A Good Friday reflection...add yours if you wish

[Trishie]

One year a moderator checked this wasn’t a relevation, so no, just something I wrote one Easter:

Jesus’ dying prayer

Father God, the sky is darkening with the culmination of my human destiny. I can no longer see Your Face! I humbly cry out to You from the depths of my being.

I AM Your beloved Son who has accomplished all that You desired of me. I AM only begotten Son of Your divine Essence. You created all things through me. Yet I hang defenceless upon searing metal stakes that bite into my flesh and bone each time that I force upwards to gasp the very air that You created through me.

My torment is scarcely bearable and my mind faints and jolts in horrific awareness with the weakness of my battered, abused body.
My body, ruined in its youthful strength, is exposed in degraded despoil.
Fevered with dehydration, my eyesight fades, my ears ring, my head throbs, and my tongue swells.

My muscles tremble uncontrollably, deeply bruised by the Roman scourgers who smashed metal and jagged bone into every part.
My face is swollen and raw; my eyelid split, heavy with pain and blood.
Sweat screams saltily in my torn nerves.

My joints are dislocated with violent distension.
My head can find no ease as the thorns gouge into my scalp with inescapable ache within my brain.

Yet nothing wounds deeper than the torture of love within my being.
My heart thunders and rips with the anguish of love.
Love is the shuddering gasp of my breath.

Love is the dry, harsh voice of thirst that cries out my forgiveness.
Love is the blood and life-fluids that drain from me. Love is my strength, my weakness, my hope, my faith and my generosity.
Love has been my life and now it is my death.
Let love flow from me upon all my brothers and sisters of humankind, to cleanse them from evil and discord.
Let love draw them to me, in communion on their cross of redemption.

My Father how I love them, these foolish blind ones who watch me die, and taunt with indifference, lukewarmness and unbelief throughout the centuries. They have not seen and heard although I have fought the powers of evil for them, with persistent prayer and penance, with teaching and example, with humility and powerful truth, and now with my death. I am, for them, a bleeding, suffering testimony of love.

I love them, Father. Forgive them. They cannot understand what they do and fail to do. For my love of them even in my extremity, forgive them.
Save them from the pitiless powers of darkness that rule the earth and oppress their lives.

They are my kin. I emptied myself of all glory and lived, witnessed and die—as man—for them. Pity them, for sake of my pity for them. I hold them up to You. My whole being bears the emptiness, darkness, and guilt of humankind’s deepest struggle. I would strive to enlighten them as I have these past years, but now is only time to suffer, to expiate, and to plead for them.

I have been patient with them, Father. With careful repetition and example, I taught them what they must take into their darkened minds for their soul’s redemption and for the nations to which I will send them in Your name. I frequently transcended the natural sequence of events to offer them miracles, so that they would recognise Your power in me, thus be encouraged to believe and to follow Your truth. Yet many only marvelled at spectacle, seeking more.

Father, my throat is bruised and constricted, for grief of the souls for whom I die. They cannot know how terribly wounded I am by their sin, infidelity, hypocrisy, mental blindness and hardness of heart. I am God and I am sinless man—so these things have heinousness and poignancy far beyond their dulled understanding. Nor can they imagine the depth of my love and yearning for each precious one’s everlasting happiness and fulfilment in You.

Father, look upon these Your chosen people from whom You drew my human form. They join with the gentiles to destroy me, for evil howled for my death, and they succumbed. Now it seems that my mission is lost to evil spirits who believe that they have triumphed over the only Person who could restore Creation and redeem humankind. Yet I shall rise again, because I am eternal Lord of Creation. I am undefeated, for my faith and love is Your reality and victory, You who are divine origin of all that exists. With my rising so shall humankind be raised to You.

Father, I offer You my whole Self, all that I am and have done, with all that You are, to plead for salvation and conversion of souls. I might have refused to become their redemption, yet I accept total immolation. Within it, Father, I hold each person to myself. In the wounds, the blood, in the tender swelling of broken tissue, in the shuddering of shattered muscle, in the sweat that burns across the clammy dust of earth upon me—within these is written the name of each human soul! Laden with humankind and with the sins and guilt of each, I offer myself to You, Father. As Your divine Son, I implore that You accept this prayer across the length and breadth of time.

Father, my Father, I am crushed! My humanity yearns for release and peace as grief and longing rasps at every fibre of soul, mind, heart and body. Speak in me, Father, out of Your own Being. Pray in me, and accept all suffering love at my torn, bleeding hands.
I am Your own, Your very Self—and these for whom I am living Sacrifice are my sisters and brothers, my kin, flesh of my flesh.

Accept all my prayer for them—all ever prayed and suffered by any person in union with me throughout time, all love, atonement and praise from each individual, held up to You in my ruined hands. Everything You have given to me and to each soul, I return to You, with all that I am, which is of Your nature yet also of my human frailty. So Father, grant the coming of Your Kingdom in the souls of Your people, my own, out of Your great love for me.

 

[Trishie]

Woman, behold your Child

Dear Mother, please intercede with the Father that I may grow in worthy fraternity with Jesus, for this kinship was His dying wish. So deep was this astonishing desire, that He bridged earth to heaven for me by the racked sufferings of His soul, mind, and body.

As His humanity strained to shattering point, He knew even then my sins and faults, which He understood and forgave even as He suffered. He knew that I do not comprehend the heinousness of offence against God or against others whom He lovingly created. He knew that I could not grasp the greatness of His act of incarnation and immolation, of His redemption of us, of me. For selfishness and worldliness dims the human soul’s limited perception regarding truth and love.

He, this suffering Being, subject to all human vicissitude and weakness, was aware—with pain that deepened His own—of the anguish that filled your being and drenched your face with unconscious tears of love and distress as He died for me. He knew the depth of your pain—poignant with memories of the best of sons, of the greatest of men—loving, wise and innocent, compassionate, beloved, and vibrantly human.

Disfigured beyond recognition, He died for me in apparent failure and disgrace, yet He still asked your maternal love for me, inviting me to loving fraternity. Your love, transcending all, accepted me wholly.

Lovely Lady, pure crystal of divine glory, I humbly slip my hand in yours with obedient trust. I feel unworthy, sinful, wondering and hopeful. Why has He, this wonderful, promising, intelligent young man allowed Himself to be degraded and destroyed, emptied in loving endurance that escalates throughout indescribable torment—piercing your soul?

Why has He done this for one such as me, who am so insignificant and sinful! Yet He draws me into His household and gives me His own Mother and His divine Father.

Gentle Mother, most blessed, you were chosen from amongst all women to cooperate in the incarnation of the only begotten of the most high God! You were entrusted with His nurture, His molding and protection from conception until the beginning of His public ministry. Now your suffering eyes are filled with love and pity that calm the shame, confusion and discouragement that might otherwise overwhelm me.

Mother, intercede that what He has done, and all that He promises, be fulfilled in me and in everyone for whom I pray. Please lead me to love your Son and our God as He has loved and to cherish others with such love. Lead me to give my paltry all to Him in humble, obedient, creative service.

Let this small gift be blessed in your maternal love for me and in the intercession of the entire heavenly household. Thus may I live for His glory, offering atonement, gratitude and petition for us poor sinners—so that His joy and delight in me, and yours, is as great as His suffering for me, and yours.

Mother as gift to Him for such undeserved love, please obtain of the Father, that whenever Jesus looks upon me He knows only gladness, finding in me for Himself…the pleasure of an innocent child…the love and nurture of Nazareth with you…the intimacy and repose of a perfect Bethany. Let Him know with thrilled awareness, that His blood and torment, and your tears, are not wasted to me nor to souls whom His salvation reaches through me.

 

[Trishie]

To Jesus: gratitude

Jesus, although divine, You became human to teach and redeem us. As infant, child and youth You played, studied, laboured, and grew in obedience, cheerfulness, gentleness and strength. Behind Your eyes lay deepening knowledge of Your true origin, growing knowledge of God and man, creation and life. Your heart bore love that is wondrous, merciful, and eternal.

As man, You taught, healed, and shared Your life with other men, slipping away to pray to the Father of all life. You worked and socialised, enduring and enjoying human experience in everything but sin. Yet as You faced death in terrible aloneness, the putrid deluge of all humankind’s sins oozed upon You, to the nauseated anguish of your sinless spirit. Yet, You held out Your arms to bear the weight of all the darkness of our human race.

In the Garden rebelling flesh sweated like drops of blood as Your humanity cried out to Love Itself for kind release. Yet You humbly, praying, grasped the will to save each person from eternal discord, sorrow and death—although many will only half-heartedly welcome Your gift and numerous others will reject it.

Despite Your sorrow at this bitter truth, Your love prevails in total sacrifice. Forever, therefore, through Your mercy, I owe You my eternity—of fulfilment, happiness and peace, of kinship with the almighty Father, in loving communion with all who accept Your redemptive Sacrifice, and through the divine Spirit, make Your life their own.

God Incarnate, what is Your will for me? I am redeemed by You, and come to You in all my burdened brokenness. I offer You my being, gifts, virtue; and even, in deep humility, I give You my faults and sins, pleading for Your pity, healing, and communion.

Jesus, as man, You lived and died for me, as God can make me whole, and make me wholly Yours. This enduring grace I also seek for each soul in my care, for am I not, as You have proved to be—for his sake and for Your glory—my brother’s keeper!

 

[Trishie]

Mystery of Redemption

Holy God, we do not grasp how awesome and incomprehensible are Your truths. We mistake our conceptions regarding You as the essence of the reality that they fail to encapsulate. Human Reason cannot make sense of God becoming subject to obedience, humility, selflessness and suffering, in love for His creatures! Thus, while we seek You, we are required to trust as little children.

We can only suspect a flicker of the magnitude of this God through His Creation of a stunningly vast universe containing massive expanding galaxies in an immensity of space. Yet, God of such greatness, You also create the fragile intricacy of tiny insects and the worlds of microscopic lifeforms in their intrinsic perfection!

Holy God, open our minds and hearts to the supreme greatness and the sublime mystery of Your works!

From our tiny planet, so important to us but insignificant amongst the countless orbits of the universe, we dare to say ‘our God’ and ‘our Father’ in contemplating the Creator of all these marvels and capable of unknown wonders inconceivable to us. Perhaps the greatest wonder, however, is the love and mercy You show to Your human creatures on this planet, Earth!

All things are held in being in continuous creation within You. Yet, to our knowledge, only human creatures dare to sin. You require of us a life of charity and justice, of prayer and self-denial, of trust and faithfulness during our earthly existence—in promise of everlasting union with the everlasting I AM WHO AM, which is Yourself. Slow to trust, we are reluctant to accept sacred Your dream and plan for us as individuals and as community. The choice to reject or accept is ours.

The Angels, whom You created before us, also faced a choice to love and honour God or to serve themselves. Two-thirds obeyed God and now dwell with You in glory and delight. To the rebellious remainder, punishment was swift. Doubtless, You gave these glorious creatures generous opportunity to fulfil their radiant destiny!

Perhaps other life forms will, or have, faced such choices, for ‘there are many rooms’ in Your heavenly kingdom. If hidden amongst the planets in the myriad galaxies of Your immense Creation, You should choose to form creatures other than the Angels and humanity, I pray that they will serve You better, and that where they fail, Your mercy will be deep and embracing.

Yet many people habitually accept Your revelations and promises with spasmodic attention or with vague complacency. Before so great a God, the purest human zeal and the highest knowledge and goodness are as nothing. How intense should be our gratitude before the wonder of our relation to You. How great our repentance should be before the arrogance of neglecting our Creator’s laws and astonishing mercy! Holy God please lead us through awareness, repentance and rebirth into continuing spontaneity of response to Your creative love!

So that we in our unworthiness may be saved and made whole, through Your mercy the seeming-impossible occurs. The eternal Son of God enters the limitations of created time and matter. He assumes fully our humanity, while also retaining His infinite divinity. With His humble, obedient life as human being, He bridges the immeasurably vast difference between God and creature for all humankind!

In our disobedience and ingratitude, our God, You have not destroyed us, but have become for us—a defenceless infant…a humble labourer…a man murdered by Your chosen people. You have become for all time, food to be assimilated into the functions of the human body and soul of mere creatures, devout and lukewarm alike.

You have become bread to be tabernacled in centuries of neglect before multitudes of unbelievers and of apathetic followers…cherished only by Your true friends. Yet even these have not lived without offence against You, excepting one pure woman, chosen as Mother—for the Son did not enter our nature in resplendence as a magnificent adult. Rather, the Father humbly, through an Angel, sought permission of the sinless young virgin to accept Him as a helpless embryo!

What is this humility, this faith, this patience, this obedience, this compassion that You show us, infinite God! We are proud, stubborn, untrusting and wayward, yet Your mercy remains open to endless human insult, for within time it is always subject to our personal acceptance or rejection. Repeatedly, You reiterate Your love and mercy in our hearts and through other persons. You reiterate them through Scripture and ministry of the Church, source of grace, sacrament and wisdom established by the Son to fulfil His promise to remain always with us.

Our God, who are You who so loves His ungrateful, ignorant, unworthy creatures! Behold the humility of eternal, infinite God, to love and desire us who are enmeshed in egoism that alienates us from each other and You! We begin to suspect the smallness of our vision, the confusion of our understanding, and the flawed nature of our enthroned Reason, with its inability to cope with these unfathomable, paradoxical truths.

 

[Trishie]

Continued:

Should we, in contemplating such things, wonder at human suffering! We begin to appreciate Jesus’ warning that unless one becomes as a little child one cannot enter God. We also begin to understand some of the causes of difficulties within our human condition, of the conflicts and miseries of our world, and of the corruption of our society in social and personal injustice and discord.

We may regret or resent these global difficulties and evils, and our personal sufferings. We seek to evade them and to avoid discipline of our sensuality and materialism that bind us from the Spirit of God in our lives. We cling to our bonds although we are created for the freedom of eternal union with You our almighty Creator, despite the redeeming anguish, love, humility and submission of God incarnate in His forging of our bridge to You.

Yet should we not welcome that where You permit, we are tested in faith, labour and suffering to loosen excessive attachment to our limited mortal existence! Our need of You is often diverted into search for material satisfaction that increases our frustration and confirms our failure to love others and You truly.

When we choose against God, we curtail the working of Your grace in our lives. This choice draws disaster upon us in the form of injustice, intolerance, loneliness, immorality and war. If we then resent and blame You, we mock ourselves, because You owe us nothing, but offer all. Should it surprise us that sin brings retribution? Should we wonder why we endure natural disasters, when we betray the Creator of all things?

We are often aggrieved at the suffering of innocents, but answer lies in the racked body of the sinless Saviour. Jesus hangs dying in grief and pain to expiate the offences of all human persons for our eternal salvation. Through Jesus, lead us into childlike faith and cheerful daily acceptance of our vocations with their satisfactions and their difficulties.

Give us the spirit of the child whom You wish each to be as we say, “Here I am. Your will be done in and through me. Through Your Son, lead me beyond myself, beyond all created things, into Your infinite, loving self, in union with the communion of saints.”

Our God, as the consecrated bread is the infinite Son of God, yet is brittle, mutable wafer, so let me be one in You despite my frailty and unworthiness. Great God, Creator of all things, thank You for Your gifts of creation and existence, and for the mercy that restores Creation and eternal blessedness to Your difficult human creatures.

Have mercy, our God, for our limited understanding, our misconceptions, our pride and our self-doubts, along with the stark realities and sufferings of this world, frequently lead many of us to falter in faith or to abandon it completely.
We believe Lord God. Please increase our faith.

“I shall cleanse you of all your defilement and all your idols. I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you…I shall put my spirit in you…You shall be my people and I shall be your God.” [Ezekiel 36:25-26, 29] “I will smelt away your dross in the furnace; I will remove all your base metal from you.” [Isaiah 1:25]
“The souls that are most dear to my Father” Jesus said to Saint Teresa of Jesus (Avila) “are those He tries the most, and the greatness of their trials is the measure of His love.”*

 

[Trishie]

The Cross of my life

Jesus, my cross is sorrow for others in their anxieties and afflictions, and in the limited help and comfort that I can give them. The nails are my mistakes and inadequacies that distress or fail others. No sooner do I inhale the breath of Your grace for others than it fouls with my failings. I must again drag up on my nailed wrists and push up upon my transfixed feet, in order to exhale the vapour of lukewarmness and sinfulness—so once again to draw in Your grace.

The faults that characterise much of my life, scourge my soul until it is bruised and faint, sapping my hope and faith. Acts devoid of generous love lash into the wholeness of Your image in me. I am sick with hunger, for I accept too little food of loving, sharing and serving in each moment of Your offering. My hunger is the more intense because others may suffer deprivation for my omissions and sinfulness.

A crown of idle thoughts, and words, of prayer neglected, of reparation postponed, of temptation undefeated, binds up my head with wounds. My inconstancy and unlove are my nakedness. The taunts are my lack of witness of Christ. My every nerve is pain, and it pours from my body in stinging sweat of regret. My lack of love makes my soul a living wound—at times benumbed, or raw with returning consciousness. Repeatedly I seek to escape this crucifixion, but I remain nailed to my weakness, fighting for hope and trust.

“Why do You abandon me, Lord?” Yet not You! Why do You allow me repeatedly to abandon You, in this lingering death of my faults and negligence! Yet, Jesus, because of Your mercy I affirm faith in Your love that brings marvellous blessing out of wretchedness, failure and sin. I cannot transform or resurrect myself, Jesus, but I offer You all that constitutes me, humbly asking that You will do what I cannot.

I give my self, crucified in its egoism and materialism, its pride and disobedience, its unbelief, unlove and ingratitude. Offer it to the Father with Your own crucifixion, so that in You I die to all these imperfections and rise again with You forever in the love and life of the Holy Spirit. Your mercy thereby draws many souls after me. Thank You, Jesus for this resurrection that You share with us. May 1982

 

[Trishie]

Christ: redeemer and guide

“His state was divine, yet He did not cling to His equality with God, but emptied Himself to assume the condition of a slave (one who lives to serve others without guarantee of reward) and became as men are, He was humbler yet, even to accepting death on a cross.” [Philippians: 2:6]

Eternal Father, Your Son Jesus relinquished all, even His human life, to redeem each person from ingratitude and disobedience. Jesus reiterated His choice by refusing to rely upon supernatural power to achieve personal comfort or to fulfil His mission. He chose to remain actively human, reliant upon faith and divine mercy. He struggled and suffered, yet remained loving and compliant. Let His example of authentic life inspire me to live by love and faith.

I cannot imagine the magnitude of self-deprivation of the divine Son in fully accepting the human condition. Like everyone else, I embody something of the poverty that Jesus endured in His humanity, for only God, through Your Spirit of love, can make me good or fruitful. Only You can bless any other person through me or my prayers or efforts.

I invoke the Spirit’s action in my attempts to pray and to serve others. If my efforts fail, either You act and bless beyond my perception, or I fail dismally in my love, prayer and service! Yes, of course, I do, but I affirm faith in Your mercy. I ask faith to accept that through Your mercy that I may not be as spiritually mediocre or bankrupt as I feel. I may be exceedingly worse, but I trust that You will supply even through such a poor instrument.

It is reassuring to reflect that at his death, Jesus, God incarnate, past miracles aside, ultimately was confronted with ‘failure’. The crowds who had flocked to follow Him and all who heralded Him with palm branches now deserted or condemned Him. He, who lived so charitably and well, was maligned, ridiculed, tortured and disgraced. His people had rejected and condemned Him. With few exceptions, His closest friends and disciples abandoned Jesus, as indeed You, His divine Father, appeared to have done.

How can we expect a better result for our efforts than the loving, sinless Son of God? This may not explain failure but it is reminder that as “the servant is not greater than the Master” why should I expect otherwise? Unlike Jesus I am often genuinely unworthy of better outcome—but I trust to Your mercy for the fulfilment of whatever hope You have in my life and in the lives of my dear ones and of everyone within our influence.

With Jesus, with all His disciples, I rely on Your promise that all will be made holy according to Your purpose. God please fulfil all that You intend for Your glory and for the salvation of others and me. 2000

 

[Trishie]

For love of Jesus

Jesus, the truths and mysteries of Your kingdom are vastly beyond me, as I lean against Your breast where beats Your loving, pierced heart. Although You are eternally throned with Father and Holy Spirit, I pray for You as if You still walked the earth. I am encouraged to do so, because You prayed long and often to the Father as You lived amongst human creatures as brother.

Jesus, like Your dear friend Peter, I can betray You and Your love, yet amid my flaws and selfishness, the yearning tenderness of my heart pleads before the Father for You. Time is no barrier for God; therefore, my prayer enters the moment of Your need.
… I pray for divine and human support in Your burdened, bruised weakness on Calvary’s path, and for alleviation of Your anguish in those last terrible hours.

Contemplating Your lonely suffering for people still proud, stubborn insensitive, and worldly, I pray for our reciprocal generosity of faith, endurance, and love. I pray for our gratitude towards Your gifts of reconciliation and healing. I ask for our appreciation and communion in the highest gift of Creation, that only acceptable offering, of You in Eucharistic sacrifice.

I desire to deliver myself unreservedly in offering with You, as I listen to Your heart within my heart—knowing that though King of kings, you lived and died for me, to make me child of your own Father. Awed at such unfathomable love I pray on concerning Your earthly life…

For Your secret depths of pain, I gaze into Your eyes. Although we both know that I cannot comprehend the grief of redeeming-God-made-man, there is healing in the sincere caring of one who loves You.

For Your heartache and tears, I gently touch Your cheek, which at the end is horribly disfigured and bruised—and contritely offer my own repentance and sorrow.

For each convulsion of agony, I tenderly hold You near—and reach for my own cross.

For times You need to be restored, against my heart I cradle Your head, which had no pillow of rest upon, earth—only the thorned piercing of humankind’s unholy thoughts (and my own). Therefore, I pray to serve Your will wholeheartedly and faithfully.

For Your times of discouragement, rejection and loneliness, I put my arms around You—and invite You to claim my being to remold in holy unity with Yourself.

For the lashes of our sinful acts, I ask of the Father, healing oil in my prayer, penance, obedience and charity. Above all, I offer the ointment of my frail love for You, to salve Your wounds.

For times that Your message is ignored or misunderstood, I kiss You softly, and listen as carefully as my sinfulness and limited comprehension allows.

For the harsh and false, blasphemous and reviling thoughts, words and acts directed against You in life and for all time—I speak love and praise, and to others proclaim Your gospel by word and deed.

Compassionately, I behold Your human limitations, along with Your natural human sorrow before the restrictions imposed upon Your action in others’ souls by their free will. I behold the painful helplessness of Your Mother during Your public life and in the seeming disgrace and failure of Your death. For these, I lovingly pray that the kingdom of God will reign with love and power and glory in each person.

Knowing that Your suffering continues in all who take up their cross to follow You, I pray imploringly for each as I do for You. I pray for each suffering soul, for every Christian, for every believer of all faiths, for my loved ones and those whom I ought to love. I pray for Your priests, through whom Your Eucharistic offering is renewed in all ages. I pray for overflowing grace for Your continuing apostolate in apostles consecrated into priesthood with You.

In Your plan of salvation, You permit our sharing in the suffering that You bore for our sins…in order to awaken repentance…in reparation for anyone’s offences…or to sanctify through affliction. Yet I entreat that sufferers may not endure an instant longer or of a degree more intense than needed. Where mine or another’s prayer and love can attain what is required, by calling upon the vast treasury of saints and martyrs, the intercession of angels, and Your own infinite merit—then Jesus I implore You to allow this.

You promise that no one will be burdened beyond endurance. Yet what extreme of sorrow can be endured beneath this limit! Pain is always relevant and a tormented moment may seem an eternity, as You the supreme sufferer know so well! Therefore, except where Your purpose is endangered, spare us the cup of suffering and allow mine and others’ salvation be wrought through divine grace, in prayer, in humble trust and generous love rather through anguish.

Yet, not as we desire, but Your divine will be accomplished! If this is to be fulfilled through suffering—for how can we in our sinfulness hope to escape what You in Your innocence do not—then please grant us perseverance in our privileged sharing in Your sacrifice. United with You let us trustingly give all, so that sanctified in You, our lives serve the highest purpose of divine will. Lead us, with peace and spiritual joy, to penetrate the mysteries of this redemptive suffering shared in You, our God and brother!

 

[Trishie]

continued:

Jesus, as I pray thus, You look down into me—a sinful but hopeful scrap of humanity—with deep enigmatic love. Through the wall of my faults and negligence, You surely see the tiny spurting of love and compassion—for Your dear Self, for all those who struggle to live in You, and for all souls.

You see my repentance for my faults, the fragility of my love, and the frailty of my faith. You see my lack of constancy, of self-denial and prayerfulness—as I cling to Your breast with childlike hope and tenderness, pleading for love to equal Yours. If You comply, then my suffering may be proportionately deep as Yours. I shall not refuse, for Your bleeding heart beats to my awareness with blazing love for a world starved of Your life. In this heart and in Your arms, I seek all mercy, grace and strength!

Jesus, please flood Your own desire and love in me, and in all who seek Your way. With this cleansing deluge, please sweep away all effective impediments to the flow of Your salvation, bringing fruitfulness to many souls in growing irrigation, reclaiming the earth from the aridity of egotism, discord, and materialism.

Thus by Your grace in those who unite wholly to Your love in childlike love and witness, humankind is progressively returned to the sanity of our Creator’s design. Then humankind is no longer the self-centred race that it has been since Adam begot the original sin of pride and ingratitude—source of human pain and sorrow!

Dearest Jesus, Your prayer for us embraces Your whole being—spiritual, mental, and emotional—and channels through Your divinity. In Yours, our only voice to the Father throughout the centuries, cries the combined voice of all souls suffering in partial or complete disunion from the source and destiny, our God.

I ask union with Your prayer, which the Father grants in your name as He has promised. I trust to this, even though during my lifetime, the effects of Your prayer in me and in others may remain hidden—for the ways of God are not yet our ways… Jesus thank You for all that You have obtained for us at immeasurable cost to Yourself.

 

[Trishie]

Reparation through suffering

Father God of all peoples, please receive from all ages the sufferings of the innocent and the contrite, in reparation for the sins of the guilty!
Behold—*
the bereaved and the deserted…the hopeless and the despairing…the displaced and the poverty-stricken…the injured and the physically sick…the mentally and the emotionally ill…the retarded and the incapacitated…the frustrated and the afraid…the isolated and the elderly…the addicted, the imprisoned and the persecuted. Behold those young, to old, sinned against by injustice, misunderstanding, abuse and neglect…those whose hearts this world has broken…those crushed by remorse and racked by misery and sin…those with lives empty of purpose—
all persons with suffering within or with suffering imposed from an external source!*

Please receive their pain, grief and loneliness, their weariness, anxiety or desperation—in conjunction with the spiritual, mental and physical anguish of Your Son, as reparation for all the sins of humankind.

Father, through Your love of Jesus, please bless and welcome the sufferers! Hold them gently in Your arms and comfort them. Heal them, claim them, and fill them with Your life and peace.

Please accept all the undirected suffering of those who do not know God. Receive this suffering in atonement for all offences against You and any person. Allow Your mercy, compassion and power to release humankind from bondage to sin, suffering, and death.
You grant me compassion to desire to bring their pain to Your redeeming grace.

Therefore, gather their tears, those fallen and those unshed. Draw them up into yourself through the sun of divine love, to purify them as a rain of mercy to fall upon the parched souls of humankind. Thus, we may grow in Your love and the earth may be filled with life and fruitfulness pleasing to Your divine purposes.

Our God, out of all the cries and moans and tears, hidden or revealed, from earth’s beginning, please hear our prayer. Joined as one with Your Son we all cry out—“My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?”

Of those who torment and those who pass by uncaring and unseeing, we say—“Father, forgive them. They know not what they do and fail to do!” With Him we then cry trustingly—“Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit!”

Father, please listen to our prayer, in union with Your beloved Son whom You raised from death to everlasting glory and joy. In Him who bore all humankind’s sins, please receive all suffering, struggle and sorrow that sin has brought upon our race.

Anything separated from God is meaningless, but in God, all becomes renewed and holy. Please accept from Jesus’ hands the suffering of every person throughout time, held within His own redemptive suffering. This that the whole price of atonement is met, and harmony is restored to Creation in the eternal triumph of Your Kingdom.
Thank You, God of our redemption!

 

[Trishie]

Divine prayer in us

Father God, let the blood of Jesus, through which we become priceless, plead before You for every person throughout time. Let it intercede for our holiness and transform us into true images of Jesus.

Through His blood that cries out unceasingly to Your mercy, please recognise Your face in each person, and reclaim what is Yours but is currently hidden in sin, in apathy, in worldly concerns, or in compromised discipleship. Have compassion on Jesus’ words—that when He is raised up He will draw everyone to Himself.

Let the heart of Jesus—anguished for those who reject their salvation and for those who fail to honour their vocation—grieve not, but behold that time when each person is innocent and pleasing…The most hardened persons have such moments hidden in their existence, even in infancy or childhood. Behold Your image in us, seeing past our sins into these pure moments in each person’s life and let them plead before God from within each drop of Your blood.

Father, remember that Jesus is most betrayed in the negligence and compromise of His closest friends. Console Him by their increasing holiness, intercession, and witness of gospel teaching.

The prayer that I offer You, our God, is not my own, but Your sacred prayer in each human soul, the prayer of the blood of Your only begotten Son.

Suffering with Jesus

Our God, in the extremity of suffering, Jesus remained heroically generous, granting salvation to a repentant sinner and praying forgiveness for His persecutors.
He showed compassion to His anguished Mother by filling her empty arms with many children and giving her a son in His loved friend John. Through him, He thus named as brothers and sisters, all persons who follow His cross.

In our own sufferings, please inspire us to deepening charity and faith, in following His example.

Father, please grant us to welcome the cross of love that we bear with Your Son. Through Him, let us serve in loving joy when we suffer through anyone’s affliction. We offer all heartache or inconvenience for others’ sake, as prayer for their true good.

Accept our sufferings united with His, in reparation for sin, and in prayer for peace, justice and love amongst Your people. Grant us to be forgiving, merciful, loving and fraternal like Jesus, witnesses to faith and faithfulness in all circumstances, joyful or painful.

“A Christian should always remember that the value of his good works is not based on their number and excellence but on the love of God which prompts him to do these things.” (Saint John of the Cross)

• “Do not say, “God will consider the number of my gifts.”* [Ecclesiasticus 7:9]
• “Offer to God the sacrifice of never gathering any fruit. If He wills that throughout your whole life, you should feel a repugnance to suffering and humiliation—if He permits that all the flowers of your desires and of your good will should fall to the ground without any fruit appearing, do not worry. At the hour of death He will cause fruits to ripen on the tree of your soul.”* (Saint Therese quoted by Celine in ‘Counsels and Reminiscences’)

Do not let your heart be troubled by the sad spectacle of human injustice, even this has its value in the face of all else. And it is from this that one day you will see the justice of God rising with unfailing triumph.” (Saint Pio)
*
“The longer the trial to which God subjects you, the greater the goodness in comforting you during the time of trial and in the exultation after the combat.” “The most beautiful credo is that which comes from your lips in darkness, in sacrifice, in pain, in the supreme effort of an unbending will for good. It is this which, like a stroke of lightening, penetrates the darkness of the soul; it is this which in the flash of the tempest lifts you and leads you to God.”* (Saint Pio)
*
“By kindliness and loyalty, atonement is made for sin.”* [Proverbs 16:6]

*“If the greatest sinner should repent at the moment of his death, and draw his last breath in an act of love, neither the many graces he had abused, nor the multiplied crimes he had committed, would stand in his way. Our Lord would see nothing, count nothing, but the sinner’s last prayer, and without delay He would receive him into the arms of His mercy.” *(Saint Therese of Lisieux)

 

[Trishie]

God’s mercy brings freedom
Father, Jesus did not judge or reject the sinful Magdalene. He did not reproach her or His foremost friend Peter who betrayed Him. He gave them hope and new life. He commissioned the Magdalene—a woman in a society where even sinless women were of little value—as messenger of His resurrection to His chosen male apostles.

Jesus left no trace of reproach or curtailment of vocation in Peter’s life despite Peter’s triple betrayal and desertion of Jesus in His ultimate ordeal. Jesus had warned, “If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my Father in heaven” but Jesus only required Peter’s triple declaration of love to reinstate him.

Merciful God, if I fear that other persons may not forgive me, remind me that I am easily mistaken about others’ intentions. If anyone rejects me, let his or her judgement call me to humility. If others cannot pardon me, or their forgiveness is conditional, please do not let judgement come to them on my account, only wonderfully bless them.

Like all men and women who follow Jesus, I seek reconciliation and healing. Though I labour to rectify my mistakes and to atone for faults only clearly seen too late, my love and earnest prayer may bear no fruit. Yet how can I blame those who may not forgive! I cringe with shock at my temerity in wounding others. I wish I could wipe away every trace of hurt in them. Please do that on my behalf, dear God.

Father, please heal me of the wound of having caused hurt to any brother or sister, so dear to You. Let Your love create life-giving relationship between us. Where my defects cause others to become less loving or trusting, I may thereby restrict blessings God wished for them. Bless them extravagantly with infinitely lovely gifts and benefits. Please guide me lest out of loving intention I err again towards anyone.

If an aggrieved impulse taints my contrition, let me remember that You forgive all repentant sin, including mine. In my failure and sorrow, there is peace in knowing that all things depend upon Your love. Only one thing is required; that I accept Your love and mercy and that I extend it to others, whether or not they can respond. It is my vocation to love and pray for them regardless. Bless them in my prayers and Masses.

My efforts are just ordinary choices…daily footsteps over grey pavements, hard wooden seats, prayers snatched out of rambling thoughts, and impulsive hopes for others’ well-being in kindly meant acts that are as likely to be misguided as to be wise. God grant me discernment in my kindness to others, and healing where my impetuous goodwill has caused injury.

I only clearly see the passage of moments and days of my life in a physical world. Therefore God, I give You what I have—my daily efforts, and myself. Help me humbly to receive the freedom of living simply in trust in Your love until death. You may perhaps never show Your face; but please constantly grant me Your strong, loving Spirit so that I rest faithfully in Your tenderness and Your divine will, whatever happens, however difficult—or however wonderful.

Thank You for Your amazing love and forgiveness. Thank You for loving and pardoning me even when others appear unable to forgive as Jesus did. 2004

 

[Trishie]

Prodigal

Father, like the prodigal son, I squander gifts of my eternal inheritance.
Like him, I spiral into deprivation and alienation.

Yet, Father, the ‘prodigal son’ possessed something that I do not.
He bore memories of his father, of his loving home and of his former comfort.
I have no memories of You, only hearsay and promises, books and teachings.
I have no memories of my heavenly home,
only those of my life upon earth with its pleasures and its sorrows.

Would I, knowing God, have departed from You and our home?
Yet I do not know You and I often depart from You.
In my humiliation, I return to You, still incapable of truly appreciating Your love.

Hungry and desperate, I stumble towards You with little merit in my return.
I carefully formulate my entreaty upon Your mercy, saying, “Father, I am not worthy to be Your child.

Let me be as a hired servant that I may eat, drink, and have shelter,
and that my wounds may heal, and I may live.”

I cannot comprehend the depth of Your parental love for me.
Scripture assures me of Your unconditional love,
yet in my repentance as in my disobedience, I am ignoble still.

Therefore, Father, because of Your nature and in spite of mine, I call upon Your merciful love.
Let me become, and remain, worthy of such a Father 2001

Thy will be done
Our God, self is a subtle thief—the avenue by which sin drains time, resources, and sadly, Your children, away from You in compromise and self-seeking.

Awareness of my faults and failures makes me doubt that You can use me for Your loving purposes. Through such doubt, I can frustrate Your desires in me and cheat others of unique graces You intend for them through me. My humanity with its gifts, can steal me from You.

Yet, our God, You chose to use for Your Son ‘frail human flesh’ to obtain our fallen nature’s redemption. You watched Him laugh and weep, eat and walk with sinners and with ordinary people as He taught Your love and will. You saw Him touch and heal disease and sin…resist temptation that His humanness gave Him…and achieve submission and faith even in abandonment and death.

Through Jesus, You therefore give me confidence to ask You to hold me always in Your presence and in Your love and service through all the vicissitudes of my life. You give me courage to know that when I ask You to use me to the fullest extent of Your will, it is not pride, but humility—for I am nothing in myself, but in You, all is possible.

Leave me not simply in this knowledge, our God, but for sake of others, whom You created me to serve, please continually love through me. Let me discern the difference between my interpretation and Your will itself, so that Your perspectives become mine and I welcome your will for others and for me with humility and peace.

Hold me always in Your arms and keep my eyes on Your Face. Bathe me continually in Jesus’ blood and fill me with His life. Thereby, You may be glorified and shown to Your people that they may be drawn closer for the fact that You have given me existence and faith. Thank You, God, because by Your Love You will accomplish these.

 

[Trishie]

didn’t mean to add so much stuff, just the first one, but just got trawling through some of my writings from my journal ‘a handful of wildflowers’. It doesn’t matter really. I probably bored anyone with my thoughts quite early on. Just so easy to cut and past from my records that one gets carried away. I’m an idiot sometimes, as my husband could rightly tell you, and people here sometimes see for themselves…
Trawling through and reading them I suppose was just really my bit of mediation for the evening that I foisted onto anyone who happened to get anywhere through them! Mercifully I’m stopping now tonights trend now.

I never even intended to write all the stuff in ‘a handful of wildflowers’. I only wanted to get a few things down on paper, but they kept coming for a long time.
The impetus to faith that began this journal came during Ash Wednesday Mass in 1980. A young Capuchin priest introduced his homily with the words,
“Lent is a time for new beginnings. Easter is the time for fulfilment of God’s promises. And God fulfils all of His promises.” I felt a surge of excitement. “You fulfil all of Your promises, Lord God!”

For a long time therefore I called my journal ‘new beginnings’ but changed the name to the diminished one in memory of the little weedflowers my young children used to bring me, dandelions and clover flowers, gifts of love from them to their mother, but to others, more or less worthless. I figure my prayers are about that to God, childish gifts of love but to most other people, not worth much. The real title is ‘weedflowers’ but poetic license took over. Just once, though, my 18 year old son in the seminary wrote out of the blue years ago. “In ‘New Beginnings’ I believe God has given power to desire, and creative wisdom; and voiced it as clearly as that cry of the poor which pierces the clouds." It would be nice if true. I hope so, but have no certainty. Anyway

Lord God please help us to allow You to fulfil all Your personal promises to each of us, for Your glory, for others’ blessing, and for our own. Lord have mercy on us.

 

[Memaw]

didn’t mean to add so much stuff, just the first one, but just got trawling through some of my writings from my journal ‘a handful of wildflowers’. It doesn’t matter really. I probably bored anyone with my thoughts quite early on. Just so easy to cut and past from my records that one gets carried away. I’m an idiot sometimes, as my husband could rightly tell you, and people here sometimes see for themselves…
Trawling through and reading them I suppose was just really my bit of mediation for the evening that I foisted onto anyone who happened to get anywhere through them! Mercifully I’m stopping now tonights trend now.

I never even intended to write all the stuff in ‘a handful of wildflowers’. I only wanted to get a few things down on paper, but they kept coming for a long time.
The impetus to faith that began this journal came during Ash Wednesday Mass in 1980. A young Capuchin priest introduced his homily with the words,
“Lent is a time for new beginnings. Easter is the time for fulfilment of God’s promises. And God fulfils all of His promises.” I felt a surge of excitement. “You fulfil all of Your promises, Lord God!”

For a long time therefore I called my journal ‘new beginnings’ but changed the name to the diminished one in memory of the little weedflowers my young children used to bring me, dandelions and clover flowers, gifts of love from them to their mother, but to others, more or less worthless. I figure my prayers are about that to God, childish gifts of love but to most other people, not worth much. The real title is ‘weedflowers’ but poetic license took over. Just once, though, my 18 year old son in the seminary wrote out of the blue years ago. “In ‘New Beginnings’ I believe God has given power to desire, and creative wisdom; and voiced it as clearly as that cry of the poor which pierces the clouds." It would be nice if true. I hope so, but have no certainty. Anyway

Lord God please help us to allow You to fulfil all Your personal promises to each of us, for Your glory, for others’ blessing, and for our own. Lord have mercy on us.

Very interesting. God Bless, Memaw