The Severe Mercy in “For Joy and Gladness”

An ancient prayer from Early Church for joy, table, meal.

Prayer is not an escape hatch from the world. In the older Christian writers, it is usually the opposite: a way of standing still long enough for God to tell the truth about the world and about us.

So the invitation is simple: do not merely admire the sentence. Borrow it. Pray it until it starts telling the truth in your own voice.