Prayer for the Grace to Age Well

We are all engaged in the process of aging regardless of the count of our years.  This afternoon, I came across this wonderful prayer by Jesuit priest and French Philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  If memory serves me, the good father also made the well known statement, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience."  I want to share with you his "Prayer for the Grace to Age Well."  As Sister Joan Chittister wisely says, you have to begin to prepare now how you want to be when you are 80.

Prayer for the Grace to Age Well

"When the signs of age begin to make 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 the 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 myself."

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S..J. (1881-1955)