So Heavy

An Italian friend translated this prayer, and it seemed particularly apt to the theme of grace that appears in many Catholic novels. I realize this prayer isn't meant as a work of fiction, but please consider it an accompaniment piece to the novels and short stories that have been written after 1900. From a Christian perspective, grace is meant as a gift for the undeserving, and for the quietly desperate like Binx in The Moviegoer or for those physically suffering like the whiskey priest in The Power and the Glory, this prayer is an acknowledgement that to live fully is to know pain.

The two graces

that the Lord gives

are sadness and weariness.

Sadness, because it forces me to memory.

Weariness, because it forces me to the reasons why I do things.

O God, let a total positivity lead my soul,

in whatever condition I am,

whatever remorse I have,

whatever injustice I feel passing on me,

whatever obscurity surrounds me,

whatever enmity,

whatever death overtakes me,

because You, who made all the living creatures, are for the good.

You are the positive hypothesis about everything I live.

---Don Luigi Giussani---