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 friends,
betrayed by them, subjected to the law,
made 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 labors,
a man who loved and who found no love in response,
you who were too exalted for those about you to understand,
you who were left desolate,
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 Father, why have you forsaken me?”
I will receive you as you are,
make you the innermost law of my life,
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 need to 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 dimmedness of your eternal life.
Karl Rahner, 1904 – 1984, German Jesuit theologian
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And this is eternal life,
that they know you the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
prayer & verse 