You Have to Break My Heart Always

Lord, you know that I will forget to follow you and depend on you.
You know that I will not turn to you anymore as your child
if I feel I can make it on my own.
So you have to break my heart always,
you have to keep me poor and humble,
you have to keep me incapable of anything without you.

You have to make it clear to me
that I can do nothing without your grace,
and that will never be clear to me
if I think things are going well.
You have to break my heart.

(A prayer of Fr. Vincent Nagel, from the book Magnificat Year of the Priest Companion)