All of us need God's grace, inspiration and strength
to fulfill our vocation. We welcome your prayers, and
invite you to join us in our work as you pray with us
and for us that everything we do - prayer, speech, and
action - may give glory to God.
Finally, St. Ignatius calls us to ask three questions
of ourselves, to focus our own prayer, to serve as a foundation
for our own actions:
“What have I done for Christ?
What am I doing for Christ?
What ought I do for Christ?”
~ Spiritual Exercises, #53
We’ve provided some ways for each of us to answer…
PRAYER OF ST. IGNATIUS
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my
understanding and my entire will. All I have and call
my own, You have given to me; to you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me
only your love and your grace. That is enough for me.
PRAYER FOR GENEROSITY
Lord Jesus, 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 seek reward,
except that of knowing that I do your will.
Amen.
~ St. Ignatius Loyola
PUTTING LOVE INTO PRACTICE
"Love consists in sharing what one has
and what one is
with those one loves.
Love ought to show itself in deeds more than in words."
"I ask the Father to give me an intimate knowledge
of the many gifts I have received,
that filled with gratitude for all,
I may in all things love and serve the Divine Majesty."
~From the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius
PRAYER FOR LIGHT AND HELP
Jesus, I feel within me
a great desire to please you
but, at the same time,
I feel totally incapable of doing this
without your special light and help,
which I can expect only from you.
Accomplish your will in me -
even in spite of me.
~St. Claude la Colombiere, S.J.
PRAYER FOR HUMILITY
Let me have too deep a sense of humor ever to be proud.
Let me know my absurdity before I act absurdly.
Let me realize that when I am humble I am most human,
most truthful, and most worthy of your consideration.
~Daniel A. Lord, S.J.
PATIENT TRUST
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient with everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient with 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 within 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.
~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.
PRAYER FOR DETACHMENT
I beg of you, my Lord,
to remove anything which separates
me from you, and you from me.
Remove anything that makes me unworthy
of your sight, your control, your reprehension;
of your speech and conversation,
of your benevolence and love.
Cast from me every evil
that stands in the way of my seeing you,
hearing, tasting, savoring, and touching you;
fearing and being mindful of you;
knowing, trusting, loving, and possessing you;
being conscious of your presence and, as far as may be,
enjoying you.
This is what I ask for myself
And earnestly desire from you. Amen.
~ Blessed Peter Faber, S.J.
DRAW ME INTO YOUR FRIENDSHIP
Lord Jesus, from the start you invite ordinary people
to come to where you live. When they come, you welcome
them and call them to labour and rejoice with you.
You are the most beautiful among all people, and I hardly
believe that you want me for your friend.
You are powerful, Lord. Draw me more and more into your
friendship and lead me along the way you took with friends.
~ Joseph Tetlow, S.J.
MY LORD AND MY GOD
Glorious Lord Christ:
The divine influence secretly diffused and active in the
depths of matter,
And the dazzling center where all the innumberable fibres
of the manifold meet;
Power as implacable as the world and as warm as life;
You whose forehead is of the whiteness of snow,
Whose eyes are of fire,
And whose feet are brighter than molten gold;
You whose hands imprison the stars;
You who are the first and the last,
The living and the dead and the risen again;
You who gather into your exuberant unity every mode of
existence;
It is you to whom my being cries out with a desire as
vast as the universe:
"In truth you are my Lord and my God."
~ Pierre Teihard de Chardin, S.J.
