A Year With Thomas Merton - March 3

With Contrite Hearts to God

Every day I mean to pray, especially in choir, for all the priests in the world who hear confessions and for all their penitents. I ask that everywhere this Sacrament may be administered and received in truth and justice and prudence and mercy and sorrow, and that priests and penitents may better know what they are doing and that they be filled with a great love and reverence for what they do. I ask that everywhere men may discover in themselves a great admiration for this Sacrament and may love it with their whole being, giving themselves entirely with contrite hearts to the mercy and truth of God, that His love may remake them in His own likeness--that is, that He may make them true.

Down there in the wooded hollow full of cedars I hear a great outcry of blue jays, and yonder is one of the snipes that are always flying and ducking around St. Joseph's hill. In all this I am reassured by the sweet, constant melody of my cardinals, who sing their less worldly tunes with no regard for any other sound on earth. And now the jays have stopped. Their tribulation rarely lasts very long.

Now I am under the sky. The birds are all silent except for some quiet bluebirds. But the frogs have begun singing their pleasure in all the waters and in the warm, green places where the sunshine is wonderful. Praise Christ, all you living creatures. For Him you and I were created. With every breath we love Him. My psalms fulfill your dim, unconscious song. O brothers in this wood.