Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures –
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.

Blessed Charles de Foucauld wrote words like these in one of his notebooks. In his own style, he included many redundancies and repetitions in his writing of this prayer. It was supposed to be Brother Charles’ version of the prayer of Jesus on Calvary.

After Charles’ death, the redundancies and repetitions were removed, and the “prayer of abandonment” came to be used regularly by his large and diverse spiritual family.