A Prayer by Michel Quoist

"I want to love, Lord,
I need to love.

All my being is desire;
My heart,
My body,
yearn in the night towards an unknown one to love.

My arms thrash about, and I can seize on no object for my love.

I am
alone and want to be two.

I speak, and no one is there to listen.

I live, and no one is there to share my life.

Why be so rich and have no one to enrich?
Where does this love come from?
Where is it going?
I want to love, Lord,
I need to love.

Here, this evening, Lord, is all my love. . . .
**********
Listen, son,
Stop,
and make, silently, a long pilgrimage to the bottom of your heart.

Walk by the side of your love so new, as one follows a brook to find
its source, and, at the very end, deep within you, in the infinite
mystery of your troubled soul, you will meet me.

For I call myself Love, son,
And from the beginning I have been nothing but Love,
And Love is in you.

It is I who made you to love,
To love eternally;
And your love will pass through another self of yours -
it is she that you seek;
Set your mind at rest; she is on your way,
on the way since the beginning,
the way of my love.

You must wait for her coming.

She is approaching.

You are approaching.

You will recognize each other,
For I've made her body for you, I've made yours for her.

I've made your heart for her, I've made hers for you.

And you seek each other, in the night,
In 'my night,' which will become Light if you trust me.

Keep yourself for her, son,
As she is keeping herself for you.

I shall keep you for one another,
And, since you hunger for love, I've put on your way all your brothers
to love.

Believe me, it's a long apprenticeship, learning to love,
And there are not several kinds of love:
Loving is always leaving oneself to go towards others. . . .
********
Lord, help me to forget myself for others, my brothers,
That in giving myself I may teach myself to love."

Michel Quoist,
France, 1954.