Dr. Paulos Mar Gregorios

Blessed be the name of the Lord our God! He has brought me to this day – 48 years of age.
I am supposed to be a mature adult. And yet I know how pitifully inmature I am, how woefully concerned about myself, about my health, about my future careeer and so on.
True maturity demands that one is free from excessive concern over oneself. I have lived a life in which there has been little sharing, and I have become selfish and ego – centred to the point of lovedom for others.
Here I have been at the Seminary for three years, and I am ashamed to think of how little I have really achieved. The Seminary is still not on a secure or stable foundation. Our financial situation is always precarious. We still have to build up a competent faculty. We have not constructed our adequate curriculam. We ought to produce dozens of books here – all these and many other works remain unfulfilled, quite perribly due to my own laziness.
The accident this past year has reduced the amount of my physical energy by half. I continue to make half a dozen trips abroad and that takes up all my time and energy. And I am not sure it is the wisest way of budgetting my time.
The spiritual wilderness seams in much more serious a problem. It must be that one’s emotions dry up at a certain age. In any case neither my emotions nor my will can experience much worship. Rich emotional experiences of the presence of God are perhaps no longer to be expected at my age. First the paralysis of the will seems to one a problem, with which I should deal. My prayer discipline has become extremely weak. Equally weak in my control over my thoughts and derives. There is a basic weakness of the will that render me unfit to be a fruitful calowrer in the Vineyard of the Lord.
O God, have mercy upon me. In Thee alone I trust. There is neither power nor wisdom in me. Only in Thy love can I find both power and wisdom. Make me free, endow me with power from on Light, that thy servant may truly serve thy kingdom.

(Written in 1970 Aug. 9)