Prayer is such a personal thing. It is in fact just talking to God. Its not supposed to be a ritual but should come from the heart. Sometimes though someone else can say what you want to say much better. Even though God would really just like to hear your own words, sometimes it makes me feel better to get what I want to say out............so many many years ago, a friend of mine AnneMarie gave me a little book called "youth Before God" neither of us were any longer Catholic and so she had given her book away, I wanted to read it and so I kept it...............This is what inspired me.
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"I have nothing that I can give you - except myself. But I belong to you whole and entire, for you are the Creator and I am your creature. Thus I can only freely give back what was yours from eternity.
Take my body that it may serve you with all its frailty and with all its strength! It should not belong to sin, nor to earthly impulses alone. It is destined for eternal glory, and hence I offer it to you, O God! Keep it healthy as an instrument of your will.
Take my soul and all its faculties which you have given me, so that my thoughts and aspirations, my actions and my conduct may be consecrated to you and your Holy will, O God! Keep far from me all selfishness and all vain striving!
Take my heart with its desires an inclinations, with its love and its suffering, with anxiety and its joy! Make it pure and good as you would have it!
Take all the good that I have ever done or wanted to do, all that I have suffered in patience and borne innocently, all my work, my efforts, my cares; and take too what is imperfect and bad in me and form it according to your will!
Thus I give to you my whole self to use according to your will."
Amen
"I have nothing that I can give you - except myself. But I belong to you whole and entire, for you are the Creator and I am your creature. Thus I can only freely give back what was yours from eternity.
Take my body that it may serve you with all its frailty and with all its strength! It should not belong to sin, nor to earthly impulses alone. It is destined for eternal glory, and hence I offer it to you, O God! Keep it healthy as an instrument of your will.
Take my soul and all its faculties which you have given me, so that my thoughts and aspirations, my actions and my conduct may be consecrated to you and your Holy will, O God! Keep far from me all selfishness and all vain striving!
Take my heart with its desires an inclinations, with its love and its suffering, with anxiety and its joy! Make it pure and good as you would have it!
Take all the good that I have ever done or wanted to do, all that I have suffered in patience and borne innocently, all my work, my efforts, my cares; and take too what is imperfect and bad in me and form it according to your will!
Thus I give to you my whole self to use according to your will."
Amen
1 comment:
Thank you so much for sharing this. I just read something from the Prayer book from Melansia yesterday. If you look at anglicans online, there is a link to it. ( I am terrible at linking to something!)
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