A Lenten Character

Ave Maria!  Sister Laurel at Notes from Stillsong Hermitage notes that St. Benedict says in his Rule of Life that all monastic life should have a Lenten character (see her entry "Feast of St. Benedict").  She includes the following prayer written by a Benedictine oblate and Presbyterian clergywoman.  Wow, what an examination of conscience!  It's a keeper and now has a permanent place in my spiritual survival kit. 

Search me, penetrating Spirit,
drag my depths for the sunken
accumulations of my life.
Retrieve it all:
the old, unhealed wounds,
the memories I've tried to keep
from you, who alone
can remedy and soothe.
Receive my sacrifice
of grudges, the sludge of unforgiveness,
the slights I horde like green pennies,
the pettiness I practice to protect myself
from pain.  I offer you the worthless cache
of my spirit's cuts and bruises, the elaborate
self deceptions that have long outlived their use.
Take what you find in the sodden sea chest
of my mind, and show it all to me.
Let me see what I've submerged:
what I ought to salvage,
what it's time to purge.

Rachel M. Srubas, Oblate, OSB

The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately corrupt;

who can understand it?

I the Lord search the mind and try the heart,

to give to every man according to his ways,

according to the fruit of his doings...

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;

save me, and I shall be saved;

for thou art my praise.

~Jeremiah 17:9-10; 14