The Prayers I Make
To The Supreme Being
(The Prayers I Make - music by Jane Marshall)
Michaelangelo
The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed
If Thou the spirit give by which I pray:
My unassisted heart is barren clay,
That of its native self can nothing feed:
Of good and pious works thou art the seed,
That quickens only where thou say'st it may:
Unless Thou show to us thine own true way
No man can find it: Father! Thou must lead.
Do Thou, then, breathe those thoughts into my mind
By which such virtue may in me be bred
That in thy holy footsteps I may tread;
The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind,
That I may have the power to sing of thee,
And sound thy praises everlastingly.
Sunday’s choral anthem is a beautiful arrangement of “The Prayers I Make”, music by Jane Marshall; poem by Michaelangelo Buonarri, translated by William Wordsworth.
Here is a short commentary on the poem and prayer. Enjoy.
Blessings,
Dorene
The words of this poem/anthem were penned originally by Michaelangelo Buonarrati (yes, that Michelangelo, a poet as well as a painter), and translated into English by William Wordsworth. They speak to a most basic fact about prayers and praying that we are deeply prone to forget or overlook. Prayer, when prayed with any kind of effectiveness, comes from the leading of the Holy Spirit more than from us. Prayers coming from our own motivation – the “barren clay” of the “unassisted heart” of Michelangelo’s poem – can be far worse than merely shallow or meaningless. They can be exercises in vanity and self-righteousness.
In this poem we are taught, “of good and pious works thou [God] art the seed…unless thou [God again] show us then thine own true way, no one can find it! Father, thou must lead.” Here, we rely on God to be able even to offer up the words to pray, and then those words in turn form us into those followers of God, into the body of Christ even, by their unceasing call upon us and our choices and actions.
In short, it is a deeply important call to be discerning and obedient to the Holy Spirit even in the act of praying, for whether it is Christ’s model prayer or any other, the prayers we make…make us.
To the Supreme Being echoes the themes of reliance on divine guidance and the limitations of human nature. It also reflects the Romantic era's emphasis on the importance of nature and emotion, as it portrays the speaker's prayer as a plea for inspiration from God. The speaker acknowledges their own shortcomings and the need for divine intervention to achieve spiritual growth. The poem's brevity and direct language convey the speaker's sincere and humble petition, capturing the essence of the Romantic era's focus on personal experience and communion with nature.
Source: https://allpoetry.com/To-The-Supreme-Being-From-The-Italian-Of-Michael-Angelo
https://kingdomwinds.com/michelangelos-spiritual-life/#:~:text=form%20of%20prayer.-,Michelangelo's%20intense%20faith%20was%20the%20primary%20cause%20of%20the%20greatness,bodies%20will%20release%20our%20souls.
https://gpconline.org/2020/03/08/sermon-the-prayers-we-make/#:~:text=The%20words%20of%20today's%20anthem,than%20merely%20shallow%20or%20meaningless.