Aug 18, 2010 Wednesday: The Prayer of the Workers Hired Late

"The Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at down to hire laborers for his vineyard...'The last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day's burden and the heat.'...'My friends..What if I wish to give this last one the same as yours? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?" (Matthew 20:1-16)

The following excerpt of Elisabeth Leseur appeared on Aug. 18, 2010 daily meditation for Magnificat missallette. 
(Elisabeth Leseur, who died in 1914, was a French married laywoman whose cause for canonization is underway)

The Prayer of the Workers Hired Late

To love, to be unpretentious, to simplify my life--to go joyfully to God, seeking nothing for myself, in complete abandonment.

Never to lose sight of the intentions for which God wants me to pray, to suffer, and to act. In the midst of exterior activities and my obligations, to keep my inner attention fixed on God, to offer everything for those I love, for those Jesus desires, for the Church.

To be always ready to obey the inner call of this gentle Jesus to action or to suffering, or to eternity, too, when he wills, and to reply  always with joy and generosity, "Here I am, Lord, ready to do your will." The day will come, will it not, O God, when it will be your will that I come to you, when the darkness and the sorrows shall vanish, and the burden of the body will no longer weigh on me, when my soul will fly at last, freely to your beauty, to plunge itself into your holiness, to drink in your love.