Sometimes we all need just a little bit of help when we pray. Sometimes it is good for us to borrow the prayers of other people and put them to use ourselves. And for just that reason, here’s a lovely prayer from St. Augustine (as found in the excellent little book Fount of Heaven. Perhaps it will give you words to pray today.
Great are you, O Lord, and greatly to be praised.
Great is your power. Your wisdom is infinite, and we praise you.
We, who are just a particle of your creation. We, who carry our mortality with us—the witness of our sin, and the witness that you resist the proud.
Yet we praise you.
You awaken us to delight in your praise. For you made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its place of rest in you.
Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which is first: to call on you, or to praise you? To know you, or to call on you? For who can call on you, not knowing you? Whoever does not know you might call on you as someone other than you really are.
Or rather, do we call on you so that we may know you? But how do they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe without a preacher? (Romans 10:14).
And whoever seeks the Lord will praise him: for they that seek will find him, and they that find will praise him.
I will seek you, Lord, by calling on you. And I will call on you, believing in you, because you have been preached to us.
With the faith you have given me, I will call on you. That faith has inspired me, through the incarnation of your Son, through the ministry of the preacher.
Amen.
