In failure
Jesus, I put my trust in the apparent failure of the Cross, for You are condemned to a criminal’s execution and it seems that Your mission has failed, You who alone could redeem humanity.
Who can accept that it is God-incarnate whose sweat and blood drips into the dust, from Your drained, dishonoured body! Yet Your human cry of abandonment by the Father is belied by the triumph of love and faith in Your final confident submission. You die, but You have not betrayed the Father’s trust.
Jesus, to my sadness, I fail in many ways and sin(ed) against others (another) by my failures.
Have I betrayed Your will or mistaken Your purpose? Will You restore me to grace now, Jesus? To do what? Will You show me? Will You fuse together the broken pieces—of my life, of my service—to make a new and better creation? Am I to step around the fragments and to pass another way?
I ask to walk with certainty along the path of holiness that You choose uniquely for me. If not, then please allow me the certainty of buoyant faith. I ask courage to continue through the enveloping fog, trusting each small moment to the illumination of faith and grace.
Jesus out of my failure and sorrow, please bring healing and goodness luminescent as priceless pearls grown around grains of suffering, for Your glory, and for others’ remedy and blessing.
*Warren, the above prayer, and the following one I wrote years ago when blaming myself for some failure, to be be what somone needed me to be. I can’t heal you heart but can at least say I understand how you’re hurting.
But Warren I’ll ask St Peter to pray you’ll get another chance after your breach of trust and love. Remember when the cock crowed and Peter remembered Jesus’ warning that he was going to abandon and betray Him, his friend, his Saviour, and Peter went out and cried bitterly, (and thinking he didn’t have a chance of making things right?} Jesus did forgive him but required him to show he loved Him before restoring to him the commission he’d promised him, to lead and care for the members of the Church. It’s hard to rebuild trust and prove your love. God grant that you may have the chance.
I ask God to help you through all this, and to give you another way if this doesn’t resolve. Please take care of yourself.*
Peter’s regret
Jesus, I know the regret of one who fails to serve the need in another person, perhaps even in one’s most-loved. I have experienced the remorse of those who wound another, however unintentionally.
Afterwards, there may seem no redress? The damage perhaps seems irreversible. The other’s heart or mind may seem unapproachable due to their nature or attitudes; or one simply lacks courage to risk the other’s anger or reproach?
When we bless others, we bless You, and when we wound them, we wound You… Thus, in Your weakest moment I left You desolate. In Your greatest need, I abandoned You—although in my confusion and loss I feel that You deserted me. Nothing can expunge your hurt then, in that time. I ask forgiveness, and You forgive. Yet the moment cannot return and you are gone. Not gone, but changed…beyond my touch and understanding?
The scars remain, burned in Your feet and hands, and in my heart. Yet You loved and chose, and gave Your life for me—although my weakness, fear, and sin betrayed and denied You. Now, in recompense made fit by Your pure sacrifice—again and again I shall serve and pray for each brother in his weakness and need, as You have done for me. Thus may I watch with my Lord, sharing a-hundredfold what once I denied You.
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