The Prayer for the Fourth Sunday of Advent “Lord Jesus, make me a Christian who awaits your Coming with faith and trust” by Adolphe Baudon de Mony

“God of Mercy and Goodness, You will fulfill for poor humanity all the Promises of the Patriarchs and Prophets. To redeem her from sin, to reopen the Door of Heaven for her and close that of Hell, You will descend into a Crib! By the most incomprehensible Prodigy You will become a man like us and for us! How open our hearts must be to this magnificent thought, and what more beautiful moment than that of Communion to repeat: A God is going to come to us! A God will live with us! We will finally become the heirs of the Heavenly Father, worthy of Eternal Life! Also, Lord Jesus, while You are in my soul, I nourish myself with this thought which surpasses all my imagination, and I repeat to myself in the ecstasy of joy and humility: God so loved the world that He gave him his only Son! God is so Merciful that He is willing to forget our sins! God is so Powerful that He wants to take us out of the bondage of sin to bring us into Glory, to reform our corrupt nature and elevate it to Gospel Perfection. My God ! You are going down to save humanity! Praise, Honor and Glory to your Majesty, to your Mercy, to your infinite Indulgence! God of Justice and Truth, You have fulfilled your Promises: have I done the same? For a long time I have been approaching Your holy table to partake of it at repeated intervals; I have made resolutions at Your feet for a long time: have I accomplished these resolutions? Lord Jesus, enlighten me with the lights of your Holy Spirit, so that I can realize exactly what I have not done, and what remains for me to do. You told me through the mouth of Your forerunner, “Prepare the Way of the Lord, make His paths straight.” Did I act like this? Have I prepared in my soul a sanctuary worthy of You? Have I filled the valley of my base and corrupt inclinations? Have I lowered the mountain of my pride, of my personal concerns? Have I smoothed out through prayer, through mortification, the rough edges of my character and my mood? My Jesus, You tell us, be perfect, as Your heavenly Father is Perfect. I must therefore strive for Perfection; but how far I am from it! Since I wanted to devote myself to it, I have barely made any progress, and if I have not lost on one side what I thought I had gained on the other. So impress upon me seriously and once and for all the necessity of becoming like You, and for this reason to shake off my selfishness, to overcome my outbursts, to practice self-denial, and to live in mortification and penitence. My God, You want pure, chaste, zealous servants, finally worthy of You. Let me finally become one after so much hesitation. My Jesus, when will I be worthy of You? When will I devote myself with all my strength to the perfection that your Gospel advises us? Until today, I have only formed weak resolutions: on the contrary, inspire me with generous ones. Too often, I feared being too much Yours, doing too much for Your Glory, for my Sanctification. It always seems to me that my prayer is too long, my penance too hard, that my alms are too considerable; I am afraid of giving myself with too much abandon, and of becoming a true disciple of the Gospel, a true Saint. Lord, enlighten my mind, so that it breaks with these false thoughts! We can never love You too much, serve You too much. There is no excess to fear here, whatever the world says, as long as we comply with the Laws of your Church. We can love You badly. We can serve You with illusions and false and human ideas, but, once again, we never love You, we never serve You too much. Penetrate me with this strong thought, in order to make me a generous Christian, a Christian who awaits your Coming with faith and confidence, who works to accelerate it in himself and in others. There are too many of these soft and degenerate souls who belong neither to You nor to the world, who float between good and evil and do not want to break with either. I do not want to be like this, Lord Jesus, after so much kindness from You. Only help me to triumph over my weaknesses. I will make a serious examination of the life I led during the Advent Season, to see if I made progress in Virtue, or if I went backwards. Amen