Prayers for Christmas 2023-2024

Twelfth Day of Christmas, January 5, 2024

Christ of Christmas Day and Season, we can never leave the perpetually birthing events of realizing you and all and in all;  give us grace to the manifold phases of your divine creating and birthing effects everywhere.  Amen.

Eleventh Day of Christmas, January 4, 2024

God of Christmas, the Mass of Christ; we thank you for giving us the Mass to commemorate the continuous birthing of Christ within us as the realization of the image of God upon our lives even as we observe particular remembrance events of what is always already.  Amen.

 Tenth Day of Christmas, January 3, 2023

God, who birth within the human experience cannot be limited to the Christmas event or season, be born in us continuously as we seek identity each moment with what is the highest in us as living proof of the values of love and justice.  Amen.

Ninth Day of Christmas, January 2, 2024

God of all, we tend to make you but a local deity who rubber stamps our very provincial lifestyle; give us humility to perceive your plenitude and welcome to all in ways individually unique to each person.  Amen.

Eighth Day of Christmas, January 1, 2024 (Feast of the Holy Name)

Eternal Word, from you arising the naming habits of humanity as our hope of preserved identity across the changes which time forces upon our outward and inward being; we give thanks that the name of Jesus is remembered in many ways in attaining the constant return as the Risen Christ, and we entrust our identities to the vast memorial capacity of the Eternal Word, who is God.  Amen.

Seventh Day of Christmas, December 31, 2023 (A certain calendar last day of the year)

O God, whether we call today, the seventh day of Christmas or the last day of our calendar year, we invoke your presence upon the times of our lives in search of meanings in our lives which are passing away; help us to value the times our lives, of everyone's lives with the practice of love and justice.  Amen.

Sixth Day of Christmas, December 30, 2023

God, who is the Horizon of all that we know, keep us humble enough within your great Horizon to care for everyone and everything which lives and moves and have being within the great Horizon that you are.  Amen.

Fifth Day of Christmas, December 29, 2023

Eternal Word, our knowing of you and anything begins with you as with great reflexivity we became worded beings who know each other and our world through having word; help us to find our voices of love and justice in our words and deeds and in our social structures.  Amen.

Fourth Day of Christmas, December 28, 2023 (Holy Innocents)

Jesus Christ, your word says that children's angels in heaven behold the divine Father even while children on earth suffer and die as part of the direct and collateral damage of the cruelty and neglect of adults; renew us in the mission to protect infants and children as central to our calling to mentor those who are the future of our world.  Amen.

Third Day of Christmas, December 27, 2023

Eternal Christ, we poetically proclaim you as all and in all by confessing you as Word from the beginning; help us to make the very best words flesh in our lives with creative body language deeds of love and justice.  Amen.

Second Day of Christmas, December 26, 2023

Word made flesh, you are the mystery of the mystification of what we see, hear, touch, and taste with a symbolic order of meanings.  Give us wisdom in the ordering of our lives through our deliberate roles in finding our voices in language to teach our body language to perform the deeds of kindness, justice, and mercy.  Amen.

Christmas Day, December 25, 2023

O God whose greatness might make you so aloof from human experience; we thank you for the discovery of the Christmas Story of your hiddenness within human experience, even within the Christ Child, who is born in us and gives us grace to accept our experience as a valid way to know what is sublime in human living.  Amen. 

Prayers for Christmas 2022-2023

Thursday of Christmas 1, January 5, 2023

God, whom we want to claim as ours, and often in implying that you have our limited provincial interests; remind us again that you are manifest to all, especially to those who might be most foreign to our own experience.  Let us ponder the wideness of your manifestation and experience the gradually widening of our own hearts.  Amen.

Wednesday of Christmas 1, January 4, 2023

God, who is our Hope, our endless future is in you even as we are committed to what is best in current situation of our lives.  Give us grace not to put off the excellence which is required of this day to be expressive of love and justice.  Amen.

Tuesday of Christmas 1, January 3, 2023

Gracious God of Good News, the Epiphany of Jesus is the Good Fame that is needed in our world which promulgates so many undesirable models of evil or the merely benign.  Let us latch onto the good news from the truly worthy model given to us in Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Monday of Christmas 1, January 2, 2023

God and Father of Jesus, you gave your Son-child Jesus to Mary and Joseph, and you gave them grace to share him with the entire world as a sign of your abiding presence with us.  Give us grace to so show forth the love and justice of Christ that we might winsomely persuade the world of your love.  Amen.

Sunday, Feast of the Holy Name, January 1, 2023

God, the Holy Name of Jesus was given in time to be a source of coalescing our identity around what is our human salvation, our holy health in the best human behaviors of love and justice.  Amen.

  Saturday after Christmas, December 31, 2022

God of continuous time, we mark a last day of the year in how we classify time, even as today has both sameness and differences with what has come before.  Help us to honor time by what we do in the times of our life as we seek the health of salvation of loving and just lives.  Amen.

Friday after Christmas, December 30, 2022

God, whom we name, even though you cannot be contained by any name, we address you as open, continuing surpassing greatness whose capacity contains all and us.  We thank you for the permission to use your name as a sign of being in relationship with you, and we desire to serve this relationship better each day.  Amen.

The Fifth Day of Christmas, December 29, 2022

Glorious Word made flesh, you have never ceased the creative process of the word being made continuously material world events to our perception.  You also became flesh in love and justice and to these valuing actions we commit our own dynamic of being word made flesh.  Amen.

Feast of the Holy Innocent, December 28, 2022

God, who became submitted to the vulnerability of a baby in the Christ Child; we asks for the angels of children to keep them safe, especially from human tyrants and human adult behaviors which jeopardize their safety.  Amen.

The Third Day of Christmas, December 27, 2022

God of mystery, the beloved disciple is an unnamed one and perhaps invites one to enter into knowing oneself as a beloved disciples, beloved pupil and student of Christ, who lives among other who are or who are realizing their beloved status as well.  Give us grace to live as beloved ones with each other.  Amen.

The Second Day of Christmas, December 26, 2022

God, we thank you that you are definitively known because we have Word, and that Word has and always already become flesh.  Give us grace to elevate the meaning of words through the practice of justice, love, and care.  Amen.

Christmas Day, December 25, 2022

God, forgive us for not recognizing the divine presence everywhere, even as we offer thanks this day that the Godly Presence became particular in the human child Jesus to remind us the surprising places for the divine to be made apparent.  Amen.

Prayers for Christmas 2021

Wednesday in 2 Christmas, Eve of the Epiphany, January 5, 2022

God whose very name would imply universality, what would be the universal meaning of Jesus Christ to everyone in the world?  We ask that the Christ nature of God's image being upon all persons would arise in each person and allow each person to recognize our common family identity so that we would care for each other as we seek to take the very best care of ourselves.  Amen.

Tuesday in 2 Christmas, January 4, 2022

O God, we believe that in Jesus Christ, the divine life became initiated into humanity in the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist; help those who are strong and powerful to accept their initiation into community for the the purpose of ministry and helping the entire community to raise their level of well being.  Amen.

Monday in 2 Christmas, January 3, 2022

God whom we know in palpable ways when the experience of the Sublime marks our human experience with the extraordinary and the uncanny, we ask for events of the Epiphany of Christ in increased events of the active practice of love and justice in the behaviors of all people.  Please God, inspire the sublime results of love and justice to become manifests so that the world can be saved.  Amen.

Sunday, 2 Christmas, January 2, 2022

God whose realm is everywhere, you make your realm accessible to all who with wisdom comes to find that all human life is possessed with Word ability that can become expressive of the wisdom which best characterizes the wisdom of God and life.  Amen.

Saturday in 1 Christmas, January 1, 2022, The Holy Name

O God, we have measured another year in the 4.543 years which have passed according to our own location and measuring standard; forgive us for overestimating our own time because we are prisoners of our own era.  Let our estimation of our own time be a time to add the qualities of love and justice to our world and help us to reverse the arc of damage that we are inflicting upon the people of the future because we live as though our world only belongs to us in our own time.  Amen.

Friday in 1 Christmas, December 31, 2021

God of Time, we label in arbitrary ways time in measurements as a way of telling our story located in time and space.  The end of a unit called a year is an attempt like grasping the water in the river that flows aways and we might call a handful of river water representative of the entire stream.  And so we clasp the river of Time with our calendars because we want that the time of our life to be qualitative time punctuated by the good deeds that qualify the days of our life.  Amen.

Thursday in 1 Christmas, December 30, 2021

Gracious Word of God, forgive us for keeping faith stories within their own logic and failing to see how they are meant to inspire us to do the seeming impossible task of making heaven on earth in the practice of love and justice.  God, we look to the impossibility of the miracles stories so that we might be inspired to overturn the logical gravity of selfish sin and let God do the seeming impossible work of justice through us in our daily practice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 1 Christmas, Holy Innocents, December 29, 2021

God of power and might, you share that power and might with people so that they can protect and care for infants and children; we condemn in your name the abuse of power which causes the needless death and harm of any infant or child and we ask that the power of humanity be converted to care for the vulnerable in Jesus' Name.  Amen.

Tuesday in 1 Christmas, December 28, 2021

God of the incarnation, make the Word flesh in us again and again as it can be made active in the words and deeds of love and justice in our lives.  Amen.

Monday in 1 Christmas, December 27, 2021

O God of the Martyrs, who presides over the free conditions where good people get killed wrongly, and bad people live on to do harm and evil for their power and their greed; you continue to inspire the humble and the good to overcome evil with the seeming pitiful weapons of goodness because you do not want good people to perpetuate evil in any way.  Give us hope to believe that the seeming invisible effects of goodness are building the infrastructure for future goodness.  Amen.

Sunday, 1 Christmas, December 26, 2021 (on the passing of Archbishop Tutu)

O Christ, the Eternal Word, made flesh in Jesus; you became made flesh again in your prophet and priest Desmond Tutu and the people of South Africa were rebuked into the work of reconciliation, forgiveness, and restoration.  Thank you for revealing in the work of our brother Desmond how bad our sins have been, how significant the changes to betterment have become, and yet further revealing the work that needs to be done in the loving of God and our neighbors.  Amen.

Christmas Day, December 25, 2021

Dear God, we thank you for uncovering the mystery of the ages, in the birth of Jesus who was the New Adam to help us realize that the image of God upon us is in fact the realization of the Risen Christ with us.  Thank you for using all creation as a midwife for Christ to be born in us.  Amen.