Commontide

Preparation for Personal Prayer

Holy Spirit, breath of God and fire of love, I cannot pray without your aid: Kindle in me the fire of your love, and illumine me with your light; that with a steadfast will and holy thoughts I may approach the Father in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ my Lord, who reigns with you and the Father in eternal union. Amen.

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Commontide
Prayer
Prayers

In Times of Suffering or Weakness

Dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: I hold up all my weakness to your strength, my failure to your faithfulness, my sinfulness to your perfection, my loneliness to your compassion, my little pains to your great agony on the Cross. I pray that you will cleanse me, strengthen me, guide me, so that in all ways my life may be lived as you would have it lived, without cowardice and for you alone. Show me how to live in true humility, true contrition, and true love.  Amen.

BCP 2019, p. 674

Provenance

ACNA 2019

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

This heartfelt prayer of surrender in sickness or hardship first appears in the Anglican Church in North America's 2019 Book of Common Prayer. We don't know who first wrote it: unlike its neighbors in the prayer book (attributed to Francis of Assisi, Anselm, Aquinas and others), this one is printed with no name attached, so it comes to us as a modern devotion, offered anonymously and received with gratitude.