Essential

How essential is every petition the Church prays!  Take the Lord's Prayer, for example.  It is necessary, for the good of the whole creation, that God's Name be hallowed.  We desperately need His Kingdom, and for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, for that would make earth into another heaven.  We need our daily bread, and as grocery prices go up and up and up, we think about this more than we perhaps used to.  We so, so need forgiveness, and we can't benefit from it unless we forgive one another.  We need to be dlivered from evil, and not to be put to any test beyond our endurance.

With Demetrios' upcoming surgery (to be scheduled during his appointment tomorrow), the prayer for "an angel of peace, a guardian of our souls and bodies" takes on new urgency.  With age, so do the prayers for passing the rest of our lives in peace and repentance (which are actually the same thing), and for a Christian ending to our lives, painless and without shame or suffering, and a good defense before the dread judgment seat of Christ.  And how desperately we need a unified Church to minister to us!  And how we suffer from lack of peace in the world.

And so on.  Each and every prayer is so perfect!  And so urgent.  And so all-important!

Truly, these prayers could only have been written by saints, and this Church could only have been made by the Holy Spirit!