listening, saturday

Saturday, January 31

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

          

Opening Prayer: Speak, O Lord, as we come to You, to receive the food of Your holy word.  Take Your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in Your likeness, that the light of Christ might be seen today, in our acts of love and our deeds of faith.  Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us all your purposes, for Your glory. (Speak O Lord by Stuart Townend, Keith Getty)

Scripture Reading for the Day: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

Reading for Reflection:

In Jesus we have a master to whom we do not sufficiently listen.  He speaks to each heart the word of life, the only word, but we do not listen.  We want to know what he is saying to others, and do not listen to what he is saying to us.  We are not sufficiently attuned to that transcendental being imparted to all things by divine action. (The Sacrament of the Present Moment by Jean-Pierre De Caussade)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you that your grace is sufficient for me—this day and every day.  Thank you that whatever this day may hold, or whatever it may require, or whatever it may demand, I can always hold on to this truth.  Thanks be to God!

listening, friday

Friday, January 30

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

         

Opening Prayer: Speak, O Lord, as we come to You, to receive the food of Your holy word.  Take Your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in Your likeness, that the light of Christ might be seen today, in our acts of love and our deeds of faith.  Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us all your purposes, for Your glory. (Speak O Lord by Stuart Townend, Keith Getty)

                      

Scripture Reading for the Day: Matthew 3:13-17

Reading for Reflection:

Prayer is creating a sacred space where you can be overwhelmed with God’s uncompromising love and acceptance. (Living in God’s Embrace by Michael Fonseca)

It is the voice of the Spirit within us that reminds us that we, too are the Beloved.  If we listen closely, we will hear these words of love.  (Embracing the Love of God by James Bryan Smith)     

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      

Closing Prayer: Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly, while the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high.  Hide me, O my Savior, hide, till the storm of life is past; safe into the haven guide; O receive my soul at last. (Jesus Lover of My Soul by Charles Wesley)

listening, thursday

Thursday, January 29

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

         

Opening Prayer: Speak, O Lord, as we come to You, to receive the food of Your holy word.  Take Your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in Your likeness, that the light of Christ might be seen today, in our acts of love and our deeds of faith.  Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us all your purposes, for Your glory. (Speak O Lord by Stuart Townend, Keith Getty)

Scripture Reading for the Day: 2 Chronicles 7:11-22

Reading for Reflection:

 

     I believe that we know much more about God than we admit that we know, than perhaps we altogether know that we know.  God speaks to us, I would say, much more often than we realize or than we choose to realize.  Before the sun sets every evening, he speaks to each one of us in an intensely personal and unmistakable way.  His message is not written out in starlight, which in the long run would make no difference; rather it is written out for each of us in the humdrum, helter-skelter events of each day; it is a message that in the long run might just make all the difference.

     Who knows what he will say to me today or to you today or into the midst of what kind of unlikely moment he will choose to say it.  Not knowing is what makes today a holy mystery. (The Magnificent Defeat by Frederick Buechner) 

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      

Closing Prayer: Bless with your presence my life and ministry all this day long and when night comes grant your servant rest and peace.  Amen. (A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants)

listening, wednesday

Wednesday, January 28

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

          

Opening Prayer: Speak, O Lord, as we come to You, to receive the food of Your holy word.  Take Your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in Your likeness, that the light of Christ might be seen today, in our acts of love and our deeds of faith.  Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us all your purposes, for Your glory. (Speak O Lord by Stuart Townend, Keith Getty)

Scripture Reading for the Day: Ecclesiastes 5:1-7

Reading for Reflection:

 

Prayer is not a matter of my calling in an attempt to get God’s attention, but of my finally listening to the call of God, which has been constant, patient, and insistent in my inner being.  In relationship with God, I am not the seeker, the initiator, the one who loves more greatly.  In prayer, as in the whole salvation story unfolded by Scripture, God is reaching out to me, speaking to me, and it’s up to me to learn to be polite enough to pay attention.  When I do have something to say to God, I am rendering a response to the divine initiative.  So the questions of whether or not and how God answers prayer now seem to me bogus questions.  God speaks, all right.  The big question is do I answer, do I respond, to an invitation that is always open.  (Speech, Silence, Action! by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      

Closing Prayer: God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  This very day the Lord has acted, may God’s name be praised.  Come, let us raise a joyful song, a shout of triumph to the rock of our salvation.  Let us come into Your presence with thanksgiving, singing songs of triumph.  For You are a great God, a great king over all gods.  The depths of the earth are in Your hands; and the mountains belong to You.  The sea is Yours for You made it; and the dry land Your hands fashioned.  Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the One who made us.  For You are our God, and we are the flock that You shepherd.  We will know Your power and presence this day if we will but listen for Your voice. (Venite by Robert Benson)

listening, tuesday

Tuesday, January 27

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

        

Opening Prayer: Speak, O Lord, as we come to You, to receive the food of Your holy word.  Take Your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in Your likeness, that the light of Christ might be seen today, in our acts of love and our deeds of faith.  Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us all your purposes, for Your glory. (Speak O Lord by Stuart Townend, Keith Getty)

Scripture Reading for the Day: John 10:1-18

Reading for Reflection:

 

     Retire from the world each day to some private spot, even if it be only the bedroom (for a while I retreated to the furnace room for want of a better place).  Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God’s presence envelopes you…Listen for the inward Voice till you learn to recognize it.  Stop trying to compete with others.  Give yourself to God and then be what and who you are without regard to what others think…Learn to pray inwardly every moment.  After a while you can do this even while you work….Read less, but more of what is important to your inner life.  Never let your mind remain scattered for very long.  Call home your roving thoughts.  Gaze on Christ with the eyes of your soul.  Practice spiritual concentration.  All of the above is contingent upon a right relation to God through Christ and daily meditation on the Scriptures.  Lacking these, nothing will help us; granted these, the discipline recommended will go far to neutralize the evil effects of externalism and to make us acquainted with God and our own souls. (The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                     

Closing Prayer: The heavens declare your glory, O Lord, and the skies proclaim the work of your hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech, and night after night they reveal knowledge.  There is no speech, or language, where your voice is not heard.  Your voice goes out through all the earth, and your words to the end of the world.  We will know your power and presence this day, if we will but listen for your voice.  Amen.

listening, monday

Monday, January 26

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

          

Opening Prayer: Speak, O Lord, as we come to You, to receive the food of Your holy word.  Take Your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in Your likeness, that the light of Christ might be seen today, in our acts of love and our deeds of faith.  Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us all your purposes, for Your glory. (Speak O Lord by Stuart Townend, Keith Getty)

Scripture Reading for the Day: 1 Kings 19:1-13

Reading for Reflection:

 

Our relationship with God would be greatly improved if we saw prayer as listening to God rather than talking to him.  Think of those boring people who talk endlessly to others (or rather, at others).  All their words show that they are distanced from others rather than close to them.  Could this also be the reason why our prayers lack insight into the character of God?  Openness to God, submissiveness to God, listening to his “still, small voice,” may give us far more insight than the constant chatter which we are used to calling prayer. (The Transforming Power of Prayer by James Houston)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                     

Closing Prayer: You must adapt your word to my smallness, so that it can enter into the tiny dwelling of my finiteness—the only dwelling in which I can live—without destroying it.  Then I shall be able to understand; such a word I can take in without that agonizing bewilderment of mind and that cold fear clutching my heart.  If you would speak such an “abbreviated” word, which would not say everything but only something simple which I could grasp, then I could breathe freely again.

     O Infinite God, you have actually willed to speak such a word to me!  You have restrained the ocean of your infinity from flooding in over the poor little wall which protects my tiny life’s acre from your vastness.  Not the waters of your great sea, but only the dew of your gentleness is to spread itself over my poor little plot of earth.  You have come to me in a human word.  For you, the Infinite, are the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Encounters with Silence by Karl Rahner)

listening, sunday

Sunday, January 25

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

        

Opening Prayer: Speak, O Lord, as we come to You, to receive the food of Your holy word.  Take Your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in Your likeness, that the light of Christ might be seen today, in our acts of love and our deeds of faith.  Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us all your purposes, for Your glory. (Speak O Lord by Stuart Townend, Keith Getty)

Scripture Reading for the Day: 1 Samuel 3:1-21

Reading for Reflection:

 

     Every once in a while, life can be very eloquent.  You can go along from day to day not noticing very much, not seeing or hearing very much, and then all the sudden, when you least expect it very often, something speaks to you with such power that it catches you off guard, makes you listen whether you want to or not.  Something speaks to you out of your own life with such directness that it is as if it calls you by name and forces you to look where you have not had the heart to look before, to hear something that maybe for years you have not had the wit or the courage to hear.  (A Room Called Remember by Frederick Buechner)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      

Closing Prayer: Lord, teach me to listen.  The times are noisy and my ears are weary with the thousand raucous sounds which continuously assault them.  Give me the spirit of the boy Samuel when he said to Thee, “Speak, for thy servant heareth.”  Let me hear Thee speaking in my heart.  Let me get used to the sound of Thy voice, that its tones may be familiar when the sounds of earth die away and the only sound will be the music of Thy speaking voice.  Amen.  (The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer)

grasping, saturday

Saturday, January 24

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

          

Opening Prayer: Lord God, give me open hands and not clenched fists as I walk with you and for you in the midst of this day— that I might be able to live with a true sense of freedom from the need to grasp desperately for love and value from those I come into contact with.  For Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

 
Scripture Reading for the Day: Psalm 63:1-8

Reading for Reflection:

 

Prayer is the outgrowth of both silence and solitude.  In silence we let go of our manipulative control.  In solitude we face up to what we are in the depths of our being.  Prayer then becomes the offering of who we are to God: the giving of that broken, unclean, grasping, manipulative self to God for the work of God’s grace in our lives. (Invitation to a Journey by M. Robert Mulholland)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      

Closing Prayer: Come, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who stand by night in the house of the Lord!  Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord!  May the Lord bless you from Zion, he who made heaven and earth!  Amen. (Psalm 134)

grasping, friday

Friday, January 23

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

          

Opening Prayer: Lord God, give me open hands and not clenched fists as I walk with you and for you in the midst of this day— that I might be able to live with a true sense of freedom from the need to grasp desperately for love and value from those I come into contact with.  For Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Scripture Reading for the Day: Psalm 16:1-11

Reading for Reflection:

 

     To pray means to open your hands before God.  It means slowly relaxing the tension which squeezes your hands together and accepting your existence with an increasing readiness, not as a possession to defend, but as a gift to receive.  Above all, therefore, prayer is a way of life which allows you to find a stillness in the midst of the world where you open your hands to God’s promises, and find hope for yourself, your neighbor, and your world.  In prayer, you encounter God not only in the small voice and the soft breeze, but also in the midst of the turmoil of the world, in the distress and joy of your neighbor, and in the loneliness of your own heart. (With Open Hands by Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      

Closing Prayer: Keep me safe, O God, I’ve run for dear life to you.  I say to God, “Be my Lord!”  Without you, nothing makes sense.  And these God-chosen lives all around—what splendid friends they make!  Don’t just go shopping for a god.  Gods are not for sale.  I swear I’ll never treat god-names like brand-names.  My choice is you, God, first and only.  And now I find I’m your choice!  You set me up with a house and yard.  And then you made me your heir!  The wise counsel God gives when I’m awake is confirmed by my sleeping heart.  Day and night I’ll stick with God; I’ve got a good thing going and I’m not letting go.  I’m happy from the inside out, and from the outside in, I’m firmly formed.  You canceled my ticket to hell—that’s not my destination!  Now you’ve got my feet on the life path, all radiant from the shining of your face.  Ever since you took my hand, I’m on the right way. (Psalm 16, The Message)

grasping, thursday

Thursday, January 22

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

          

Opening Prayer: Lord God, give me open hands and not clenched fists as I walk with you and for you in the midst of this day— that I might be able to live with a true sense of freedom from the need to grasp desperately for love and value from those I come into contact with.  For Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Scripture Reading for the Day: Romans 7:14-25

Reading for Reflection:

 

     It is a long spiritual journey of trust, for behind each fist, another one is hiding, and sometimes the process seems endless.  Much has happened in your life to make all those fists, and at any hour of the day or night you might find yourself clenching your fists again out of fear. (With Open Hands by Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      

Closing Prayer: To you, Lord, I call; you are my Rock, do not turn a deaf ear to me.  For if you remain silent, I will be like those who go down to the pit.  Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help, as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place.  Amen.  (Psalm 28:1-2)

grasping, wednesday

Wednesday, January 21

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

          

Opening Prayer: Lord God, give me open hands and not clenched fists as I walk with you and for you in the midst of this day— that I might be able to live with a true sense of freedom from the need to grasp desperately for love and value from those I come into contact with.  For Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Scripture Reading for the Day: Luke 12:13-21

Reading for Reflection:

 

     We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do.  Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual—even on the spiritual—plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life. (The Spiritual Life by Evelyn Underhill)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself     

                       

Closing Prayer: Holy Father, from whom alone all good proceedeth, let the Christian graces of faith, hope, and charity be every day more firmly established within me.  Amen. (A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie)

grasping, tuesday

Tuesday, January 20

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

          

Opening Prayer: Lord God, give me open hands and not clenched fists as I walk with you and for you in the midst of this day— that I might be able to live with a true sense of freedom from the need to grasp desperately for love and value from those I come into contact with.  For Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

 
Scripture Reading for the Day: Matthew 6:19-34

Reading for Reflection:

 

     Greed is often associated with a ravenous appetite that devours anything within reach—a noisy, uncouth vice.  Yet it is more often known in the quietly insistent urge that nudges us from wanting to “needing,” then to grasping what we now “need” so others cannot deprive us of it.  Jesus addressed this grasping, clinging mind when he counseled that we cannot serve God and mammon, and Aramaic word denoting ill-gotten gain (Matthew 6:24).

     “In your minds you must be the same as Jesus Christ: His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God…” (Phil.2:6, JB).  The spiritual life is one in which we grow out of the grasping, clinging mind into the mind of Christ.  The Christ-mind releases us from our compulsion to associate personal worth with what we have accumulated, taming what nineteenth-century professor Adolphe Gratry calls “the exuberant desire to rise by a borrowed power.” (Editor’s Introduction by John S. Mogabgab, Weavings, November/ December 2005)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      
Closing Prayer: O Christ my Lord, who for my sake and my brethren’s didst forgo all earthly comfort and fullness, forbid it that I should ever again live unto myself.  Amen. A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie)

grasping, monday

Monday, January 19

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

          
Opening Prayer: Lord God, give me open hands and not clenched fists as I walk with you and for you in the midst of this day— that I might be able to live with a true sense of freedom from the need to grasp desperately for love and value from those I come into contact with.  For Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Scripture Reading for the Day: Mark 10:17-31

Reading for Reflection:

 

     Praying is no easy matter.  It demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your being, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched.  Why would you really want to do that?  Perhaps you would let the other cross your inner threshold to see something or to touch something, but to allow the other into the place where your most intimate life is shaped—that is dangerous and calls for defense.

     The resistance to praying is like the resistance of tightly clenched fists.  The image shows a tension, a desire to cling tightly to yourself, a greediness which betrays fear.  A story about an elderly woman brought to a psychiatric center exemplifies this attitude.  She was wild, swinging at everything in sight, and scaring everyone so much that the doctor had to take everything away from her.  But there was one small coin which she gripped in her fist and would not give up.  In fact, it took two people to pry open that squeezed hand.  It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin.  If they deprived her of that last possession, she would have nothing more, and be nothing more.  That was her fear.

     When you are invited to pray you are asked to open your tightly clenched fists and give up your last coin.  But who wants to do that?  A first prayer, therefore, is often a painful prayer, because you discover you don’t want to let go.  You hold fast to what is familiar, even if you aren’t proud of it. (With Open Hands by Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                     

Closing Prayer: Open my hands, and my heart, O Lord, to all that you desire to do in and through me.  For the sake of Jesus.  Amen,

grasping, sunday

Sunday, January 18

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

           

Opening Prayer: Lord God, give me open hands and not clenched fists as I walk with you and for you in the midst of this day— that I might be able to live with a true sense of freedom from the need to grasp desperately for love and value from those I come into contact with.  For Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Scripture Reading for the Day: Mark 5:24-34

Reading for Reflection:

 

     When at last I cling to you with all my being, for me there will be no more sorrow, no more toil.  Then at last I shall be alive with true life, for my life will be wholly filled by you. (Confessions by St Augustine)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, forgive me when my bleeding and wounded heart causes me to grasp for life and relief from any and every source available.  Instead, help me to reach only for you, that I might touch the fringe of your robe and find healing and wholeness for the brokenness of my heart and soul.  In Your Name I pray.  Amen. 

small, saturday

Saturday, January 17

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

         

Opening Prayer: Lord, give me the ability to persist through tedium, to survive without the oxygen of recognition, praise, and stroking, and to do some good things every day which are seen only by You. (Sacred Space: the Prayer Book 2010 by Jesuit Communication Centre)

                               

Scripture Reading for the Day: Philippians 2:1-11

Reading for Reflection:

 

     True service finds it almost impossible to distinguish the small from the large service.  Where the difference is noted the true servant seems to be often drawn to the small service, not out of false modesty, but because he genuinely sees it as the important service.  He indiscriminately welcomes all opportunities to serve.

     Self-righteous service requires external rewards.  It needs to know that people see and appreciate the effort.  It seeks human applause—with proper religious modesty of course.  True service rests contented in hiddenness.  It does not fear the lights and blare of attention, but it does not seek them either.  Since it is living out of a new Center of Reference the divine nod of approval is completely sufficient.  (Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      
Closing Prayer: O Jesus, how far down you had to come to reach us; how small and how low.  Can anyone really comprehend the magnitude of that downward journey?  You, who had always enjoyed the true delight and loving intimacy of the Trinity, yet willing to step out of the ecstasy of that intimacy because of your great desire to bring us into it.  You, who was in very nature God, laid aside your Divine privilege and position to become a man of sorrows, despised and rejected.  You, the Eternal One, were willing to become a mere mortal.  You, the Creator of all, were willing to become one of the created.  O the great sacrifice! O the immense love!  You emptied yourself of more than we can dare ask or imagine.  And thus, you gave us an example that we should do the same.  Lord Jesus, show us specifically what this emptying looks like in our lives in the days ahead.  Amen.

small, friday

Friday, January 16

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

         

Opening Prayer: Lord, give me the ability to persist through tedium, to survive without the oxygen of recognition, praise, and stroking, and to do some good things every day which are seen only by You. (Sacred Space: the Prayer Book 2010 by Jesuit Communication Centre)

Scripture Reading for the Day: Luke 14:7-14

Reading for Reflection:

 

     Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again.  Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man.  If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too.  And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him he comes most fully. (The Hungering Dark by Frederick Buechner)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself    

                      

Closing Prayer:

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.

From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being loved, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being extolled, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being honored, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being praised, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being preferred to others, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being consulted, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being approved, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being humiliated, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being despised, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of suffering rebukes, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being calumniated, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being forgotten, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being ridiculed, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being suspected, Deliver me, Jesus.

That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be chosen and I set aside, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be praised and I unnoticed, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be preferred to me in everything, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it. (Litany of Humility)