Your compassion surpasses my sins, Mary: Day 026

Your compassion surpasses my sins

St. Alphonsus confesses his sinfulness to our Blessed Mother, but declares his confidence in her mercy.

Mother of holy love, our life, our refuge, and our hope, you well know that your Son Jesus Christ, not content with being himself our perpetual advo- cate with the Eternal Father, has willed that you too should concern yourself, with him, in obtaining the divine mercies for us. He has decreed that your prayers should aid our salvation, and he has made them so efficacious that they obtain all that they ask.

To you, then, who are the hope of the miserable, this wretched sinner turns his eyes. I trust, Lady, that in the first place through the merits of Jesus Christ, and then through your intercession, I will be saved. Of this I’m confident; and my confidence in you is such that if my eternal salvation were in my own hands, I would place it in yours, for I rely more on your mercy and protection than on all my own works.

My Mother and my hope, don’t abandon me, though I deserve that you would do so. See my miseries and, being moved with compassion, help and save me. I admit that I have too often closed my heart, by my sins, against the lights and helps that you have procured for me from our Lord. But your compassion for the miserable, and your power with God, far surpass the number and malice of my sins.
Mary, I trust in you. In this hope I live; in it I desire and hope to die, repeating always, “Jesus is my only hope, and after Jesus, the most Blessed Virgin Mary.” —St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
Do I have the sense that I am, before God, a “wretched sinner”? Or does that sound too harsh, because I consider myself a good person? Should I perhaps ask God to let me see myself as he sees me?

CLOSING PRAYER
From a prayer of St. Alphonsus: O Queen and Mother of mercy, you dispense graces to all who turn to you with so much generosity, because you are a queen, and with so much love, because you are our most loving mother. I entrust myself to you this day.

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