Prayer: Prayer for the Grace to Age Well, by Pierre Teilard de Chardin, from "The Divine Milieu"

When the signs of age begin to mark my body,
and still more when they touch my mind;
When the illness that is to diminish me or carry me off
strikes from without
or is born within me;
When the painful moment comes to which I suddenly
awaken to the fact that I am growing ill
or growing old; and
Above all at the last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive
within the hands of the great unknown forces that have formed me,
In all these dark moments, 0 God,
Grant that I may understand that it is you—
provided only my faith is strong enough—
who is painfully parting the fibres of my being
in order to penetrate to the very
marrow of my substance and bear me away within yourself.