What do you do if you find yourself stranded on the side of the road with a flat tyre and your jack isn’t working? What if your child is in hospital or your aunt shows up at your door late at night drunk and about to pass out? What do you do if your mother is suffering from mental illness and she’s having a meltdown in front of your kids? Well, try to get physical help. Call a breakdown vehicle, the police, a doctor, a therapist or a priest. But also, pray.
What follows is a small toolbox of prayers that we can use when we’re in a precarious situation and in need of immediate spiritual assistance. We should always start with the basics such as the Our Father and Hail Mary – always a good idea when we’re under pressure. But we can also appeal to the saints to help us. Think of them as your soul’s personal paramedics, who, since they’ve also lived through difficult times, can help us when we are experiencing an emergency of our own.
We can pray with St Dymphna or St Gemma Galgani when we have a migraine or our friend is feeling depressed. We can call upon St Joseph, Jesus’s adoptive father, to help when our son or daughter has a dangerous fever. We can ask St Peregrine to pray with us if we are suffering from illness or get news that a colleague has cancer.
All prayers should ultimately be directed to God, so even though the saints can serve as advocates and friends, bringing knowledge and assistance to our time of need, keep the Almighty in the forefront of your mind and heart. Our heavenly helpers would want us to do that too.
Here are three prayers that all of us should keep with us and memorise.
St Francis de Sales’s prayer for inner peace is one of my favourites. Whenever fear has a grip on you or you’re experiencing self-doubt, or simply whenever you’re in trouble, this prayer brings great comfort:
Be not afraid. Do not look forward to the changes and chances of this life in fear; rather look to them in full hope that, as they arise, God, whose you are, will deliver you out of them.
He has kept you until now, so hold fast to his dear hand and he will lead you safely through all things, and when you cannot stand, he will bear you safely in his arms.
Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow: the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either he will shield you from suffering or he will give you unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace, then, and put away all anxious thought and imaginations.
I only discovered St Teresa of Ávila’s prayer for comfort during stressful times about a year ago, though it is well known to many people. Since then these words have carried me through periods of uncertainty and loneliness:
Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything. Whoever has God lacks nothing. God alone suffices. Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless his people.
St John Vianney, also known as the Curé d’Ars, composed this prayer in the 19th century for parish priests, but it should be a prayer that all of us learn by heart today:
I love you, O my God, and my only desire is to love you until the last breath of my life. I love you, O infinitely lovable God, and I would rather die loving you, than live without loving you.
I love you, Lord, and the only grace I ask is to love you eternally. My God, if my tongue cannot say in every moment that I love you, I want my heart to repeat it to you as often as I draw breath.
Excerpted and adapted from Life Everlasting: Catholic Devotions and Mysteries for the Everyday Seeker by Gary Jansen with the permission of TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright 2018 by Gary Jansen
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