cannot be exercised without the other. If God had not created man, He would
still, indeed, have been perfect in goodness; but He would not have been
actually merciful, since mercy can only be exercised towards the miserable.
You see, then, that the more miserable we know ourselves to be the more
occasion we have to confide in God, since we have nothing in ourselves in
which we can trust."

He goes on to say: "It is a very good thing to mistrust ourselves, but at
the same time how will that avail us, unless we put our whole confidence
in God, and wait for His mercy? It is right that our daily faults and
infidelities should cause us self-reproach when we would appear before
our Lord; and we read of great souls, like St. Catherine of Siena and St.
Teresa, who, when they had been betrayed into some fault, were overwhelmed
with confusion. Again, it is reasonable that, having offended God, we
should out of humility and a feeling of confusion, hold ourselves a little
in the background. When we have offended even an earthly friend, we feel
ashamed to meet him. Nevertheless, it is quite certain that we must not
remain for long at a distance, for the virtues of humility, abjection, and
confusion are intermediate virtues, or steps by which the soul ascends to
union with her God.

"It would be no great gain to accept our nothingness as a fact and to strip
ourselves of self (which is done by acts of self-humiliation) if the result
of this were not the total surrender of ourselves to God. St. Paul teaches
us this, when he says: _Strip yourselves of the old man and put on the
new_.[1] For we must not remain unclothed; but clothe ourselves with God."

Further on our Saint says: "I ever say that the throne of God's mercy is
our misery, therefore the greater our misery the greater should be our
confidence."[2]