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O great God, Father of all things,
whose infinite light
is darkness to me,
Whose immensity
is to me as the Void,
You have called me forth out of Yourself
because You love me in Yourself.
I am a transient expression
of Your inexhaustible and eternal reality.
I could not know You,
I would be lost in this darkness,
I would fall away from You into this Void,
if You did not hold me to Yourself
in the Heart of Your only begotten Son.
Father, I love you
Whom I do not know.
I embrace You
Whom I do not see.
I abandon myself to You
Whom I have offended.
You love in me
Your only begotten Son.
You see Him in me.
You embrace Him in me,
because He has willed to identify Himself
completely with me
by that love which brought Him to death,
for me, on the Cross.
Thomas Merton, 1915 – 1968, American Catholic writer and Trappist monk
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O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you,
I know you, and these know that you have sent me.
I made known to them your name,
and I will continue to make it known,
that the love with which you have loved me may be in them,
and I in them.
prayer & verse 