Getting ready for Christmas - are you naughty or nice? Are you good enough?

St. Nicholas coming to the aid of children.

Think you are deserving?

I'm not.  However, I was genuinely consoled by today's Offertory Prayer:

Be pleased, O Lord, with our humble prayers and offerings, and, since we have no merits to plead our cause, come, we pray, to our rescue with the protection of your mercy.  Through Christ our Lord.

I have no merits!

I need to be rescued!

I need protection ...

... the protection of His mercy.

The present-day mentality, more perhaps than that of people in the past, seems opposed to a God of mercy, and in fact tends to exclude from life and to remove from the human heart the very idea of mercy. The word and the concept of "mercy" seem to cause uneasiness in man ... Bl. John Paul II

I like this ...

Therese to Celine:

Beloved little sister, let us never seek what appears to be great in the eyes of creatures... The only thing that is not envied is the last place; it is only there in that last place where one finds no vanity or spiritual affliction.

However, 'the way of man is not for him to decide', and at times we catch ourselves desiring things that glitter. Then let us humbly rank ourselves among the imperfect and esteem ourselves little souls whom the good God sustains at each moment. As soon as he sees us convinced of our nothingness, he extends his hand to us. - From: Celine: Sister and Witness to St. Therese of the Child Jesus.

To know that Therese ranked herself with people like me - to attract the Divine Mercy.

Don't give up.  Our misery irresistibly attracts the Divine Mercy.