A GREAT SYMPHONY OF PRAYER IN THE JUBILEE YEAR - WE ADORE YOU (IN THE MORNING)STARTING THE DAY IN A CHRISTIAN WAY

This year's itinerary will be marked by meditation on common Christian prayers, one for each month. These are well-known texts, having permanent potential. Reflecting on them will bring surprises, making these prayers appear in a new light and, perhaps, making us eager to recite them every day, should we ever have neglected them. Let us begin with the prayer that traditionally opens a Christian's day.

I adore you, my God

and I love you with all my heart.

I thank you for having created me,

made me a Christian and preserved me on this night.

I offer you the actions of the day:

let them all be according to your holy will.

For your greater glory.

Preserve me from sin and all evil.

May your grace be always with me

and with all my loved ones. Amen.

‘I adore you, my God, and love you with all my heart’. The attack is challenging, no doubt about it. They are words that, as they are spoken, require us to be true to ourselves, lest they sound false on our lips. Truly, Lord, I adore you and love you with all my heart? After all, who can say they love God with all their heart? More than a declaration of intent, the ‘I adore you’ thus becomes a provocation, an insistent invitation to do what the prayer says. It is by telling oneself to love God that, little by little, one begins to love him seriously, so that the will adheres to the words uttered and is gradually modelled on them.

Let us not miss the verb that gives the entire prayer its title: ‘I adore you’. Christian love is by its very nature meant to spread over many, while adoration is reserved for God alone. An undue claim? Not at all. On closer inspection, adoring God is a condition for being able to love him precisely as God, that is, with all one's heart. There is a close connection between adoration and love: if reverence for God is lacking, if adoration ceases, one soon loses even the taste for the things of God, for prayer itself, and finally love for creatures, reduced to an object of profit, is also extinguished. The lack of adoration is the remote root of all abuse, because adoration preserves charity and keeps it in its proper order.

‘I thank you for creating me, making me a Christian and preserving me on this night’. Aware of our precariousness, of the structural fragility of our existence, we recognise that we have received everything from God: We thank him for the life he granted us by creating us out of nothing, and for the renewal of that life he gives us even today. This awareness, if assimilated, keeps us small, humble, meek towards others, authentically poor in spirit (cf. Mt 5:3). Whoever knows that he has received everything, does not impose himself on others, does not pretend anything and learns to rejoice in every little thing, because he accepts it as a divine gift. The primacy that God claims in our lives (= worship) is not an encumbrance, much less an arrogant claim.

Without God, without this tasty friendship with Him, even the other goods fade and we would not be able to enjoy them to the full.

After giving thanks for the gift of life, which is the basic condition for every other gift, we move on to thank God for the gift of the Christian faith, which discloses to us the meaning of life. What would it be worth to live even many years, yet deprived of the knowledge of God and the prospect of a blissful eternity lived in his friendship?

‘I thank you for... making me a Christian’. Let us be honest: am I happy to be a Christian? Do I recognise the beauty of the faith in which I was baptised? Do I have a lively desire to deepen and enjoy, first and foremost, that faith which, as a parent or catechist, I propose to the new generations? We could push the reflection a little further through an exercise of imagination: what would become of my life without God? If God suddenly disappeared from my life, would I miss him, or would everything remain as before?

‘I offer you the actions of the day’... Since the prayer is recited in the morning, when one has a whole day to live, rightly the ‘I adore you’ goes on to entrust God with the day. It may turn out wonderfully, or it may be a disaster, because not everything depends on us. But there is one thing we can do: offer our actions to the Lord in advance, asking him that they conform to his will. Saying in the morning: ‘I offer you the deeds of this day’ is like making a commitment before the Lord, to perform only those deeds that He may like, as if we were collecting them in a basket that in the evening, anxiously, we will present to Him. The offering of our actions, repeated perhaps several times in the course of the day, is a powerful incentive to act always and in everything, even in the smallest things, in a way that conforms to God's will. After all, when we have done what pleases God, we have done everything and we should be at peace, even if outwardly the work could be perfected, or is subject to criticism. Let us keep this in mind: only if we strive to act as God wants and because He wants us to, will we find peace and be happy where the Lord intended us to be.

But in the adventure of a new day, not everything runs smoothly. So here is the wise plea: ‘Preserve me from sin and all evil’. Note the order of the requests: first of all, God is asked to preserve us from sin, because sin is the greatest evil that can happen to us, simply because it causes us to lose the greatest good, which is God!

We can be sure of this: God wants us to stay away from evil more than we do. If, therefore, we ourselves make this request of Him, will He not help us? ‘Ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you... What father among you, if his son asks him for a loaf of bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks him for a fish, will he give him a snake instead of a fish? ... If therefore you, who are evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!’ (Lk 11:9-13).

This knowledge should infuse us with serenity, even in the midst of the seriousness of the struggle. In prayer we are turning to the One who is more powerful than all evil, because the Lord Jesus, risen from the dead, has already overcome them. Faced with the evil that threatens to overwhelm him, the Christian does not recklessly advance alone, presuming on his own strength, but takes refuge in the shadow of the Cross and confidently asks for divine help. Often in the spiritual life, a tenacious prayer achieves what years of effort had failed to achieve...

The prayer of adoration ends on a sweet note: ‘May your grace be always with me and all my loved ones’. Let us pay attention to the objective of this prayer, to what we are asking for ourselves and our loved ones: God's grace, that is, the very life of God, poured out on those who love him. So that, ‘related’ to God, we can participate in the mystery of his Trinitarian life, enjoying moment by moment his sweet friendship. Is there anything more beautiful in a human life?

Whoever has experienced, even fleetingly, what it means to live in God's grace, instinctively understands that this is the highest good, and therefore also desires it for those he loves most: Your grace be always with me and all my loved ones.

Fr Marco Panero, SDB