Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you; and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them: Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come life everlasting. Amen.
A Prayer of St. John Chrysostom
This is usually the last prayer of Morning Prayer in the Daily Office. It dates back to the 4th Century and has been used by the church for nearly 1700 years as a reminder that the church gathers as a community and offers its prayers and petitions together as the Body of Christ.
I have always marveled at how the Church is so diverse, and so spread out, and yet so connected. On any given day, thousands of us pray the Daily Office together. We may be in different locations separated by time and space, yet we are reading the same scriptures, singing the same Psalms, offering the same collects, reciting the same Apostle’s Creed, and boldly praying the same Our Father. As Jesus said, where two or three are gathered in his name, he is in our midst.
I love the beginning of the last sentence of the prayer: “Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us…”
We may have desires and wants that we offer up in prayer, but we trust God to do what’s best for us. As that theologian Garth Brooks said a few years back, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers…”
Today, we share our common prayers and supplications, may God grant us all that we need, and what is best for us.