Fr Peter Helman

“To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.” (Psalm 25:1)


The first thing I must learn as one who prays is to let go, to cease fretting over things that don’t concern me, to mind my own business, as it were, and set all care of myself, physically and materially, in the hands of somebody else—God. I must be still, put aside long speeches to God, let pain and joy and all of life itself, whatever is in me,

be prayer.

I must love God with whatever comes to me, be still under it and love God with it. I must set aside strength, the dream of perfection, anything pious within me, anything under my own direction that will always tend to work against Christ for it is presumption. I set my face to darkness, to pain, to abandon, to weariness and helplessness, to joy and satisfaction, to success and failure, to pleasure and profit, to disappointment and unknowing, refusing the warrant of my own good for the exceeding gifts that are God living in me. I must

be prayer.

The safe way is the hard way is the easiest way. I must want with God’s grace to predispose myself to the work of Christ in the deep end of my heart, to consecrate myself, body and soul, to the action of Christ’s love. I sleep and in the morning rise, and the heart of God deeply stirs my own, animates me, speaks in me to Christ what are truly his words holding me fast. I lift up my soul to God with God’s strength that wills and works in me for his own good pleasure. I am filled with faith, filled with prayer, filled with desire, and if I desire I have already found. And when I love and cry out, lift my soul to God, God has already heard me.

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Today, beloved, whatever the circumstances, listen to the voice of God that speaks always and everywhere to you of the love of Christ, for nothing will separate you from the love of God.

Yours,
Peter+