A Prayer for Compassion

Oh God, I wish from now on
to be the first to become conscious
of all that the world loves, pursues, and suffers;

I want to be the first to seek,
to sympathize and to suffer;
the first to unfold and sacrifice myself,

to become more widely human
and more nobly of the earth
than of any of the world's servants.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881–1955)