Our Morning Offering – 10 February – Monday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, Year A
Prayer of Abandonment
By Blessed Charles of Jesus de Foucauld (1858-1916) Martyr
Br Charles’ Meditation on the last words of Jesus
Father,
I abandon myself into Your hands.
Do with me what You will.
Whatever You may do,
I thank You.
I am ready for all,
I accept all.
Let only Your will be done in me
and in all Your creatures.
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into Your hands
I commend my soul.
I offer it to You
with all the love of my heart.
For, I love you, Lord,
and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into Your hands
without reserve
and with boundless confidence.
For You are my Father.
Amen
What we know as the ‘Prayer of Abandonment’ is not a prayer which Brother Charles wrote for any eventual companions, or even one he prayed himself. Rather it came from one of his meditations on the Gospel in relation to the ‘cardinal virtues’. These texts were written by Brother Charles in 1896 towards the end of his time with the Trappists at Akbes (Syria). At that time he was still called by his monastic name Brother Marie-Alberic. In fact it is a prayer which he puts on the lips of Jesus and which cannot be said by anyone but Jesus. So it is only with Jesus that we can recite it.
If it has become such an important prayer for the members of his Spiritual Family, it is then, because they are aware that we can never say it alone. We pray it with Jesus. With Jesus’ help, let us grow in this spirit of abandonment uniting ourselves to Him in his trusting abandonment to the Father.
This prayer invites us to unite ourselves to Jesus. It seeks to trace a path for our life’s journey with God and with humanity. It is the path which Jesus travelled before us. We are encouraged to give ourselves in confident abandonment to the Father.
AnaStpaul 