Prayer for the Day

by Revd Canon David White

20th September 2026 - 16th Sunday after Trinity

Help me, O God, to put off all pretences and to find my true self.
Help me, O God, to discard all false pictures of you –
whatever the cost to my comfort.
Help me, O God, to let go all my problems, and fix my mind on you.
Help me, O God, to see my own sins, never to judge my neighbour,
and may the glory be all yours.
Into your hands I commend my spirit.
Your will, not mine, be done.  Amen.

This is a deep and penetrating prayer by Anthony Bloom. His title was Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (1914 – 2003). He was best known as a writer and broadcaster on prayer and the Christian life though he was also a monk and Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. He had lived his early life in Moscow where his father had been in the diplomatic service and after denying the Christian faith in the early part of his life, he was ordained priest in 1948 and became head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain.

This prayer reflects his theology and approach to the spiritual life in which he focussed on the complexities of the personal encounter between humans and God.

Each line and petition of this prayer is a complete prayer in itself – and then to have them grouped together like this is almost overwhelming. How do we start to deal with our pretences and find our ‘true self’, let alone discard all the ‘false pictures’ we have of God? Maybe the thing to do, as the prayer says at the end, is to commend ourselves to God – and do the best we can to love him with all our heart and mind and soul, and our neighbours as ourselves.