Happy Easter to all of you! This weekend I will be away leading a parish retreat in North Carolina on the theme of God’s mercy. That is especially fitting, because this weekend is Divine Mercy Sunday. In those retreat talks I will be drawing from St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Aquinas teaches us that God’s mercy is not simply God feeling sorry for us. It is God acting to heal what we cannot heal ourselves. If Aquinas gives us a theology and ethics of mercy, Bernard gives us a spiritual psychology of mercy. He helps us see why so often we fail at mercy and how God can reform our hearts.

As Lent draws closer to Holy Week, the Church invites us to slow down and go deeper. In this bulletin series we’ve been practicing Lectio Divina, a traditional way of praying with Scripture. We’ve learned to read attentively (Lectio), chew on a word or phrase (Meditatio), and respond to God in prayer (Oratio). This week we arrive at the fourth step: Contemplatio or “Contemplate.” Contemplation is not about saying more, but about resting quietly in God’s presence, allowing Him to work within us beyond words. Pope Benedict XVI described it as receiving God’s own way of seeing and judging reality, and then asking: What conversion of mind, heart, and life is the Lord asking of me? In contemplation, we don’t force the moment. We sit with the Lord and let His Word shape our vision until, little by little, we begin to see with “the mind of Christ.”