Sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.

Note from Roadturn: These words are from a modern-day monk and priest. Their author, Father Lazarus, is a pilgrim in the tradition of the Desert Fathers.  

Before all we can ever see, touch or smell

Before all created things
Before even the world itself existed …

there existed the One.

The One was not created
The One was the creator
Revealed to the creation as Abba … Father
The One who existed before all things

Abba … Father

Only One Word was spoken
through the unity of the Holy Spirit
The Word who was Jesus
who was with Him and in Him from the beginning.

Jesus the Word was truly part of the One
who was entirely uncreated;
The One who always was and always will be.

Holy God, Holy and Immortal
Before time and after time

When the Word lives and prays in the heart
we come to have no prayer left for ourselves;
We come to see all existence as sacred
because it has flowed from the One
and exists according to His holy will .

We become transparent to God
We can do no other
than live to the Glory of God
Our prayer is that of the angels

to the Glory of Heaven
to the Glory of God

The Word and the silence have become One
in our hearts.

Father Lazarus

The Prayer of Abandonment

Father, I abandon myself into Your hands; do with me what You will.
Whatever You do I thank You.
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only Your will be done in me,
as in all Your creatures.

I ask no more than this, my Lord.

Into Your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to You, O Lord, with all the love of my heart,
for I love You, my God, and so need to give myself–to surrender myself into Your hands, without reserve and with total confidence;

for You are my Father.

Brother Charles of Jesus