Opening Prayer
Jesus, sometimes I want to ask what I need to do and what is the least I can get away with, but I’m afraid to look you in the eye and ask the question. Your answer is too challenging and at times, saddens my selfish heart. Teach me humility and self emptying so that you can fill me with life beyond the petty fulfillment I create for myself. All my meager and powerful attempts to fulfill myself and recreate the world in the image of my needs and expectations seem to cause emptiness and destruction. Like Ezekiel, teach me to be faithful when my world seems to be falling apart. Instill me with trust to know that You will catch me from falling totally into the abyss of my own creation. Give me a positive heart to see Your purifying and recreating power amid the seeming coming-apart I experience in this world. Free me to let go of all I grasp that You may make me a sanctuary of Your presence and freeing love.
St. Therese, this is the last time you receive Holy Communion. And yet you did not pout in self-pity and rather knew that your longing for Jesus was even stronger even though your illness did not allow you to receive Communion. As you then taught us about “everything is grace”, help us to see the disappointments and darknesses of life as moments of grace when you are calling us closer and to my intimate trust of God.
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