IN THE DREADED DARK, WE ARE GRACED

My poor prayer to my Father on awakening this morning was in deep and sincere gratitude for this seemingly dark period I am walking through. Then I read Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation for today quoting Jesuit theologian and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin...and I was graced.

When the signs of age begin to mark my body (and still more when they touch my mind); when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off strikes from without or is born within me; when the painful moment comes in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old; and above all at that last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive within the hands of the great unknown forces that have formed me; in all those dark moments, O God, grant that I may understand that it is You (provided only my faith is strong enough) who are painfully parting the fibres of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within Yourself. --  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu: An Essay on the Interior Life

Thank you.