Our Morning Offering – 8 October
Just as It Is – a Prayer before Holy Communion
By Karl Rahner SJ
Come Lord enter my heart, You who are crucified,
who have died, who love, who are faithful,
truthful, patient and humble.
You who have taken upon Yourself, a slow and toilsome life
in a single corner of the world,
denied by those who are Your own,
too little loved by Your friends, betrayed by them,
subjected to the law, made by the plaything of politics
right from the very first,
a REFUGEE CHILD,
a CARPENTER’S SON,
a creature who found only barrenness and futility
as a result of His labours,
a man who loved and found no love in response,
You who were too exalted for those about You to understand,
who were brought to the point of feeling Yourself forsaken by God,
You who sacrificed all,
who commend Yourself into the hands of Your Father,
You who cry, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’
I will try to receive You as You are,
to make You the innermost law of my life,
to take You, as at once, the BURDEN and the STRENGTH of my life.
When I receive You, I accept my everyday just as it is.
I do not have any lofty feelings in my heart to recount to You,
I can lay my everyday before You, just as it is.
For I receive it from You Yourself,
The everyday and its inward light,
The everyday and its meaning,
The everyday and the power to endure it,
The sheer familiarity of it,
which becomes the hiddenness of Your Eternal Life.
Amen.
AnaStpaul 