“The only thing that counts is not what human beings want to try to do, but the mercy of God.” [Romans 10:16] “It is by God’s grace that you have been saved, through faith. It is not your own doing, but God’s gift.” [Ephesians 2:8-9]
Gospel virtues
Our God, please fulfill my desire to be the person You want me to be. Claim me for Yourself so that Your love triumphs over my sinful habits and selfish responses.
As I keep faith with Your Creation by proper care of my human needs, with Your grace, I want to abstain from unchristian attitudes and activities. I desire grace to attribute to each spiritual, mental, and physical gift and achievement, its rightful service, without pride, envy, or creation of artificial needs in self or in others.
Grant me a chaste heart that loves generously without subterfuge, sin, possessiveness or selfishness. Grant me to respect the goodness of Your Creation in others’ lives and mine, in chastity appropriate to my state and circumstance. Thus, my soul prepares for Your vision and already breathes Heaven’s life.
Let negative thoughts and imaginings never dominate even my darkest moments, for gloom demonstrates absence of faith and curtails Your expression of love in me. In place of self-doubt, please give me peaceful faith in Your will, so that I honestly accept my humanity, and trust You to win goodness out of failures and situations that appear hopeless.
Bless me with such humility and obedience, that I no longer have cause to be fearful or defensive. Pride and self-will evaporate before compassion for others. Doubt disappears before growing faith. Irritation and hasty judgement dissipate within generous patience and understanding. Loss and hurt quickly flow into acceptance of Your will and compassionate serving of others. Self-indulgence fades before reparation and appropriate self-discipline, to make me a channel of Your love to others.
With Your grace, I want to meet others joyfully, with unselfish love. I want to apply the kindliest interpretation to others intentions, regardless of appearance. I want to forgive gladly the instant offense occurs. I implore You to bless those who offend me as bounteously as You bless those who benefit me. I ask grace to face another’s negative behavior with warmth and sympathetic kindness, and to fulfill another’s true needs cheerfully.
Behold me as I am, our God, with all that I would withhold from You and conceal from myself. Take me, God, with my faults along with the good already received of You. Have mercy and forgive me for all offense and failure. Let Your love flood over my lukewarmness. Use me as I am, and with each moment’s service convert me anew that I grow increasingly centered in You.
Our God, please hear my prayer and grant my desire to live in You even in my darkest times
Holy God, I ask Your guidance and wisdom to ensure that the burdens I carry are only those that You intend.
Yet regardless of whether my crosses are of my making or of others in my life, I offer my difficulty and suffering to You, in union with Christ’s suffering and in union with the Mass, in prayer to God for the salvation of souls.
Help me to strive my prayerful and practical best, inasfar as charity allows, to overcome these crosses of our making not Yours, these I create for myself by my unwise choices, or my sins, and those that I endure because of someone else’s behavior or choices that impact on me or my loved ones.
Holy God, I ask Your guidance and wisdom to ensure that the burdens I carry are only those that You intend.
Yet regardless of whether my crosses are of my making or of others in my life, I offer my difficulty and suffering to You, in union with Christ’s suffering and in union with the Mass, in prayer to God for the salvation of souls.
Help me to strive my prayerful and practical best, inasfar as charity allows, to overcome these crosses of our making not Yours, these I create for myself by my unwise choices, or my sins, and those that I endure because of someone else’s behavior or choices that impact on me or my loved ones.
Let self-made crosses no longer weaken me for genuine crosses that You permit! Lift from me those crosses that I construct out of fear, doubt or self-accusation.
Free me of those crosses that I subconsciously build in desire for appreciation and love.
Free me from crosses of mistaken sense of mission. Lead me to accomplish the mission that You intend for me. Please grant that it will be so.
Free me from the errors of trying to carry and solve others’ problems where it is only my task to offer understanding, prayer, and what help that I can actually offer. Otherwise, in sleeplessness and anguish, I carry a cross of impracticality and helplessness that leaves me worn out, aiding no one. Yet inspire me to undertake, powerfully and sensitively, any means of genuine assistance to others.
Help me to recognize my areas of personal weakness or scarring that burden and lead me to behave in ways unhelpful to others and myself, and that lay unnecessary crosses upon others’ shoulders. Fill me with the Holy Spirit’s prayer for them and with His love to flow through to them. Grant that my own crosses and mistakes enable me to give consolation, support, and even enlightenment to others, through Your grace.
Please give me wisdom, faith, and charity to overcome tendencies and habits that impede me from Your service. Thus I, unhindered, am impelled to You in everything, in cooperation with the graces You desire to flood through my being at every instant, however secretly. Then, I am free, and I rejoice! For by Your mercy alone, my life is centered in You our God, in self no longer, and my crosses become sources of grace and blessing to others.
