Prayer & Praise

Lord, do you hear me?

I’m suffering dreadfully, locked in myself, prisoner of myself.

I hear nothing but my voice, I see nothing but myself and behind me there is nothing but suffering.

Lord, do you hear me?

Deliver me from my body; it is nothing but hunger , with its thousands of tentacles outstretched to appease its insatiable appetite.

Lord, do you hear me?

Deliver me from my heart; when I think that it’s overflowing with love, I realise angrily that it is again myself that I love more than the loved one.

Lord, do you hear me?

Deliver me from my mind; it is full of itself, of its ideas, its opinions; it cannot carry on a dialogue, as no words reach it but its own.

Alone, I am bored, I am weary, I hate myself, I am disgusted with myself.

For ages I have been turning around inside myself like a sick man in his feverish bed.

Everything seems dark, ugly, horrible.

It’s because I can look only through myself.

I feel ready to hate people and the whole world.

It’s because I’m disappointed that I cannot love them.

I would like to get away, walk, run, to another land. I know that joy exists; I have seen it on singing faces.

I know that light exists; I have seen it in radiant eyes.

But Lord, I cannot get away, for I love my prison and I hate it, for my prison is myself and I love myself, Lord.

I both love and loathe myself.

Lord, I can no longer find my own door.

I grope around blindly, I knock against my own walls, my own boundaries.

I hurt myself, I am in pain.

I am in too much pain and no one knows it, for no one has come in.

I am alone, all alone. Lord, Lord, do you hear me?

Lord, show me my door, take me by the hand.

Open the door. Show me the way, the path leading to joy, to light.

But Lord, do you hear me?

My child, I have heard you.

I am sorry for you.

I have long been watching your closed shutters.

Open them; my light will come in. I have long been standing at your locked door.

Open it; you will find me on the threshold.

I am waiting for you, the others are waiting for you, but you must open up.

You must come out.

Why choose to be a prisoner of yourself?

You are free. It is not I who locked the door, it is not I who can open it.

For it is you, from the inside, who persist in keeping it solidly barred.

Quoist, Michel (2014-09-05). Keeping Hope – Favourite Prayers for Modern Living: Selected Inspirational Prayers from World-Renowned Theologian Michel Quoist (Kindle Locations 529-538). Gill & Macmillan. Kindle Edition.