I come to You like Jacob in the garments of Esau –

   that is, in the merits and the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ.

You, Father, Who willed to be as though blind

   in the darkness of this great mystery

   that is the revelation of Your love,

   pass Your hands over my head

   and bless me as Your only Son.

You have willed to see me more really as I am.

For my sinful self is not my real self,

   it is not the self You have wanted for me,

   only the self that I have wanted for myself.

I no longer want this false self.

And now, Father, I come to You in Your own Son’s self,

   for it is His Sacred Heart that has taken possession of me

   and destroyed my sins and it is He who presents me to You.

Where? In the sanctuary of His own Heart

   which is Your palace,

   the temple where saints adore You in heaven.

Thomas Merton, 1915 – 1968, American Catholic writer and Trappist monk

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But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.