Jesuits pray in many ways. Sometimes they compose their own prayers. Here is one from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), the French paleontologist and theologian, asking for the grace to age well. When the signs of age begin to mark my body (and still more when they touch my mind); when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off strikes from without or is born within me; when the painful moment comes in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old; and above all at that last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive within the hands of
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