God of My Life

This prayer is attributed to Karl Rahner (a German Jesuit influential in post-Vatican II thought).  His words led me into worship.  Perhaps they may do the same for you…

Only in love can I find you, my God.

In love the gates of the soul spring open,

allowing me to breathe a new air of freedom

and forget my own petty self.

In love my whole being streams forth

out of the rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion,

which makes me a prisoner of my own poverty and emptiness.

In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward you,

wanting never more to return,

but to lose themselves completely in you,

since by your love you are the inmost center of my heart,

closer to me than I am to myself.

But when I love you,

when I manage to break out of the narrow circle of self

and leave behind the restless agony of unanswered questions,

when my blinded eyes no longer look merely from afar

and from the outside upon your unapproachable brightness,

and much more when you yourself, O Incomprehensible One,

have become through love the inmost center of my life,

then I can bury myself entirely in you, O mysterious God,

and with myself all my questions.

-Karl Rahner SJ

Source: Harter, Michael, SJ. (1993). Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits. St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources.

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