Prayer of Catharine of Siena

This prayer of Catharine of Siena often comes to my mind. It is a brilliant integration of the Incarnation and the Atonement which grounds the events of Good Friday, this most weighty of events in Christian time. 

And you, high eternal Trinity

acted as if you were drunk with love,

infatuated with your creature.

When you saw that this tree could bear no fruit

but the fruit of death

because it was cut off from you who are 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 engrafting!

You, sweetness itself,

stooped to join yourself

with our bitterness.

 

Catharine of Siena