Pillars of Fire In My Soul

The Three Steps of Mercy Creation The Triune God is a unified community of love that is, always was, and always will be. Creation is the fruit of that love, the merciful response of God to the cry of Nothingness: “Let us be!” God answered by creating the universe and all that it contains, with the human person as the pinnacle of all of God’s creation. Creation, then, is the first step of mercy. God works in partnership with us to create new human life. Throughout the history of salvation, God has responded with mercy to those who have not been able to conceive children. For example, Sarah and Elizabeth, two devout women of our faith tradition, were barren. They turned the energy of their grief into constant prayer, and God’s merciful response was to bless Sarah with her son, Isaac, and Elizabeth with her son, John. In addition, God chose these dearly wanted children to play important roles in the history of salvation. In a similar scenario, for the first ten years of their marriage, Stanislaus and Marianna Kowalski, Helen’s parents, knew the grief of not being able to conceive a child. From the time of their marriage, they prayed unceasingly to be blessed with children. Madame Babel, Marianna’s mother, joined in their prayer, offering up this intention at the Holy Sacrifice of Mass as well. She encouraged her daughter to trust in God’s mercy and assured her that she would have children. In fact, Marianna ended up giving birth to ten children! Josephine, the eldest, was born after an extremely prolonged and difficult labor. Genevieve, their second daughter, was born about two years later after another complicated childbirth. Marianna was very nervous during the third pregnancy, but little Helen was born without any problems, and the births of the seven children who followed Helen were also remarkably trouble-free, although two daughters died in infancy. In later The Road to Canonization 139