Mar 14 2023 11 mins 12
SM4 – The Sea of God’s Mercy – Season of Mercy: Lent and Easter by Servant of God Catherine Doherty
An excerpt from Season of Mercy: Lent and Easter:
The Sea of God’s Mercy
It came to me that Lent is a sort of sea of God’s mercy. In my imagination, it was warm and quiet, and inviting for us to swim in. If we did, we would be not only refreshed but cleansed, for God’s mercy cleanses as nothing else does.
Then I thought of our reticence. I do not know if it is reticence, or fear to really plunge into God’s mercy. We really want to be washed clean; we want to be forgiven. But these desires meet with something else inside. I say to myself that if I enter into that sea of mercy I will be healed, and then I will be bound to practice what Christ preaches, practice his law of love. And that law of love is painful, so terribly painful. There by that sea I stand and think. If I seek mercy, I have to dish out mercy, I have to be merciful to others. What does it mean to be merciful to others? It means to open my own heart, like a little sea, for people to swim in.
If we stand before God’s mercy and drink of it, that means the Our Father is a reality and not just a prayer that I say.
Doherty, Catherine. Season of Mercy: Lent and Easter (Seasonal Customs Vol. 2) (pp. 28-29). Madonna House Publications. Kindle Edition.
Catherine Doherty was born into an aristocratic family in Russia in 1896, and baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. Because of her father’s work, she grew up in Ukraine, Egypt, and Paris. Many different strands of Christianity were woven into the spiritual fabric of her family background, but it was from the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church, the living faith of her father and mother, and the earthy piety of the Russian people themselves that Catherine received the powerful spiritual traditions and symbols of the Christian East. Catherine fled to England during the Russian Revolution, and was received into the Catholic Church in 1919. The cause for her canonization has been officially opened in the Catholic Church. More information about Catherine’s life, works, and the progress of her cause can be found at: www.catherinedoherty.org and www.madonnahouse.org.
Discerning Hearts is grateful to Madonna House Publications whose permission was obtained to record these audio selections from this published work.
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