with|Wherwith|title=wherewith}} shall I kneel before the high God?” (Mich, vi. 6.) My God, miserable as 1 am, I can make thee no offering worthy of thy goodness or grateful to thy heart. I can only present thee a soul loaded with more mercies than would suffice to sanctify any other but myself. Let thy own mercies then praise thee, let them give thee glory, and let my preservation from those torments I have so often deserved, be a standing memorial of thy paternal compassion. Look mercifully on a soul whom contrition and guilt have penetrated and confounded, thou of whom thy prophet has said, that “the bruised reed he shall not break, the smoking fax he shall not quench” (Is. xlii. 3.) Support in thy mercy my weakness, of which thou alone knowest the extent; and fan into a flame those sparks of good desires which thy grace has enkindled within me, but which my infidelities have so often, alas ! well nigh extinguished. O fulfil then thy gracious promise: “I will seek that which was lost: and that which was driven away, I will bring again: and I will bind up that which was broken: and I will strengthen that which was weak” (Ezech. xxxiv. 16.) Divine Jesus! let thy mercy be upon me according to my hope in thee, “ For the eyes of the Lord are on them that fear him, and on them that hope in his mercy” (Ps. xxxii. 18.)
Most holy Virgin, thou who hast, as I trust, interceded for my pardon, obtain for me also the grace of perseverance, that I may live and die in the friendship of my God. Amen.
O most sweet Lord Jesus! graciously vouchsafe to remember all the holy thoughts that have passed in thy divine mind from the beginning of the world to this moment, particularly thy tender design of becoming Man for the redemption of the world; and
