Page:TheParadiseOfTheChristianSoul.djvu/230

This page needs to be proofread.

O Lord, a broken and a humbled heart. My days have declined and perished without fruit, for it is impossible for me to recall them; but permit me to recount them in the bitterness of my soul.

O Lord, the deep of my most profound misery calls upon the deep of thy most deep mercy. Shut not up thy mercies in thy anger, and let not the fount of thy inexhaustible mercy be dried up towards me because of my sins; for thou hast mercy upon all, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, and overlookest the sins of men for the sake of repentance.

It is thine, O Lord, to forgive sins; have mercy upon me, for now is the time for grace and mercy. And while there is time for amendment, grant me to merit the glory of thy blessing, lest, in the day of consummation, I be struck with .the sentence of thy curse.

Make me, O Lord, I beseech thee, to abandon my evil habits, and to do works acceptable to thee; and henceforward, by thy aid, to apply to doing thy will the diligence which I have hitherto spent upon sins, that so, where sin abounded, grace may more abound.

And I implore thee, by thyself, and for the love of thy most tender mother the glorious Virgin Mary, and by the intercession of all thy saints and elect, to pardon all my sins, negligences, and ignorances; and not to destroy me with my iniquities, nor in thy anger to reserve my sins to the end.

Remember, O Lord Jesus, that it is thine to lose nothing of all that thy Father hath given thee, and that it is thy property always to have mercy, and to spare; to lose none, but to save. For thy Father sent thee into the world, not to judge the world, but that we might have life through thee; that thou mightest be for us, and not against us. For thou hast paid our debt, atoned for our sin, and supplied our neglect.

Let, then, thy full and superabundant satisfaction, O Lord, thy bitter death, and the price of thy blood that was shed; the renewal of thy satisfaction, which is the venerable mystery of thy body and blood, daily offered to thee in the Church for the salvation of the faithful, in which thou art thyself priest and sacrifice, the offerer and the receiver of the offering, and the offering itself, avail now, and in my last hour, to merit for me now the grace that I merit not myself, and to obtain for me hereafter the rest and glory which thy most bitter death has won for me.

Thy eyes, O Lord, have seen my imperfect being; but thou, who art gracious and