Engrafting to Life

As 2010 begins, we all wish that this New Year will usher in blessings of peace and prosperity to the world, especially to the poorer countries. For the Philippines, 2010 is another critical year because of the May elections. We pray that our people will really be prepared for this democratic exercise, so that the country's chance to begin anew will not be squandered. May we truly experience being engrafted into the life of God as we begin 2010.

Happy New Year!

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ENGRAFTING TO LIFE

And you, High eternal Trinity

Acted as if you were drunk with love,

Infatuated with your creature.

When you see that this tree could bear no fruit

But the fruit of death,

Because it was cut off from you who were life,

You came to its rescue

With the same love with which you had created it;

You engrafted your divinity into the dead tree

Of our humanity.

O sweet tender grafting!

You, sweetness itself, stooped to join yourself

With our bitterness.

You, splendor, joined yourself with darkness;

You, wisdom, with foolishness;

You, life, with death;

You, the infinite, with us, who are finite.

What drove you to this

To give back life to this creature of yours

That had insulted you?

Only love, as I have said,

And so, by this engrafting, death is destroyed.

-Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)