Prayers for Advent, 2023

Sunday, 4 Advent, December 24, 2023

God of perpetual advents, your comings are ever fresh even as we trace the grooves of how you have come and been known in our past; as we create liturgical labyrinths of former paths to knowing you, let fresh insights of your coming anew be known.  Amen.

Saturday 3 Advent, December 23, 2023

God of the unpredictable, from obscurity Jesus became lionized as the Eternal Word, the All and in All, and the Glorified King above all; give us the eyes of faith to see the unpredictable goodness of Christ-likeness inhabit the peoples of the world.  Amen.

Friday in 3 Advent, December 22, 2023

Eternal Christ, we thank you that your life is conceived within us by the overshadowing of the eternal Spirit; help us not to limit your presence to a conceiving event and let our volitions participate with your continual growth within us to take us over with the work of love and justice through us.  Amen.

Thursday in 3 Advent, December 21, 2023

Gracious God of Hope, we await for what we already have in part, because the hope in us makes us expectant of more in love and justice for our world.  Amen.

Wednesday in 3 Advent, December 20, 2023

God, we are living and moving and having our becoming within the overall divine creative Becoming; let us not alight on any thing as final outcome but only as temporal occasions toward becoming surpassing persons toward more excellent future selves.  Amen.

Tuesday in 3 Advent, December 19, 2023

Christ, whose identity with Jesus in history we retrace in our season of Advent; we confess and tell the origin of our identity in the birth of Jesus whose story became worthy to tell in the aftermath of manifest post resurrection experiences of people who pondered why such things happened.  Let us know a continuity with the birth of Christ with new occasions of the sublime in us now.  Amen.

Monday in 3 Advent, December 18, 2023

God of the Song of Mary, the world awaits the casting down of the thrones of the tyrants and the lifting up of the lowly even while you have apparently left us with a responsibility to make such happen;  we ask for the end of those who abuse power and in greed control the vast proportion of the resources of the world to the neglect of the common good.  O God, defeat the greedy, we pray.  Amen.

Sunday, 3 Advent, December 17, 2023, Gaudete

God, you comprise the fullness of everything, and this fullness impinges upon us as an accessible joy; let us be lured by this accessible joy in the midst of the woes which confront us in the competition selfish egos in our world which often leaves us unhappy and disillusioned because we are not yet what we might be.  Amen.

Saturday in 2 Advent, December 16, 2023

God, who will always be the Always Already, in faith we know that we will reassess in different ways than how we interpret our current experience now; help us to cherish what appears good to us now and give us courage to bear what seems to be awful, knowing that future reconstitution of the traces of what has been will include all with expanding meanings colored by future outcomes.  Amen.

Friday in 2 Advent, December 15, 2023

God of All, we are often frustrated by such diversity in the world known poignantly when we encounter the newness of difference; give us the humility to know that we are but a small occasion of clusters within the Great All, and in this humility give us grace to have the wisdom of justice in living together.  Amen.

Thursday in 2 Advent, December 14, 2023

God, who tolerates everything, enlarge our hearts to embrace the diversity of people who want the conditions of justice and love in our lives, and let us never regard largesse of hearts to be a weakness.  Amen.

Wednesday in 2 Advent, December 13, 2023

God of everlasting time; let us seek the end of unjust conditions by bringing bad behaviors to the judgment of exposure followed by the transformation of wrongly used energy into the works of love and justice.  Amen.

Tuesday in 2 Advent, December 12, 2023

God of John the Baptist, let us like him be those voices who announce the good news about Christ, effacing ourselves behind the goodness of the Risen Christ who rises within us to help us achieve the love and justice that is needed in our world today.  Amen.

Monday in 2 Advent, December 11, 2023

God who gave us Christ as an example of what excellence can be in human appearance; help us not to misrepresent the excellence of Christ by identifying him with false triumphalism and disassociating him from the poorest of the poor and the most needy in our midst.  Amen.

Sunday, 2 Advent, December 10, 2023

God, who allows all conditions which are, we take comfort in the continuous sustaining of the world; give us the hope that believes the future will fulfill the past and that any particular moment of weal or woe does not stand alone in pride or regret after it has been relegated to being but amid a Greater Story.  Amen.

Saturday in 1 Advent, December 9, 2023

God, who sends prophets to let us know what is wrong; we thank you for not leaving with negative criticism regarding our failures as you show us what we can become in love and justice with the transformation of our life energies.  Amen.

Friday in 1 Advent, December 8, 2023

God, the higher power giving the grace of impulse control; we are inspired to set seasons of fasting to highlight the gross inequities in resource distribution throughout our world, so as to fast for employing more just distribution.  Spare us from making our fast serve but our selfish piety rather than taking from our excess to give to those who need more.  Amen.

Thursday in 1 Advent, December 7, 2023

Gracious God, give us the grace of higher power to fast, not to prove that we are religious, but to further healthful impulse control which in turn allows us to organize the resources of our lives to share with those in need.  Amen.

Wednesday in 1 Advent, December 6, 2023 (Nicholas of Myra)

Gracious Giving God, let the traditions which derive from Nicholas of Myra be foremost a care for the safety and well being of the children of the world in their having plenty of food, shelter, clothing, education, and caring mentors for their future success.  Amen.

Tuesday in 1 Advent, December 5, 2023

God who has empowered us in freedom, give us the courage to do want we can and keep us from expecting from you what we need to do ourselves; and let us commit the things outside of our strength and ability to your providence.  Amen.

Monday in 1 Advent, December 4, 2023

Great Giver of Goodness, you have provided so much for our enjoyment that we often linger such enjoyment into addictions  and over indulgence; restore us in the ability to fast for impulse control and for the sharing of our excess with those who need what is basic for their subsistence.  Amen.

Sunday, 1 Advent, December 3, 2023

God of Time, we have given you a calendar to invoke you into the times of our lives through a teaching curriculum so that we may ponder the manifold aspects of your appearances to us;  give us expectant hearts for your arrivals, even as we review your past epiphanies to us and to the blessed people of our heritage.  Amen. 

Prayers for the Season of Advent 2022

Saturday of 4 Advent, December 24, 2022

God who is Sublime and who shares sublime occasions with us; we thank you for the most divinely Sublime Christ who has shared with us the path of knowing our own sublime divine parentage in being in God's image.  Give us grace to be good children of God.  Amen.

Friday of 4 Advent, December 23, 2022

God of perpetual coming to humanity and God who has alway been present to humanity; let us not your many occasions of becoming apparent in time make us forget the divine undergirding presence of life itself.  Amen.

Thursday of 4 Advent, December 22, 2022

God of Time, teach us to value our tentative lives and grant us strength to make what is tentative by being constant efforts at the practice of love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday of 4 Advent, December 21, 2022

God who comprehends light and darkness, the longest and shortest day of the year occurs at the same time depending upon our location on earth; give light in our darkness and give us the darkness of rest for our renewal we pray.  Amen.

Tuesday of 4 Advent, December 20, 2022

O God who opposes the tyrants, hasten the end of the oppressors of this world so that those who wish for the kindly sharing of everyday life might live in peace.  Amen.

Monday of 4 Advent, December 19, 2022

God, who is same in your omnipresence, we give thanks for the Word made flesh in Jesus as a definitive message of the truth of God always being with us in Sameness of presence in all creation.  Give us humility to know that we are always walking on holy ground of divine presence and let us honor your presence everywhere with how we live with love and justice.  Amen.

Sunday, 4 Advent, December 18, 2022

Gracious God, forgive us for personalizes your universal love and forgetting that your love belongs equally to everyone else.  Amen.

Saturday of 3 Advent, December 17, 2022

God of all, forgive us when we invoke you as justification for our small hearts in excluding others from invoking you from different situations than ours.  Amen.

Friday of 3 Advent, December 16, 2022

Christ the Eternal Word, you have created us a language users to know that we use language for speaking, writing, and our body language deeds; give us grace to elevate our language by practicing what love and justice might mean in speaking, writing, and the acts of our body language.  Amen.

Thursday of 3 Advent, December 15, 2022

God of all peoples, so many name you in different ways for their particular identity in their particular locations on earth; give us grace to promote our locations as houses of prayer for all people and avoid presuming that we speak exclusively for you.  Amen.

Wednesday of 3 Advent, December 14, 2022

God whom we say has advents in human experience even though you have never left human experience.  Give us who have live so long in states of your presence being inapparent, many more advent experiences of your apparent presence.  Amen.

Tuesday of 3 Advent, December 13, 2022

God who has been born within creation from the beginning; we thank you for the specific birth of God in Christ in the person of Jesus to bring us the knowledge of the general fresh natal presence of God within us.  Amen.

Monday of 3 Advent, December 12, 2022

God who would not be known if you were not with human experience; we thank you for the occasion of knowing the greatness of what we participate in and we ask for grace to be participants of this life with love and justice.  Amen.

Sunday, 3 Advent, December 11, 2022

God who is All, whose All has to get funneled into translatable bits to be processed by us; let the bits which get to us be the ones which teach us love and justice in our words and deeds today.  Amen.

Saturday in 2 Advent, December 10, 2022

God of Advents and perpetual comings known in language lives of language users; some of your comings to be known are more pronounced and poignant as in the person of Jesus and his many future comings as the Risen Christ.  Gracious God, let us be prepared for the many comings of God to us.  Amen.

Friday in 2 Advent, December 9, 2022

God of time, we live in the latest times; give us wisdom to peruse what we can from the past experiences of humanity, so that we can make better decisions to effect further future latest times for better conditions of justice.  Amen.

Thursday in 2 Advent, December 8, 2022

Gracious God who inspired the Magnificat; forgive us who sing this song when we do not lift up the lowly, or feed the hungry, or send the rich away empty.  Let us be delivered from being hypocritical singers of this glorious song.  Amen.

Wednesday in 2 Advent, December 7, 2022

God of patience, we often think that you wait too long for things to be resolves, corrected, ended, and redeemed.  Forgive us who do not have the same divine duration as you, to be patient in anticipating many good things for the common good of the most people in our world.  Amen.

Tuesday in 2 Advent, December 6, 2022

God of the most Expanding Realm, in this Realm the humble bishop of Myra has morphed into the patron giver of gifts for children.  Give us grace to keep this world aptly prepared for children to know the basic gifts of life.  Amen.

Monday in 2 Advent, December 5, 2022

Gracious and Everlasting God, your Realm includes the experience of time as the before and after moments of life; you have placed us in the latest times according to our contexts, and we ask for grace to integrate in wise ways the traces of the past that we know into a better now and future in our human craft of love and justice.  Amen.

Sunday, 2 Advent, December 4, 2022

Gracious God, the banality of your presence goes unrecognized and sadly we live the banality of unexamined inferior living of injustices.  Thank you for the prophets who expose our banal evils and who invite us to new habits of the banality of goodness which we begin to do without recognition.  Amen.

Saturday in 1 Advent, December 3, 2022

God of the beauty of infinite diversity, help us to appreciate the truth of beauty in its many forms; and let us not limit truth to but propositional logical phrases of science but complement the practical with aesthetics of love and justice.  Amen.

Friday in 1 Advent, December 2, 2022

God of Ideals, about whom none greater can be conceived;  we seek not to be condemned by what is best but coaxed to it in making choice and actions to be better today than yesterday.  Thank you for prophets who give us the direction of perfectibility.  Amen.

Thursday in 1 Advent, December 1, 2022

Gracious God, your Plenitude is beyond our comprehending capacity in always being More than we can  perceive even in the extended durations of our experience.  In your Great More, we receive utopian visions of the harmonies of love, justice, and peace, and though such visions elude our capacity to make them actual, we receive the grace of these visions to know the direction of goodness.  Keep us this Advent on the path of Goodness.  Amen.

Wednesday in 1 Advent, November 30, 2022

God, who is Utopian Being, your vision of perfection provides us with the direction for human progress toward love and justice and living with the most adequate harmony in this world of true freedom with so many agents of freedom in direct competition and clashes.  Give us the wisdom of harmony on the path of the best harmonies for the most beings in your created order.  Amen.

Tuesday in 1 Advent, November 29, 2022

God of all possibilities, the seeming impossible visions of future perfection haunt us daily to get our act together; we asked for the utopian person, the Risen Christ to spiritually animate us toward what might be significant progress today in surpassing ourselves in love and justice.  Amen.

Monday in 1 Advent, November 28, 2022

God of our ideals, you have sent prophets and the prophetic to remind us of how we fall short of the ideals of love and justice; give us grace to bear up in our gaping failures and give us strength to take wise incremental steps toward the ideals of love and justice in our specific life situations today.  Amen.

Sunday, 1 Advent, November 27, 2022

God of Everlasting Continuity, let us not only have visualization of the end of injustice, but let us also work to make justice a reality in our world toward the model of the perfect justice of the reign of Christ.  Amen.

Prayers for Advent 2021

Friday, Christmas Eve, December 24, 2021

God of dark and light in the natural realm, your presence is constant while the sun can be seen and when it is not; we seek constant light from the Spirit of your Son Jesus so that in wisdom we can direct the path of our life choices today.  Amen.

Thursday in 4 Advent, December 23, 2021

God of always, already synchronicity, we cannot help but divide life experience into sequences and categories and identities; but everything is always, altogether, and we trust your comprehension of the altogether, to help us have wisdom in our parsing of overwhelming experience through the specific funnels of our focus today in trying to make our specific situation better, not in a comparative way but in an integrative way with how we mediate the wisdom of your presence.  Amen.

 Wednesday in 4 Advent, December 22, 2021

O God, we who have invented the ability to have everlasting lights while there is natural darkness have lost the light of moral and just care of each other and our environment.  Restore in us the inner Light of Christ to penetrate the darkness of injustice, cruelty, and the selfish neglect of those who suffer the most because of lack of care.  Amen.

Tuesday in 4 Advent, December 21, 2021

O God, who bears everything which has come into existence; and in our thinking that existence should be censored to allow only the perfect to come into being, we erase the moral significance that can only come because of freedom in a field of probabilities, give us the grace to bear everything that we must face today, and help us to discern how we can exercise our moral significance by making the wise decisions in our circumstances toward loving and just outcomes.  Amen.

Monday in 4 Advent, December 20, 2021

Gracious God, you emptied the divine life into the life of a baby; your emptied life continues within the lives of all babies and vulnerable people in this world who have been diminished by harshness.  Give us grace to tend to the continual self-emptying of the divine within the weak in our world.  Amen.

Sunday, 4 Advent, December 19, 2021

O God of justice, we cannot yet say the world is just because we exist in time;  give us grace to approximate our behaviors in time with what is just, in giving everything and everyone their due, as each being is also able to acknowledge co-existence with all that was, is, and will be.  As we seek justice, let the notion of tomorrow's justice deconstruct the presumption of having arrived at justice for today.  Amen.

Saturday in 3 Advent, December 18, 2021

O God of the Magnificat, who lifts up the lowly; not all lowly are lifted up and not all hungry get fed, and we can blame you as an intermittent interventionist or we can live up to our moral integrity created by genuine freedom to persuade humanity to love one another for best human practice.  Amen.

 Friday in 3 Advent, December 17, 2021

God of Eternal Word, Time, and Freedom, we know ourselves to be because we have language, and having language we have come to name you because language is evidence of the personal, and having language, we cannot help but see everything in personal ways, and so to name you God, as Great Personal Being, seems unavoidable.  Give us grace to continue to take you and everything personally, especially if it means deliberate love, care, and justice.  Amen.

Thursday in 3 Advent, December 16, 2021

God of Freedom and Time within the lives of language users; we interpret today Freedom and Time as definitive of evolution toward being people of justice and love, and when we seem to be devolve away from justice and love, we ask that the horrendous outcomes will shock us back upon the path of justice and love.  Amen.

Wednesday in 3 Advent, December 15, 2021

O God of freedom, we need strategy of living with the truth of the free conditions of our world as we try to influence institutions and governments to feed the hungry and lift up the lowly, while doing what we can on the local scale in our neighborhoods.  We beseech the will of heaven of ideal behaviors and harmonies to be brought to the actual earthly conditions of our lives even though we know that what is perfect is always further in the future because all creations is still growing up and we of higher sentient life are hoping to learn better behaviors from having failed so often.  Help us in the continual task of reconciling the ideal to the actual, and may we play our part in helping to make the actual more ideal.  Amen.

Tuesday in 3 Advent, December 14, 2021

O God of Blessed Mary, are you scattering the proud and casting the mighty from their thrones when they are not lifting up the lowly?  We want the values of Mary's Magnificat to be ours today and we ask for the persuasive powers of God's love to further bend the arc of history toward helping the lowly.  Amen.

Monday in 3 Advent, December 13, 2021

Our souls proclaim the greatness of the surpassing Worthy One, because humility is natural in the face of Plenitude; and yet in our very humbled particular human being, we still find a favor in knowing our association, and completeness with the Great One.  And all generations of humanity have and will know the favor of having the Christ Child be born in them because of the divine spark on everyone's human life from the beginning of knowing existence itself.  Amen.

Sunday, 3 Advent, Gaudete, December 12, 2021

God of Rejoicing in the middle of such a diverse life that there are many thing which are so impaired of goodness that rejoicing can seem out of place; we look for inner and divine compensation to face things which are not worthy because of deliberate evil or the probability conditions which include sufferings; as the Lady of Guadalupe appeared to members of a subjugated people to give them hope and identity, let us also be those who bring hope to people in very deliberate ways when we have the ability to do so.  Amen.

Saturday in 2 Advent, December 11, 2021

O God, who asks us to rejoice because of knowing the fruit of the Spirit joy; we know that we cannot rejoice in the conditions of hatred, oppression, cruelty and suffering, even as we can be happy in the good things of life; help us to see you beyond the visible to be the true source of our joy in the midst of all that can happen to us.  Amen.

Friday in 2 Advent, December 10, 2021

God who comprehends the most extensive realm of Life; help us to live the values of the realm of God in the applied practice of harmony of difference known as justice so that all beings can find the role that is in accordance with the full freedom of their nature and in so doing live peaceably without causing harm to others.  Forgive O God, my prayer for the seeming impossible, but let the ideal inform even our attempts at harmony today.  Amen.

Thursday in 2 Advent, December 9, 2021

O God of authenticity, give us humility to receive the rebukes for our hypocrisy, and refrain from replacing right behaviors with religious piety, and help us to "know ourselves," by continual deferral to the Messiah, the one who is unsurpassable but who shares the direction of surpassability with us so that we can repent.  Amen.

Wednesday in 2 Advent, December 8, 2021

God of Power, is there any hope for "Christian" empires consisting of people who have forgotten our origins as oppressed peoples following the Christic martial arts of the beatitudes?  We pray for the perfection of power in being transformed for the care of everyone in society, especially the vulnerable and the weak, and help our democratic leaders to know care as the only way that power can be perfected.  Amen.

Tuesday in 2 Advent, December 7, 2021

O God, who could be named the superlative of all virtues, we seek to know joy as a sustainer and compensating fullness in the midst of life where the sadness of loss and the results of oppressions, tyranny, and lying are so rampant.  Let us not reduce joy to happiness for getting what we want but know it as a flow from a deep well as affirmation for original goodness of life itself.  Amen.

Monday in 2 Advent, December 6, 2021

O God of Nicholas of Myra, his outstanding witness of kindness to children inspired the imaginations to make him is his posthumous days a near universal saint of children.  Let the spirit of kindness reign today toward children so they can be nourished in hope for a future which from our current world can oft seem dire.  With hope let our children be inspired in creativity to make Nicholas' kindness universal.  Amen.

Sunday, 2 Advent, December 5, 2021

O God who inspires strategies of people getting better; you sent John the Baptist to emphasize the importance of understanding moral and spiritual direction and the importance of making a commitment to perfection even when our failure due to bad habits humiliate us as a strategy for bringing us to experience the grace of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Higher Power promised us in Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Saturday in 1 Advent, December 4, 2021

O God of desert solitude, city bustling activity, countryside pastoral settings; lead us to cross pollination of ideas and pieties born in different settings so that we might enlarge our hearts to understand the meaning of justice for persons within different life situations.  Give us grace to tolerate diversity even as diverse people honor justice for all.  Amen.

Friday in 1 Advent, December 3, 2021

O God of the Rainbow, comprehending the entire diversity of what is; give us the wisdom of knowing yes and no on matters of love and justice, but also the grace of the threshold between the either and or, because we are people in progress toward what we yet want to become.  Help me to know that my yesterday's yes, might be today's "no" because of the becoming in time toward what justice continually means.  Amen.

Thursday in 1 Advent, December 2, 2021

O God of the Silence which speaks and inspires, you sent John the Baptist from the silence of the wilderness to preach perfectability as the direction of human becoming, and he prepared the way for Jesus to baptize with the Higher Power of your Spirit, so that we might have the ability to progress in the path of the perfect excellence to which we are called.  Amen.

Wednesday in 1 Advent, December 1, 2021

Gracious God who calls us to excellence, let us be on the adjustable path toward perfection as we face always the binary of what is, with what is better for the people of our world in kindness, love, and justice.  Let us always resolve the binary of what is and what is better with creative advance toward excellence.  Amen.

Tuesday in 1 Advent, November 30, 2021

Eternal Word of God, even though words are made flesh and external reality in how words structure our existence; words in their most basic sense are interior reality and in this reality we have come to colonize our entire external order.  Give us grace to appreciate the interior angelic reality of word messaging and help us to find our best voices following the example of the values of love and justice given to us in the witness of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Monday in 1 Advent, November 29, 2021

God of space, time, and matter, it is hard for us to conceive of space, time, and matter as not existing yet we can understand transformations, transitions, endings, and new beginning as always, already happening.  We know that big transitions happen, like the one we call Death, but even as personal death is a change not an ending, we know that you preside over Continuous Life Always, and we are humbled to live and move and have our being and becoming in You.  Amen.

First Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2021

God of freedom and time, we aspire for a coming of a hero who would take away the very conditions which make moral freedom valid; we desire a world without possibility or probability of evil, harm, and need and we use hope's narratives for an analgesic for our current struggles.  Help us to accept the co-existence of ambiguous living with our days of childhood innocence when we could not understand moral significance and help us be morally strong people who protect the state of the innocent in those who have not yet attained their moral maturity.  And let this Advent season be one when all who should be morally mature, rise to the occasion to be those who protect the innocent.  Amen.