Alan Jacobs


"Send us your spirit, Lord"

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Send us your spirit, Lord, with the gifts of humility and understanding. Teach us that your Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, but even beyond our vision. Give us the comfort of knowing that nothing we can do will be complete, no statement of ours will say all that can be said, no prayer of ours fully express our faith, no confession of ours fully bring us to perfection. Make us content to plant seeds that will one day grow, to water seeds which others have planted, to accept that their promise may be for the future, to lay foundations for others to build on better. Give us the comfort of knowing that we are merely workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs, and, with your grace, prophets for a future not our own.
Adapted from the ‘Romero Prayer’ of Bishop Untenor of Saginaw, in Eamon Duffy’s The Heart in Pilgrimage: A Prayerbook for Catholic Christians - Unapologetic: A Petertide prayer for all those ordained yesterday