From A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary, by Benedictine Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, St Scholastica Convent, Fort Smith, Ark:
If you, O Lord, should remember our guilt, Lord, who could survive?
(Ps. 130: 3, my paraphrase)
Today I made a list of all the evils in my life that I would like to eradicate. Often I have not considered such things as evil. I tend to think evil is something glaring and terribly noticeable, yet so much of the evil in my life is like a cancer that slowly eats me alive. It is good to stand back from it once in a while and ask: How did I get this way? How did I become so suspicious? How did I become so indifferent and apathetic? Where did this unwillingness to look at my faults come from? How did I become so content in the midst of all the trivia in my life? Why am I in this comfortable rut? What evil is lurking in my heart that has brought me to this state? What cancer is eating me alive?
Today, Jesus, I ask you to look at these evils with me. Help me to own them as deadly.
From the evil of fear that traps me in my narrow self centered existence and prevents me from stepping out in faith and risking new things, deliver me and set me free, Jesus. From the evil of prejudice that causes me to make judgments about a person or situation before I know all the facts, deliver me and set me free, Jesus.
From the evil of acting omnipotent, trying to do all of God’s work alone, and refusing to admit my dependency and poverty, deliver me and set me free, Jesus.
From the evil of busyness and activity, never pausing to be still enough that I can experience your contemplative look of love, deliver me and set me free, Jesus.
