Prayers Ancient and Modern 03/03

“I entreat you, give no place to despondency. This is a dangerous temptation–a refined, not a gross temptation of the adversary. Melancholy contracts and withers the heart, and renders it unfit to receive the impressions of grace. It magnifies and gives a false colouring to objects, and thus renders your burdens too heavy to bear. God’s designs regarding you, and His methods of bringing about these designs, are infinitely wise.” – Madame Guyon

Published March 3, 2016 |

God, Gracious and Merciful, give us, we entreat Thee, a humble trust in Thy mercy, and suffer not our heart to fail us. Though our sins be seven, though our sins be seventy times seven, though our sins be more in number than the hairs of our head, yet give us grace in loving penitence to cast ourselves down into the depth of Thy compassion—Amen.

Christina Rosetti

O God, the Source of perfect blessedness, who dost teach Thy faithful ones to walk in Thy laws, to search Thy testimonies, to keep Thy commands; grant unto us, we beseech Thee, Thy righteousness, that we may seek Thee with our whole hearts; that we, who hitherto have wandered like lost sheep, restored by Thy kind arms, may rejoice in the glories of Paradise, through Jesus Christ Thy Son.—Amen.

Sarum Breviary, A. D. 1085.