A Prayer of Offering for Lent

 

"The world is content with setting right

the surface of things;

the church aims at regenerating

the very depths of the heart."

Bl John Henry Newman

The Idea of a University (1852), p. 203

A Prayer of Offering for Lent

My God, I know well, You could have saved us at Your word, without Yourself suffering; but You did choose to purchase us at the price of Your Blood.  I look on You, the Victim lifted up on Calvary, and I know that Your death was an expiation for the sins of the whole world.  My Lord, I offer You myself in turn as a sacrifice of thanksgiving.  You have died for me, and I in turn make myself over to You.  My wish is to be separated from everything of this world; to cleanse myself simply from sin.  Enable me to carry out what I profess.

SOURCE: A Newman Prayer Book

Editor VF Blehl, SJ (1990), p. 23