We ask for your gifts:
• Wisdom to understand the situation, its priorities and the deeper needs;
• Fortitude to persevere, not to give up;
• Counsel to tackle the problem appropriately; and
• Piety to feel, to feel compassion, which is nothing other than feeling what the other feels.
We ask in reverence and awe of God to visit our brothers and sisters with humility.
We beseech Providence for those we visit: For they, like us, are Children of God and Temples of the Holy Spirit, they and we are, therefore, equal in dignity no matter what distress they feel or how much misery surrounds them.
In Jesus' name, we ask,
Amen.
(Source: Vincentian Rule, 1.7, commentary)
