How can we love life,

  when it holds so much bitterness

  and brings so much sorrow?

Indeed, how can we call the daily struggle true life,

  when it brings physical pain

  and spiritual sadness in equal measure?

Yet people cling to sinful activities as a source of comfort.

They grasp desperately at the passing pleasures

  and vanities of the world.

They do not readily abandon

  the desires of the body and the lusts of the eye.

Lord, strengthen me with heavenly courage,

  that I may fight against pleasures

  and vanities that harm the soul.

I do not expect or ask that trials and sorrows should cease.

I ask only that, in your strength,

  I resist the temptation to seek consolation in sin.

For I know that only by clinging to the gospel of righteousness,

  and by grasping at your eternal grace,

  can I ever experience true and lasting joy.

Thomas a Kempis, 1379-1471, German monk, author of The imitation of Christ

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May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light.