O God, Compassionate One-
I pray for a compassionate heart.
I pray for a heart that is willing to expand with your compassion, with your love.
I pray for a set of compassionate eyes that see what your eyes see.
I pray for a set of compassionate ears that hear what your ears hear.
O God, Compassionate One-
I pray for a heart willing to extend compassion to those who annoy me, infuriate me, enrage me.
Help me to see these people as your children, worthy of your love and compassion and therefore deserving of my love and compassion.
O God, Compassionate One-
I pray for a heart that is bold enough to seek reconciliation with those whom I have hurt, harmed or dismissed.
Help me to understand, to know (deep in my bones), that to live compassionately toward others means living at peace with them.
O God, Compassionate One-
I pray for a heart that is gentle with myself when I fail to be compassionate-because I will fail. I will stumble.
Help me to extend the same compassion toward myself that I want to offer others.
O God, Compassionate One-
I pray that my desire and my attempts to live compassionately (to be compassionate) will encourage others to be compassionate-one by one by
one-until our world is filled with compassionate people, filled with people who have your compassionate heart pulsing through us.
Amen.
June Mears Driedger
University of the Incarnate Word® 