O God, by whose command the sands of our lives run fast or slow, clean or clotted, your psalmist sang, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and a right spirit renew within me…”. Today I join this song, humbly asking that in your mercy you may will for me a clean heart,
a fresh heart,
a strong and healthy heart,
a heart renewed.
By your will, I beg that the heart of my youth
be rendered spiritually strong in the ethos of compassion,
even in the midst of the strains of its suffering;
a heart made faithfully strong in a spirit of complete trust in you,
even though I do not understand;
a heart made physically strong in an enfleshment away from my stoniness,
even through the enforced exercise of anguish and confusion.
You who are without beginning or end, look with compassion upon my finite years
and infinite foolishness,
and touch me through time, that I might gain wisdom enough in a terrible moment
so as not to surrender the rest of my life, or my health, in captivity to it.
As you touched the hearts of Saint Philip Neri and Saint Teresa of Avila,
touch my heart with your presence
and thereby render me whole by the force of your holiness.
I ask this in the name of Christ Jesus, your son, who suffered for my salvation and lives with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever. Amen.
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