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"Come to me"

  • SISTER WENDY BECKETT

...What we cannot accept is that we are the beloved


orvieto...or to put it more concretely, speaking as Everyman, that I am the beloved.  God longs for me, he presses on my heart with a tender, humble hunger for me.  He wants to possess me: when I let him, it is prayer.  Always his love drives him to possess — one might call this the prayer of living?  And when we have time, he enters into his own like a king — what one might call pure prayer.  The pain of prayer is frustrating his love, and the joy is assuaging it however feebly.  To be so loved and so wanted is so terrifying and so awful that we can see why we shrink from believing it.

Another thing we are wary of believing is that prayer is gift.  We don't choose our own prayer (or it might be different!).  God is the prayer, the Pray-er.  All he wants is that we accept, suffer, be involved, be left defenseless.  I think one might easily die of it, yet what could be simpler?

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Acknowledgement

beckett1 Sister Wendy Beckett. "Come to me." excerpt from Spiritual Letters (New York, NY: Orbis Books, 2012).

Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Orbis Books. This excerpt appeared in Magnificat in December 2014.

The Author

Beckett3Beckett7Wendy Beckett, better known as Sister Wendy, is a British hermit, consecrated virgin, and art historian who became well known internationally during the 1990s when she presented a series of documentaries for the BBC on the history of art. Among her books are Spiritual Letters, Sister Wendy's Meditations on the Mysteries of our Faith, and Sister Wendy on Prayer.

Copyright © 2012 Sister Wendy Beckett