies; do good to

14
them that hate you; and pray for them that persecute and
calumniate you” (Mt. 38:43-44). And as the rich young man
discovered, the law was not given to Israel as a minimum
requirement for salvation but as the means by which
true conversion of heart is effected. So it is upon our own
conversion of heart that our conscience should dwell on
our ascent to Calvary, for it is both what has been injurious
to love and that which impedes its fullest expression, for
which we need to seek the outpouring of mercy’s love.

And what a love it is: this mercy that looks upon the ones
who have crucified him and calls out for them them to
approach, without fear for what our hands have done; for
mercy rejoices in the midst of suffering, that the pain is his
and not ours to bear. And he looks upon us with the same
eyes with which he looked upon the soldiers who nailed
him to the Cross and cast lots for his clothing. These are
not the eyes of one who seeks justice for their sin, but of one
desiring to justify them – justify us – through the perfect
reparation for our sins; sins for which the burden of his
grief is more painful to him than undergoing the torment
of the Cross. We stand on Calvary in the presence of mercy:
witnessing a grief so heart wrenching that this agonising
death was joy by comparison. It is joy in the beauty of the
fallen looking upon his face and seeing the image in which
they were created. The image of love, in us so broken, but
now yearning for healing; yearning for the restoration of
what we had lost in sin. And he does not deny us but looks
upon us one more time to present paradise as his gift to the

15
repentant thief, before sealing his mercy in the death that
completes every sacrifice on every altar through all times,
and so today from the Eucharistic table where his Body
and Blood bring to our bodies the mercy of God and the
forgiveness of sins for the contrite of heart.

For, standing here and looking upon the one whom we have
pierced, which one of us would claim that even the smallest
sin does not have the most grave consequences? Beholding
the price of mercy, the heavy burden of love, here at the
foot of the Cross we see that mercy does not simply erase
the consequences of sin but suffers them most grievously.
There is no such thing as a free pass for our offences, and
we must either pay the price ourselves, or witness with a
grieving heart the Saviour pay it for us. Discerning this
is true contrition, that man should have known his sin in
the grieving love of God, and then grieve in his turn for a
mercy so unfitting to his station as a base and contemptible
creature. For herein lies the mystery, that although sin
has debased our God-given dignity and indeed made us
contemptible to one another and in our own eyes, yet still
God loves, and what he has done for this love holds us in
awe at our station on Calvary’s summit, in that moment
of perfect contrition unwilling ever again to inflict such
pain on one who has loved us with such immeasurable
depth. And in that moment, mercy heals; heals the bruises,
stresses, strains, and wounds of all our sins that were the
burden with which we were so heavilyy laden on our ascent
here. And now, here, he assumes them, and we know again

16
the joy of being created anew in love, of being made whole
and restored; and in this vigour resolve to only ever share
his suffering and never again to be their cause.

So it is that having received of the plenitude of God’s mercy

in such fullness, we are drawn into his love; drawn into
the love of the Cross, and the heart’s desire turns from
the inwardness of narcissistic self-love to the desire for
nothing but some share in the Saviour’s suffering, not for
our own sake, for it is for us that he has suffered, but for
the sake of the other; for the sake of love itself. It is thus
that we find ourselves caught up in the commandment to
love, in complete surrender of self to our God and all those
whom he has loved. And we come to understand Christ’s
exhortation to bear our cross with him as an instrument
of God’s mercy to all the world, and so to fulfil his call to
become sons of the Most High by being “merciful, as your
Father also is merciful” (Lk. 6:36). It is against this measure
of mercy that we should hold up our lives as we descend
Calvary and re-enter the world, for this is the standard of
the Christian life that is lived no longer for ourselves but,
strengthened constantly by his Holy Spirit, for him alone.
And we see clearly now that all things pointed to his Cross,
and that our whole life to come points through that same
Cross to the hope of the resurrection. But we are never a
people of the resurrection until we have first been a people
of the Cross. For we descend Calvary to be very much in
this world but never again of it, bringing to it the love that
it gasps for, expressed in a mercy it cannot yet comprehend,

17
but which is the only healing for its wounds; bringing to it
a way to peace that it will never be able to follow unless
we walk it before them – the way of our crosses borne with
the humble joy of the One who bore his before us; a joy at
the return of the lost that makes us exclaim, “I rejoice in my
sufferings for your sake” (Col. 1:24).

It is no mere happenstance, then, that the Evangelist

recounts Jesus’ deepening of his disciples’ understanding
of what it means to be merciful like the Father in his
discourse on judging others: “Judge not, and you shall not
be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.
Forgive, and you shall be forgiven.” (Lk. 6:37). All this has
the Father done in Christ, for in Christ, “mercy exulteth
itself above judgment” (Jam. 2:13). And all this must we
do to unite ourselves perfectly with the sacrifice of loving
mercy that is our only means of salvation. And far from
diminishing the effects of sin, here Christ expounds that
sin must be addressed in a radically new way. He does not
ask us to pretend that sin is not sin, but rather to recognise
it for exactly what it is: something that only perfect love is
capable of overcoming. ‘Who am I to judge?’ only makes
sense in the scheme of salvation when the question is
brought to its divine conclusion in the sacrifice of the Cross:
‘Who am I to judge when I may be their justification?’ For
Christ did not judge the sinner but loved him so perfectly
that he bore the penalty of judgment on his behalf in an act
of complete justification that left sin answered for and the
sinner free from his just punishment and free also to love

18
anew. May we then do less in response to sin against our
own person? No, we may not, if our desire is to be merciful
as the Father. We must not judge, but this does not mean
sin is not subject to God’s final judgment. We must not
condemn, but this does not mean that sin is not deserving
of condemnation. We must instead forgive, but not on
human terms proceeding from an imperfect and wounded
love, which tries to pretend that sin does not matter, that
we are not hurt by it, and yet secretly wishes for justice
and vindication. The call for justice however silently made,
however involuntary in its exhalation, makes a mockery
of the Cross, of love, and of the mercy of the Father made
manifest in Christ. Anything less than the desire for the
sinner’s salvation, by willingly taking upon ourselves the
consequences of his sin and joining the ensuing suffering
with the Cross of Christ, falls short of our Christian
vocation and degrades the perfect love we ourselves have
been given at the foot of the Cross.

If we may suffer the hurt of sins against us in the love that

has been given to us in Christ, and if we may seek, through
that same bond of love, to unite our sufferings to those
of Christ on the Cross for the sake of the one who sinned
against us, then and only then is our forgiveness God’s own
– a forgiveness that takes sin and, paying its price, renders
it impotent in the face of love. In this act of perfect love,
fuelled not by our own strength but by coming “boldly to the
throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace
to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16), we become merciful as

19
the Father: Looking upon the sinner through God’s eyes of
grief at their loss and desiring nothing but their salvation,
but “rejoicing that [we] were accounted worthy to suffer”
(Acts 5:41) and so to participate in the redemptive suffering
of Christ. In this, we “fill up those things that are wanting
of the sufferings of Christ, in [our] flesh, for his body, which
is the church” (Col. 1:24). In this, we seek to conform our
wills to the will of Christ, who from the Cross desired not
one of his accusers or killers to be condemned for their
sins against him. In this we see the love that is God, that
love which is given in such perfection to creation, and is
now returned completely to him in a trust of its abundance
that upturns the doubt of Eve and secures for us Eden and
Christ the fruit of the Tree of Life, who is the immortality
of man redeemed from death by his mercy.

20
 Of the Jubilee of Mercy

So may this Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy be your

encounter with the inestimable love of God, which is his
mercy for you and for all men. And may you have not only
your fill but be overwhelmed in its gift, so that it becomes
your own gift, through him, to each person you encounter:
A gift of mercy that suffocates sin in love.

May you encounter the One whose death purchased life

for you by redeeming you from sin. Encounter him upon
the mount of Calvary where he asks you to cast your
sins upon him so that you may be free from hatred; free
to love. Encounter him in the sacraments of his love that
will sustain you as you walk from his tomb to await the
resurrection in a world that is in so much need of what
you have received. And may you love, then, the world with
his mercy; with the mercy of your Father in Heaven, letting
your participation in the works of mercy be your school of
love from which you graduate carrying the Cross of Christ;
no mere symbol to convert the sinner by, but the reality
of God’s merciful love for each one of them. May you be
so enraptured that, forgetting yourself, you embrace each
suffering that the sins of the world precipitates in such
perfect love of God and neighbour that you become the
justification of the sinner before God by participating in
the redemptive suffering of the Saviour, which is the sole

21
and universal expiation for sin. And may your sacrifice in
perfect unison with the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross be
the completion of the bond of love that raises you in Christ,
clothed in his immortality and led by his Spirit into the
very life of God: That life of love beyond all time and space
from which life on earth began and for which God first
created man in his image, and where with all the saints we
will enjoy the vision of God’s glory for ages unending.

And as we enter this Holy Year of Mercy, may we keep

before us always the inspired words of Pope Benedict XVI
on mercy:
“Christ’s mercy is not a grace that comes cheap, nor
does it imply the trivialization of evil. Christ carries
the full weight of evil and all its destructive force in
his body and in his soul. He burns and transforms
evil in suffering, in the fire of his suffering love. The
day of vindication and the year of favour converge
in the Paschal Mystery, in the dead and Risen Christ.
This is the vengeance of God: he himself suffers for
us, in the person of his Son. The more deeply stirred
we are by the Lord’s mercy, the greater the solidarity
we feel with his suffering – and we become willing
to complete in our own flesh “what is lacking in the
afflictions of Christ” (Col 1: 24).”
HE Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger,
Homily at the Mass ‘Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice’
April 18, 2005

22
With prayerful affection, I commend you to the intercession
of the Glorious Virgin, Mother of Mercy, whose Immaculate
Conception we celebrate this day, and leave you with the
‘Prayer of mercy beneath the Cross’ of Pope Saint John Paul II:

“And behold: we who are standing beneath the

Cross of the ages, wish, through Your Cross and
Passion, O Christ, to cry out today that:
that mercy which has irreversibly entered
in to the history of man, into our whole human history
— and which in spite of the appearances of weakness
is stronger than evil –
is the greatest power and force
upon which man can sustain himself, threatened
as he is from so many sides.
Holy is God.
Holy and strong.
Holy immortal One, have mercy on us.
Have mercy: eleison: miserere.
May the power of Your love once more be shown
to be greater than the evil that threatens it.
Mayit be shown to be greater than sin.
May the power of Your Cross, O Christ, be shown
to be greater than the author of sin, who is called
‘the prince of this world.’
For by your Blood and Your Passion You have
redeemed the world!”
Pope St. John Paul II
(L’Osservatore Romano, 4-27-81,8)

23