Dear Ones: this is the prayer Linda Jackim mentioned in the Wednesday Word of the Week prayer group:
Joe’s Prayer is adapted from a prayer of Teilhard de Chardin. It further illuminates these words (included in this week’s reflection):
Come into Being as you pass away.
– Gospel of Thomas Logion 42
Now that I have found the joy of utilizing
all forms of growth to let you grow in me,
grant that I may willingly consent
to this last phase of communion
in the course of which I shall possess
you by diminishing in you.
When the signs of age begin to mark my body . . .
when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off
strikes from without or is born within me . . .
When the painful moment comes in which
I suddenly awaken to the fact
that I am ill or growing old,
and above all that last moment
when I feel I am losing hold of myself . . .
O God, grant that I may understand
that it is you who are painfully
parting the fibers of my being
in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance
and bear me away within yourself.
