The Old Words Are Not Tame

An ancient prayer from Ignatius for love, morning, strength.

A strange mercy of the Christian tradition is that it refuses to flatter us. It gives us words when our own words have become too polished to be honest.

The source text, drawn from Ignatius of Antioch, turns on a simple pressure: the soul cannot heal itself by becoming more articulate. It must be addressed, searched, forgiven, and led.

This is the sober genius of the tradition: it understands that attention is a battlefield, and that a short prayer can sometimes cut deeper than a long argument.

Christian memory is not a scrapbook. It is a school. This is one of the lessons.