Do you remember the words we pray in dialogue with the priest before the great Eucharistic Prayer? "Sursum corda," he says to us. "Lift up your hearts!" But we cannot lift up our hearts by ourselves, we need the power of God, the power of his infinite mercy to pick us up from the dunghill of our selfishness and sin.

Confession, then, is the way to be raised up from our sins, but what can lead us to such confession? God, who is the "author of every mercy and of all goodness" gives us three helps, three remedies to get us to confession: fasting, prayer and almsgiving.

Remember when Jesus drove the devil out of the epileptic demoniac? He said that this "sort of demon is driven out only by both prayer and fasting." (Mark 9:27). Or that great admonition of St. Augustine: "Do you wish your prayer to fly toward God? Make for it two wings: fasting and almsgiving" (En. ps. 42, 8).

This is the kind of fasting that lets go of everything, so that we might cling only to God. The kind of prayer that reminds us of the love we have abandoned. And the kind of almsgiving which causes us to love as Christ first loved us: it tears us away from our selfish pity parties, and recreates us in the image of the Lord who loved us unto death.

So, bow down to the Lord! Confess your sins! And this Lent the Lord will reach down from heaven and raise you up with his mercy!

Msgr. James P. Moroney, presently professor of liturgy at St. John's Seminary, Brighton becomes the 20th rector there on July 1, 2012. This is the third of a series of reflections on the collects of the Lenten season which continues throughout this holy season.