Prayer for Grace, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription) and Grace Aguilar

Shared on:

13 May 2023 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories:

Repenting, Resetting, and Forgiveness

Tags:

dveykut, תשובה teshuvah, 19th century C.E., זמן תשובה Zman teshuvah, תחינות teḥinot, 56th century A.M., Prayers for Praying, English vernacular prayer, self-reflection, teḥinot in English

TOGGLE COLUMNS (on/off):

ADJUST COLUMN POSITIONS: select the column header cell and drag it where you want. show me!

COPY INDIVIDUAL COLUMN(S): use CopyTables, a browser extension.

TABLE HELP

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Prayer for grace.
	In my distress I called on the Lord, and He answered me with enlargement — He hath hearkened to the voice of my supplication, and answered to my secret cry: and now, oh Lord, yet hear Thy servant.
	Thy promises have never failed, and yet, oh Lord, my thanks are dead, my praises spiritless, and thus, alas! how can they be acceptable to Thee, who demandest the whole heart and soul of Thy servants, their whole affections?
	Thou, oh God, to whom we owe our every blessing. Thou knowest the weakness of Thy creatures, and demandest but love and devotion in return, and even this we hesitate, and are loth to give.
	Oh, Lord, have compassion on me, unworthy as I am; take not the joy of Thy salvation from me. Oh, so shed Thy Heavenly grace upon my heart that I may constantly feel devotion dwelling there, that gratitude may ever be glowing within me; and then will my thanks be no longer dead, my praises spiritless.
	In moments of enjoyment, oh, pour Thy spirit on my soul, that I may feel it is to Thee, Thee alone, I owe all these things; not to myself, or to my earthly companions; we are but tools in Thy hand: “not unto us, oh Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name, give glory.” (Psalms 115:1)
	Oh, let me think on this, and be my spirit warm within me; and in Thy mercy, oh Lord, teach my heart to feel, my lips to speak, Thy goodness and Thy mercy.
	Give me Thy blessed grace, that my soul may not be thus deadened, but that it may feel it is to Thee I owe all these things, every happiness I enjoy, and adore Thy glorious name.
	Father, have compassion on Thy servant, whose excessive weakness is known alone to Thee, and add yet more to Thy abundant mercy by granting me that blessed grace which will enable me to praise Thy name for evermore. “Praise the Lord, praise, oh ye servants of the Lord. Praise the Name of the Lord”; (Psalms 135:1) “Oh praise ye the Lord, all ye nations; praise Him, all ye people. For His merciful kindness is great towards us, and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever.” (Psalms 117:1-2)
	Praise ye the Lord! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

“Prayer for grace” by Grace Aguilar was published posthumously by her mother Sarah Aguilar in Essays and Miscellanies (1853), in the section “Sacred Communings,” pp. 229-230. The prayer does not appear in the UK edition of Sacred Communings (1853).

Source(s)

. Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication . 1.0 . Universal .

“Prayer for Grace, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

Grace Aguilar

Grace Aguilar (2 June 1816 – 16 September 1847) was an English novelist, poet and writer on Jewish history and religion. Although she had been writing since childhood, much of her work was published posthumously. Among those are her best known works, the novels Home Influence and A Mother's Recompense. Aguilar was the eldest child of Sephardic Jewish refugees from Portugal who settled in the London Borough of Hackney. An early illness resulted in her being educated by her parents, especially her mother, who taught her the tenets of Judaism. Later, her father taught the history of Spanish and Portuguese Jews during his own bout with tuberculosis which had led the family to move to the English coast. After surviving the measles at the age of 19, she began to embark on a serious writing career, even though her physical health never completely recovered. Aguilar's debut was an anonymous collection of poems, The Magic Wreath of Hidden Flowers. Three years later she translated Isaac Orobio de Castro's Israel Defended into English at her father's behest. Later her The Spirit of Judaism drew interest and sales in both Britain and the United States after being published in Philadelphia by Isaac Leeser. He added a preface to the work elucidating his differences with her, the first of many clashes her work would have with mainstream Jewish thought. In the 1840s her novels began to attract regular readers, and Aguilar moved back to London with her parents. Despite her success, she and her mother still had to operate a boys' Hebrew school to stay solvent, which she resented for the time and energy it took from her writing. In 1847, she became ill again with a spinal paralysis which she did not let prevent her from visiting her brother in Frankfurt. Her health worsened and she died there that September.

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

self-examination (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Self-examination [version 2], by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

self-examination for every night (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Self-examination for every night [version 1], by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

prayer for submission to the divine will (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Prayer for Submission to the Divine Will, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

prayer for self-knowledge (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Prayer for Self-knowledge, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

another prayer for self-knowledge (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Another Prayer for Self-knowledge, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

prayer for the government of the thoughts (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Prayer for the Government of the Thoughts, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings (Grace Aguilar 1853) - title

📖 Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings, by Grace Aguilar [ca. late 1830s] (ed. Sarah Aguilar 1852/1853)

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=50813

Associated Image:

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in shared links on social media.)

Source Data: XML | JSON

Re-formatted: HTML | ODT

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription) and Grace Aguilar.
Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=50813>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Additional Notes:

The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of contributors, patrons, or institutional partners.
We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture. If you like what you've found here, please help keep our project alive and online with your financial contribution.

ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17