Today I want to share with you Saint Benedict’s “Prayer for the gifts to seek God and live in Him”
Father, in your goodness grant me the intellect to comprehend you, the perception to discern you, and the reason to appreciate you.
In your kindness, endow me with the diligence to look for you, the wisdom to discover you, and the spirit to aprehend you.
In your graciousness bestow on me a heart to contemplate you, ears to hear you, eyes to see you, and a tongue to speak of you.
In your mercy confer on me a conversation pleasing to you, the patience to wait for you, and the perseverance to long for you.
Grant me a perfect end – your holy presence. Amen
[Source: Finding God in All Things: a Marquette Prayer Book; Doug Leonhardt, S.J., Editor]
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Michelle 01.05.10 at 8:45 am
I’m off this afternoon to dive briefly into the silence — 24 hours at the Jesuit retreat house an hour and a bit from here– and to see my spiritual director. I will take this along…it seems just the right set of graces to ask for at the start of the year.
Eric 01.05.10 at 1:25 pm
This prayer is so clear, so complete, so much what we want to do. Then why do I (we?) not constantly do it. Why do I (we?) always need such reminders as St. Benedict’s?
jackie 01.06.10 at 11:00 am
What a beautiful prayer. Thanks.
Paul 01.07.10 at 3:32 pm
Michelle,
I have been trying to find time to response to you for the last 48 hours – I need 24 weeks at a Jesuit retreat house! I hope your brief respite there was restorative for you. Glad you liked the prayer.
Paul
Paul 01.07.10 at 3:35 pm
Eric,
You pose the $64,000 question – basically what St. Paul expressed all those years ago. We need reminders because we are imperfect humans. Thank heaven we have a perfect God!
Paul
Paul 01.07.10 at 3:35 pm
Jackie,
Glad you liked the prayer.
Paul
Michelle 01.07.10 at 10:15 pm
Paul,
It was all grace – and I wish I could send some of the stillness on, it sounds like you could use it. Why is it that we have a theology of redemptive suffering – but not one that lets us offer over the joys to those who be more in need??
Eric…yes, the (be)comings all involve goings. I keep musing about how Christ holds all these things in tension: birth/death; emptiness/fullness; light and darkness; dance and stillness….and perhaps that’s what it means to be fully human, to live in death and life, light and darkness?
Michelle
Rose Marie Clare 01.10.10 at 9:28 am
Thank you for the prayer of St Benedict
It summarizes what I have, in my small mindedness, failed too!