The Prayer Of Abandonment

Today while watching one of my favorite TV shows I stumbled upon a line that was spoken and it touched me to the core.  The TV show was the West Wing and the episode was Posse Comitatus.  Now I know most of the lines they quote are made up; however this one wasn’t.  Sparing you all the names of characters and who said what the line was;

“Who was the monk who wrote, "I don't always know the right thing to do, Lord, but I think the fact that I want to please you pleases you.”  

Well the monk was Thomas Merton, a 20^th century mystic from and Catholic writer.  He was a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemane, Kentucky, and was also known as Father Louis.  He wrote a prayer known to the Catholic organization as The Prayer of Abandonment.  Now all though the line isn’t exactly the words used by Father Louis, it does sum up pretty a whole section of the prayer.   

*My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.*

The prayer, I think, hits to the core of the way I have felt for quite some time and to the core of how many people feel.  146 words are all it is but in those few short lines a message is conveyed that I find irresistible to my soul. 

“My Lord God I have no idea where I am going” How many feel that way sometimes, for me it’s the majority of the time.  But it’s that line “I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you” that hits home to me.  I don’t know about you, but I do not know God well enough to know his every desire nor do I think anyone does.  So I worry about pleasing him, and I do think the fact that I want to please him pleases him. 

Now it is without question that the scripture that had some kind of inspiration to this prayer was the 23^rd Psalm, the last section of the prayer illuminates the words of the author of the 23^rd Psalm. 

I cannot help but to notice that it says, here in this prayer and in the Psalm, “in the shadow of death.”  If you are in the shadow of death you are in the grip of death.  To be in the shadow you are more than just in the presence of death, death is lurking over you, yet I will not fear.  That is a bold statement of faith. The faith that it takes to be in the grasp of evil and say I will not fear for you are with me is unmeasurable, and I just hope and pray daily I have that faith.

I hope you pray this pray as I will or at least remember it.  The words are a powerful sign of not only faith but humbleness, obeisance, and a broken, contrite heart.  As the apostle Paul said; keep the faith.

God Bless.