“Let me hear you declare: I am your salvation.”

I know that you are my salvation, Lord; but now I want to hear it from your own lips. I want the sound of your voice, the firmness of your gesture. Let me hear you directly and personally, addressing me in my own heart. Let me receive from you the message of hope and redemption for my life: “I am your salvation.”

And once I have received from you the message of salvation, I trust I will see it carried out in the trying vicissitudes of my daily life. You are always with me, and you are my salvation, so that now I can expect this salvation to work its wonders for me day to day as I need your help, your guidance and your strength. If you are truly my salvation, make me feel it so effectively in the daily difficulties that beset me.

In particular, Lord, save me from the people who wish me ill. There are such people round me, and the burden of their jealousy bears down heavily upon my powers of endurance. There are people who rejoice when I encounter misfortune, and laugh when I fall.

“When I stumbled they crowded round rejoicing,
they crowded about me;
nameless ruffians jeered at me
and nothing would stop them.
When I slipped, brutes who would mock even a hunchback
ground their teeth at me.
O Lord, how long will you look on
at those who hate me for no reason?
Let no treacherous enemy gloat over me
nor leer at me in triumph.”

I do not mean to complain about anybody, Lord; they know their intentions and they handle their consciences; but I do feel at times the friction, the tension, the enmity that harden faces and strain relationships. I want to look on everybody as a friend, and on every co-worker as a partner. But I find that difficult in a world of competition and backbiting and jealousy.

What I want is for me to accept personally everybody, so that by my accepting others, they may come in turn to soften their stand and to accept me. Remove all bitterness from my heart and make me kind and gently, to invite kindness and gentleness from others and to clear the air wherever I live and wherever I work.

Be my salvation by redeeming me and all those I live with and deal with from the blight of jealousy. Let us all rejoice at the good that each one does, let each one take as done by himself whatever his brother has achieved.

“Then I shall rejoice in the Lord