Prayers for a Life of Service

Patient Trust in Ourselves and the Slow Work of God

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually – let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time, (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming in you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

- Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

Some Definite Service

God has created me to do some definite service. God has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, A bond of connection between persons.

God has not created me for naught. I shall do good—I shall do God’s work. I shall be an angel of peace, A preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it, if I do but keep the commandments.

Therefore I will trust God. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve God. In perplexity, my perplexity may serve God. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve God. God does nothing in vain. God knows what He is about. God may take away my friends. God may throw me among strangers. God may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me—still God knows what God is about. …

I ask not to see— I ask not to know— I ask simply to be used.

-John Henry Newman

A Franciscan Blessing May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Prayer for Generosity

Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, save that of knowing that I do your will.

-attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola

Teach Me to Listen

Teach me to listen, O God, to those nearest me, my family, my friends, my co-workers. Help me to be aware that no matter what words I hear, the message is, "Accept the person I am. Listen to me."

Teach me to listen, my caring God, to those far from me — the whisper of the hopeless, the plea of the forgotten, the cry of the anguished.

Teach me to listen, O God my Mother, to myself. Help me to be less afraid to trust the voice inside — in the deepest part of me.

Teach me to listen, Holy Spirit, for your voice — in busyness and in boredom, in certainty and in doubt, in noise and in silence.

Teach me, Lord, to listen. Amen.

- Adapted by John Veltri, S.J.

We Pray for Children

We pray for children Who put chocolate fingers everywhere, Who like to be tickled, Who stomp in puddles and ruin their new pants, Who sneak Popsicles before supper, Who erase holes in math workbooks, Who can never find their shoes. And we pray for those Who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, Who can't bound down the street in new sneakers, Who never "counted potatoes," Who are born in places we wouldn't be caught dead in, Who never go to the circus, Who live in an X-rated world. We pray for children Who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, Who sleep with the cat and bury goldfish, Who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money, Who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink, Who slurp their soup. And we pray for those Who never get dessert, Who have no safe blanket to drag behind them, Who can't find any bread to steal, Who don't have any rooms to clean up, Whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser, Whose monsters are real.

We pray for children Who spend all their allowance before Tuesday, Who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food, Who like ghost stories, Who shove dirty clothes under the bed, Who get visits from the tooth fairy, Who don't like to be kissed in front of the car pool, Who squirm in church and scream on the phone, Whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry. And we pray for those Whose nightmares come in the daytime, Who will eat anything, Who have never seen a dentist, Who are never spoiled by anyone, Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, Who live and move, but have no being. We pray for children Who want to be carried And for those who must, For those we never give up on And for those who never get a second chance, For those we smother. And for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it. We pray for children. Amen. - Ina Hughes