Dear One,
Thank You for this day. For waking me up. For inviting me to move about as I have thus far. For the way you help me carry on. For the hope of more life to experience tomorrow. You are always generous and loving, and so I offer up my abilities and my shortcomings. Again, I say thank You. For my successes and failures, thank You. For my wisdom and ignorance, thank You. These all have brought me to You today. I ask, please – listen to my heart, read my soul. For my words fall short, and yet I will try.
I hear news from colleagues, neighbors, friends, and family of their struggle, their sickness, their need for life sustaining resources. I notice parents and teachers and students adjusting to new ways of learning. I witness leaders struggling to comfort their people, to inform them and offer reassurance that all will be well. I recognize that those who have always been in need are now joined by new faces in financial struggle. The ill are united with the newly diagnosed. The table of the hungry is expanding to include more stomachs.
What are You inviting me to discover at this moment? Help me find the good and grace when I’m struggling to understand what is unfolding around me. Help me locate You more clearly Lord, so that my eyes may find You in the fog of this crisis. I know that from struggle will come new life, because I believe the resurrection is always the new beginning after any heavy cross. And it is with this cross that I come to the altar where Your arms are open wide. I bow down low before You, Lord of Hosts. I come to your altar, Dear One, knowing I’m forgiven and loved. I bring my sorrows and concerns to exchange them for hope and faith. I sing alleluia, because You will rise, You are risen, and so too will we all be on the other side of all this. For what I need now is patience and trust, strength and courage, a peaceful heart and calm mind to carry me through this time in my life. Amen.
Our Father, who art in heaven…
St. Ignatius of Loyola. Pray for us.
Mary, Queen of Peace. Pray for us.
Live Jesus in our hearts. Forever.
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