Wednesday 17th  February was Ash Wednesday. We started the period of Lent with a combined service by the Cathedral Communities of The Blessed Virgin Mary and our own Saint Peter’s. Of course, the choir was outstanding as usual and the service was magnificently led by the Catholic Bishop and the Dean of S. Peter’s. The homily was about Lent being a time of prayer. As Christians, we are all called to a life of prayer but this is the season to enhance our efforts and look for a deeper relationship with God through our prayer. It’s not always easy and sometimes we cannot find the right words even though we feel the need to express our feelings and thoughts to God. The homily tonight made me think of a prayer, which I found in a literature magazine long time ago,  by a French priest, whose name I don’t remember, that expresses quite well the feeling of being inadequate or speechless before God. But it is our desire of Him the first and most important prayer we can offer (my apologies for my poor translation from the original French):

Lord, I meant to tell you I don’t want to pray tonight. I am too scared: I don’t want to run the risk of waiting for you. It would take me so much effort, again effort. And I don’t want to make that effort. Not tonight, honestly.
This long stream of days when nothing really happens… I really get bored…. All these days going by without realizing if I have made any progress or if I am a little bit better.

It’s getting dark, and I think tomorrow is getting near. And when I wake up –if I get to sleep at all- I’ll know I am still the same. Neither better, nor worse, ahead of me another day and the same opportunities to do something good, which I’ll miss out, as usual.
Sometimes I have asked you for perfection : Be perfect as Your Father in Heaven is perfect. I didn’t get there yet. And as I get older, I wonder if I ever will. Or if I should keep trying. I wonder, O Lord, if this perfection, I have sought it in a very pure way. I would have liked to adorn myself with it, to decorate me with it… Be a saint for the others and for me.
I had to give it up. And to admit once for all that I am what I am.
After all, this might well be what you mean, Lord, when you call us to be like little children: to simply admit that you have accepted us just as we are and to accept the fact that we are sinners, the ones you have come for and to whom your Gospel was written.
(…) Lord, you have shown your preference towards all those who fall, the lonely, the rejected, the poor who believe they are not worth much. No doubt I’m starting to realize I am one of them…
It is for people like us that you have come.
But, Lord, tonight, don’t ask me too much.