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PRAYERS
for the
Journey Along
THE WAY
(3) YOUR PRESENCE
My Lord and my God --
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- What a joy it is to be with You, and to fall down
before Your Holy Presence! I am sorry that I so easily walk away from Your Presence,
and so easily allow myself to get caught up in the negativity of the
world-that-knows-You-not. Please forgive me. Please yell at me, shout at me,
bang loudly on the door of my heart; do whatever is necessary to make me hear You and to
open up to You.
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- I really want to bask in the peace, the joy, the
delight of living and abiding continually in Your Presence. I know that without You
there really isn't any true life -- just misery and emptiness. So I don't know why I keep
filling the beautiful silence of Your sweet, melodious voice, the magnificence of the
aroma of Your Presence, with the noise and stench of the world outside-You, the
world-that-knows-You-not.
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- Please keep on calling me back to You -- scream if
that is what it takes for me to respond to You. Please, please, keep on knocking on
the door of my heart -- knock on it however loudly is necessary until I finally stop
locking the door -- locking You out. Help me so that someday I will remove the lock
permanently, and that no matter what I do, no matter where I am, I will always abide in
Your Presence. Maybe then I could walk in the midst of the world-that-knows-You-not,
and not be touched by it; that instead of me being affected by it, it would be affected by
me -- or really, by You working through me. I'm sure that it must have been like
this for people like Mother Teresa, as it has been for so many of Your saints.
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- Ah -- what a marvellous dream. Grant, please,
Lord, that one day I will allow You to so fill my heart that I will never again let the
noise and stench of the world-that-knows-You-not distract me from being filled with Your
Holy Presence. Amen.
(by a member of St. Innocent Orthodox Community, Redford,
Michigan)
- The icon of "Christ Made-Without-Hands" (detail) is by Fr.
Theodore Jurewicz
- and is at St. Innocent Orthodox Church, Redford, Michigan.
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ST. INNOCENT/
