"Patrick's Breastplate"

Tradition credits this prayer to St. Patrick circa 433 A.D:

This day I call to me; God's strength to direct me, God's power to sustain me.
God's wisdom to guide me, God's vision to light me, God's ear to my hearing, God's word to my speaking, God's hand to uphold me, God's pathway before me, God's shield to protect me, God's legions to save me: from snares of the demons, from evil enticements, from failings of nature, from one man or many that seek to destroy me, anear or afar.
Be Christ this day my strong protector.... Christ beside me, Christ before me; Christ behind me, Christ within me; Christ beneath me, Christ above me; Christ the right of me, Christ to left of me; Christ in my lying, my sitting, my rising; Christ in heart of all who know me, Christ on tongue of all who meet me, Christ in eye of all who see me, Christ in ear of all who hear me.
For my shield this day I call: a mighty power: the Holy Trinity! Affirming threeness, confessing oneness in the making of all--through love.

What an awesome prayer! If I could but live in light of this all the time! How often do my family, friends and co-workers hear something other than Christ within me!

... and yet what it takes to only have Christ...

In June this year a friend from college had their 2-1/2 year-old son diagnosed with Krabbe disease. Krabbe (pronounced "Crab-A) is a genetic disorder that is kills 100% of those afflicted - usually within 6 months of showing symptoms. It acts on the body like Lou Gehrig's disease by attacking the nervous system. It starts with clumsiness followed by blindness, loss of appetite, becoming extremely painful and finally death from suffocation from a paralyzed diaphragm. There is no cure.

I have never entered into another's pain as deeply as I have with this couple and their son. I have never cried as hard over someone else's pain while I echoed his fathers prayer that "Jesus, be merciful to Judson".

A little before noon on November 7th, little Jud died just shy of his 3rd birthday--his loving parents cradling him all morning in his dying agony.

That morning all they had was Jesus.

I was overwhelmed with two very opposing emotions: Total grief for what Christina and Drake had experienced, and an extreme sense of jealously for their state of complete dependence on Jesus to sustain them.

I was perplexed with two very opposing desires: I deeply desire to have "only Jesus" -- like St. Patrick's prayer above. I also deeply desire to NEVER experience the pain they went through (and the continued grief they're still living with).

Is this degree of "Christ being our all" possible here on earth without this level of grief? Something tells me no. I am sobered in the realization that my heart is so tied to this world that to have "Christ be my all" would cause me such grief over the things I've lost.

What a wretched sinner am I ! ...and yet, how much sweeter is the prize to come--an eternity with Christ being all we have without grief, but pure joy unending.

Praise be to Christ our Savior and Redeemer!