Quotable Archive

I serve the community's prayer

I gather it and give it voice.

I am leader, and I am listener,

I am seeker of stories.

What is your grief and what is your delight?

(Woman, why are you crying?)

What saps your strength and renews your youth?

(What matters are you discussing as you walk along?)

What concerns you from day to day?

(Have you caught anything, friends?)

What are your memories and what are your dreams?

I sit at the feet of a hundred story tellers.

I hear Good News:

God has taken flesh

at breakfast tables and on assembly lines,

in classrooms and in hospitals,

I hear the Gospel proclaimed

from the lips of a hundred preachers.

I the faith-bearer

am challenged by a hundred questions,

and dunked a hundred times a day

in reality.

I dare not offer platitudes

to these struggling Christians,

my teachers.

I put on the Lord Jesus Christ

who walked our roads and knew our hearts,

who listened with love.

Am I to be head

of the body-at-worship?

Then I must be its ears,

first a hearer.

Janet Schlichting, O.P.