Yet You Were the Life

It's Monday - which means day-to-day reality grinds to a start again, school (maybe), work, whatever life holds for you. It's easy to get caught up in doing, going, rushing, tiring, being. We can lose our center, our focal point of life. 

That's why this ancient prayer from Gregory the Great gets us back to where we need to be.

"O Lord, You received affronts
without number from Your blasphemers,
yet each day You free captive souls
from the grip of the ancient enemy.

You did not avert Your face
from the spittle of perfidy,
yet You wash souls in saving waters.

You accepted Your scourging without murmur,
yet through your meditation
You deliver us from endless chastisements.

You endured ill-treatment of all kinds,
yet You want to give us a share
in the choirs of angels in glory everlasting.

You did not refuse to be crowned with thorns,
yet You save us from the wounds of sin.

In your thirst You accepted the bitterness of gall,
yet You prepare Yourself to fill us with eternal delights.

You kept silence under the derisive homage
rendered You by Your executioners,
yet You petition the Father for us
although You are his equal in Divinity.

You came to taste death,
yet You were the Life
and had come to bring it to the dead.

Amen."

– Gregory the Great, 540-604 A.D.

(HT: Trevin Wax)