PRAYER POEMS FOR "THE STRUGGLING HEART"
SECTION 2

The Pebbles

O Lord, You are my rock and my salvation.

You, O Mountain of Strength,
Rock of immovable Truth,
You remain, still, despite our questions, doubts.
We praise You in the mightiness of Your Mountain
But stumble on the pebbles at Your Feet.

In You, Lord, I find my soul’s greatest rest,
The Waters of Life,
The Fire of Love,
Ever-burning, ever healing.
But when You speak, sometimes, I cringe.
I wonder if I hear correctly.
I wonder if I understand.
I wonder if I can do what You ask.

In my heart I know
You would not ask of me
The impossible.
But in my humanness,
I stumble on the pebbles,
Standing and falling,
Standing and falling.
Unable to die in Your Arms.
I want to climb Your Sacred Mountain
But I keep falling on the pebbles.

Do You tire at my feeble attempts?
I thirst.
Does my weakness leave You abandoned?
My God, why have You forsaken me?
Or do You, in Your All-knowingness,
Watch and wait as I discover, once again,
My utter dependence on You, my God.
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

Your Sacred Heart opens to my weakness,
Inviting me back in where I belong.
I am nothing outside of You.
I want nothing outside of You.
Your Cross is hard, my Lord, but Sweet.
Take me to the Sacred Heart of Your Mountain, my Jesus!
And rescue me from the pebbles!
The pebbles are too heavy for me to move alone!

The Forbidden Fruit

The Crucifix on the wall betrays Your body,
Stripped of all we could take,
Nailed down and hanging from Your healing hands,
The same hands that worked miracles
And whose touch healed us.
There You suffer in shame and agony
While we gaze on, unable to understand.

Watching You suffer still on this Cross,
Your Body tortured with no human way out,
Like a mother giving birth through the pain,
You focus only on the love for us
You hold in Your Sacred Heart
While we pour out our insults on You
Like salt on Your wounds.

Once we thought, yet still do,
We could know without You
What Truth and good could be.
Still unable to comprehend
The mystery of Your Mind and Heart,
We taste the forbidden fruit of doubt.
Doubt in Your goodness and kindness,
Doubt in Your plan for us,
Doubt in the purity of Your intentions,
Doubt that You could understand our thoughts
That spring from the hearts and minds You placed in us.

In our confusion and pride,
We turn the tables on You, O Lord:
It is not ourselves who do not understand.
It is You.

You, the tempter assured,
Did not love us enough
To trust us with Your mind.

You, the tempter assures,
Do not love us enough
To give us all we need.
We must take it for ourselves.

With his words of evil in our ears,
Our gaze into Your Heart of Pure Love falters.
And in that faltering
Our eyes turn from You, Love Itself,
To a darkness and coldness
That will know no Light.
Our hearts turn cold and
Our minds grow dark.

How hard, dear Lord, it is for us
To recapture that unbroken gaze of Love
Once weakened by the tempter’s lies.

O Sacred Heart of love unending,
Rip the roots and hooks of evil and darkness
From our hearts, our souls, our minds and bodies.
Sever the vines of evil rooted in us
And graft us once again onto Your Vine,
The Vine of Life and Love and Truth
That reaches to us from Your Sacred Heart,
The Heart of our Creator and Sustainer;
The Sacred Heart which burns
With the Flame of Pure Love
Guiding our prodigal return
Into Your arms and Heart of Love.

Joys and Sorrows

Pierced by our sword,
Your Sacred Heart pours forth its contents.
Love, embodied in Your Blood,
Bursts forth, given to the last drop,
Mingling with the water
Of Your mercy and forgiveness.
Your Heart, giving forth an eternity of Love,
But enduring increasing humiliation,
Neglect, arrogance, even hate,
Grieves our sins with a sorrow
Deeper than death.
Yet Your Sacred Heart cries forth
With the Blood of Love
Mixed with the purifying tears
Of sorrow and mercy.

As an infant,
Hearing the cries of another,
Though not understanding the cause,
Is so moved with compassion,
He joins in unity with the heartbreaking cry,
So I, though unable to comprehend
The enormity of Your pain,
Grieve Your pain still and
Cry with a heart broken
For the One I love.

Come to this heart, Lord,
Broken for Your Love,
And take it away, to You,
To cry with Your sorrows,
To love through Your tears,
To die with Your death,
To rise with Your Life, Your joy,
To share in Your Sacred Heart,
To be consumed with
The joys and sorrows of You.

The Only Thing I Know

My fortresses fall, my mountains crumble,
Stars and earth move around me.
Nothing is untouched, nothing is real,
Save a growing core,
Immovable, solid yet soft, unchanging.

This only grows stronger and clearer,
As everything else falls around me.
There is only one thing I know.
There is only one thing that is real.

You, O Sacred Heart of my God,
Are at the core of who I am.
You, O Sacred Heart of Love,
Are the only thing unchanging in me.
My love for You, O Sacred Heart,
Is all I know of myself that I am sure of.
My love for You is all I am
And all I want to be.

Like the Nugget left after the furnace
Turns ore to gold, are You, my Lord.
Like the Rock left after the tide
Washes away the sand, are You, my Lord.
Like the Light of a burning flame
Holding off the darkness, are You, my Lord.

You have not moved in Your love for me.
You have held me still, unchanging in my love for You
Though in everything else I crumble.
Your Heart of Love, like the cement of my life,
Holds me together with the only thing I know.

The Night Walk

Lost on Your path,
My compass searches for Your Heart.
Led into the wilderness by Your Spirit,
Into uncharted regions of the soul,
I stumble, I fall in the night.
I grope in the darkness for You,
Trusting You are still there.
As I try to brush off the dust
From my recent falls,
I sense Your gaze upon my soul.
Your hands gently wipe the tears
And dirt from my eyes and
Softly taking my bruised hands in Yours,
You tug at me to try again.

Bewildered by the difficulty of the path,
I watch for the break of dawn
So that I may see the way.
But Your hand in mine
Tells me of the Night Walk,
The trusting soul,
That closing eyes to darkness,
Walks only in Your Light;
Then holding on to Your hand,
Enters softly into the
Secret Regions of Your Heart.

Your hand lifts me again.
Closing my eyes,
I hope for a glimpse
Of the Secret Path
Leading to the Eternal City
Of Your Sacred Heart.