You will preserve me so I entrust myself to you. If you are new to mental prayer, we invite you to visit our page on the ways of mental prayer, Don’t know how to pray to God, to learn more.
We begin Day 27 of our Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
Eternal Father,
You will preserve me from my enemies so I entrust myself to you. By the sacrifice of your Son, my Lord Jesus Christ, I have been made just in your eyes. When you look upon me you see me covered in the Precious Blood of the Lamb. Heavenly Father, you are my shield and my deliverer. Teach me humility. You have searched my mind and my heart. Let me learn self-abasement from you.
AMEN.
Saturday of the 4th Week of Lent (Liturgical Year II)
You will Preserve Me so I Entrust Myself to You
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Join me in a prayerful meditation for your Lenten journey with Christ to Jerusalem.
You will Preserve Me so I Entrust Myself to You
Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Enter into the prayer of silence before the Lord
Holy Spirit,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I entrust myself to you. Let me learn self-abasement. I believe you will preserve me from my enemies, be my shield, and deliver me from evil because I humbly ask for your protection. I acknowledge my sinful nature; I have remorse for all the ways I have sinned against you. Holy Spirit, forgive me for all the times I have chosen the things of this world over obedience to your holy will in my life. Let me obey you now.
I am here, Lord, because you preserve me and protect me from evil. Help me worship you with a pure heart and without distraction. Help me to separate myself from all worldly attachments and spend these 15 minutes with my heart and mind completely fixated on you. Lord, look at me with the eyes of a protector and shield me from the tricks of the evil one. You know all my weaknesses and that I can’t elevate my heart or my mind without your help.
Please give me the grace right now to pray my mental prayer well and to love you in a way that is pleasing to you. I want to grow to love you more perfectly. Preserve me from the sin of pride. Thank you, Lord, for every consolation, desolation, time of silence, difficult trial, and temptation of the evil one. I understand that everything that happens in my life is by your holy will, whether it be your divine providence or your permissive will due to my sin and negligence.
Please humble me as I walk with Jesus toward Jerusalem. Help me carry my cross well and do so with great love in my heart.
AMEN.
Say Nothing Just Take Him In
Spend 1-3 minutes in silence gazing at the Lord with love and gratitude, in a prayer of silent contemplation.
Make a Movie in Your Mind...
Now we will contemplate the first reading. Slowly imagine this scene in your mind as you read. Take your time. Pause over a moment that really tugs at your heart. Reread the passage again, this time imagine yourself physically there in the scene. What do you hear? See? Feel? Sense?
You will Preserve Me so I Entrust Myself to You
The Mercy of God
Jeremiah 11:18-20
I knew their plot because the LORD informed me; at that time you, O LORD, showed me their doings.
Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter, had not realized that they were hatching plots against me: “Let us destroy the tree in its vigor; let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will be spoken no more.”
But, you, O Lord of hosts, O just Judge, searcher of mind and heart, Let me witness the vengeance you take on them, for to you I have entrusted my cause!
Reflection:
Jeremiah was the weeping prophet, and his life was a typology that prefigured the life of Christ in many ways. We learned earlier that he was stoned to death by those who did not want to hear what he preached because it convicted their hearts.
Be Completely Real...
How is the Lord asking you to practice humility and self-abasement right now in your life? Is he showing you how to love him and imitate him in a particular situation?
Now we will contemplate the Lord by listening to him speak to us in the Gospels.
Visualize Christ
You are in Jerusalem, at the Temple during the eight day Festival of Tabernacles witnessing an intense widespread division within the crowd surrounding Jesus and you begin to fear for his safety….
You will Preserve Me so I Entrust Myself to You
Walking Boldly toward Death
John 7:40-53
Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said, “This is truly the Prophet.”
Others said, “This is the Messiah.” But others said, “The Messiah will not come from Galilee, will he? Does not scripture say that the Messiah will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”
So a division occurred in the crowd because of him.
Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.
So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?”
The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this one.”
So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.”
Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, “Does our law condemn a person before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?”
They answered and said to him, “You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”
Then each went to his own house.
Reflection:
Unlike yesterday’s meditation when we hear Jesus speak to us about himself, today we hear what everyone else thinks of him.
When we look at the entire passage we clearly see that everyone has their own opinions. There is no consensus; the sin of pride is obvious.
This line strikes me the most: “So a division occurred in the crowd because of him.”
Have you ever had a difference of opinion with a loved one on who the Lord is and how he is to be worshiped? Maybe you’ve been sure of your position and they have been sure of their position and neither of you agree? Does this division cause a breakdown in the relationship? Have you lost a friendship? Have you been excommunicated by a family member over it?
Holy Spirit, preserve me from the sin of pride. You are a Spirit of truth and life. Please heal the divisions in my life caused by pride. Deliver us from the divisions of the evil one. Give us the grace to think and act with virtue. Fill us with wisdom to understand the truth and the desire to live in it. AMEN.
The last line of this passage is painful to read: “Then each went to his own house.”
They argued about Christ, and when no one could agree, they separated and each went to his own house.
The truth of Christ caused great division.
Let us pray:
Lord preserve me from the sin of pride.
Jesus abased himself again in this passage. Did you notice? As we read the Gospels about the events leading up to the Passion each day, we see that in many passages he seems to remain hidden. Let us pray for the virtue of self-abasement.
Let us pray:
Lord give me the grace to practice self-abasement and to have true humility of heart.
We are such weak and fallen creatures. We have such strong opinions, yet we believe them to be true. We hold onto that which we want to believe rather than seek the truth in prayer with humility. If Jesus is humble and if he remains hidden, then it seems logical that to discover him truly we must humble ourselves and go into that hidden place to know and love and be with the Lord.
Is the Holy Spirit pricking your heart about a recent argument? Is your conscience bothering you about a belief you know is false but you pretend to believe is true publicly? Do you have an estranged family member who you will not speak to because you disagree on religion and you have no charity toward them as a result? Or maybe you have lost a friendship due to spiritual divisions that caused you to sin against God and the call to love? Let us pray for the virtue of self-abasement.
Take a moment to ask Jesus questions from your heart. Give the Holy Spirit time to respond. Wait on the Lord. What is the burden on your heart? Be honest with Jesus and tell him your fears. Has he shown you something? You may want to write it down.
Let us continue our mental prayer with a meditation from Saint Peter Julian Eymard:
You will Preserve Me so I Entrust Myself to You
Self-Abasement, Characteristic of Holiness
Meditation on the self-abasement of our Lord in the Sacrament is the true road to humility. We are thus made to realize that His self-abasement is the greatest proof of His love, and that our self-abasement ought to be the proof of ours; that we must come down to our Lord Who has placed Himself on a level with the lowest beings in creation.
That is true humility: it gives of its own and reflects to God the honor and dignity it receives from Him. Many think that we can humble ourselves only for our sins and our wretchedness, not for what is good and supernaturally great in us; but we certainly can. To refer to God all the good we do is the humility of homage, the most perfect kind of humility. Our Lord teaches it to us and the nearer we draw to Him, the more we humble ourselves like Him. Look at the Blessed Virgin: she was without sin, without defect, without imperfection; she was all fair, all perfect, all radiant through the grace of her Immaculate Conception and through her unceasing cooperation with God’s graces. But she humbled herself more than any other creature.
Humility consists in acknowledging that without God we are nothing and in referring to Him all that we are. The more perfect we are, the more this humility increases, because we have more to give to God. We descend in proportion as we are lifted by grace. Our graces are the stepping stones of humility. The Eucharist teaches us then to refer to God our glory and greatness, and not merely to humble ourselves over our wretchedness. And what a permanent lesson! Every Eucharistic soul ought therefore to become humble.
A life habitually spent near Jesus in the Host ought to influence us to the point of having us think and act only under the inspiration of this self-abased Divinity. It would be devilish of anyone to want to foster his pride in the presence of the Eucharist! . . . To feel the need of abasing ourselves, we have only to look at the Blessed Sacrament. In the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the Church puts us on our knees- the posture of humility and of self-abasement.
Such is the humility of our Lord’s state.
Are You Listening?
Think about the beautiful virtue of self-abasement that St. Peter Julian Eymard teaches about. Ask the Lord to give you the virtue of self-abasement.
Take a few minutes to contemplate all the good you do, all your talents and gifts, and thank God for each of them. Acknowledge that without him you are nothing but with him you can do anything.
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 28 Mental Prayer Meditation
Love Them like Christ and Do Not Throw Stones
Jesus you love them. Lord, let me love them too and not throw stones using harsh words and deliberate actions to condemn them. Let me love them like Christ.