ABJECT POVERTY

Lay not up for yourselves treasures here on earth
where rust and moth consume, and thieves break through and steal.

Rather lay up for yourselves treasures
in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth can consume, and where thieves cannot break through, and steal.

For where your treasure is, there also
is your heart.

Dear God, help me to understand these words,
and to take them seriously. Please show me
the way to open my heart.

I live in the material world. Help me
to focus on the eternal spiritual world,
Your world, the heavenly world to come.

How much money, how much "gold," do I need
to live?

I have not taken the heroic vow of poverty,
but have I nevertheless listened sufficiently
to the injunctions of Your gospel messages?

Do I understand what it is to be poor in spirit? Have I done enough for Your destitute
and Your starving, Your ragged
and Your malnourished, Your needy
and Your disenfranchised?

Have I heard the cry of Your sick and maimed,
Your broken, discouraged and homeless,
and Your hopelessly depressed and suicidal?

Help me, Jesus, to open my eyes.
Help me, Jesus to open my ears.
Help me, Jesus, to open my heart.

Let me care more for the quality of my prayer life than the quantity of my worldly goods,
and let me care seriously and actively
for the lives of the least fortunate among us
in this world.

Let me not blind myself, or turn away
from the abject misery in which many people
are living, adults, children and infants,
in all parts of the world.

Help me become fully aware of the depth
and the extent of spirit-crushing poverty
and hopelessness which exists in the world.

Help me to do my share to alleviate
the misery of the poorest of the poor,
who are always close to Your heart.

Please bring them close to my heart as well.
Let me not turn away from the appalling reality of their desperate plight.

Let me remember daily those in great need:
the millions of children and families
who go to their beds each night hungry
and malnourished.

Guide me to discover what I can do,
here and now, to alleviate, in whatever ways,
the suffering of unfortunate parents, who, through no fault of their own, cannot adequately feed their families.

Help me, Jesus, to be generous.

Let me put the salvation of my immortal soul
above the transient things of this world, which,
when I die, will pass instantly out of my hands
in any event.

Let my soul be shining bright when I see You
before me on my Judgment Day, holding the scales
of wrath and the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

Help me, Jesus, to open my heart.

All this I pray to You my Gracious Guide,
my Good God, my Glorious Redeemer.

Amen

 

 

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