Showing posts with label Prayers for Lent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prayers for Lent. Show all posts

Saturday, April 8, 2023

Prayers for Lent, 2023

Holy Saturday, April 8, 2023

O God, on this Holy Saturday, we enter into the Sabbath Rest of Jesus in his death to all that is unworthy in life and in our lives in particular.  From our rest from what is unworthy we await the resurrecting Spirit of Christ to use the members of our body for goodness and love.  Amen.

Good Friday, April 7, 2023

God of Great Creative Freedom, you shared aspects of that freedom with all even to the point of Pontius Pilate freely condemning Jesus to death on a cross; give us grace to use the freedom that we have to live toward loving and just outcomes.  Amen.

Maundy Thursday, April 6, 2023

Providing and Sustaining Holy One, you reveal the survival of human community found in eating holy and life giving meals together, and in the service to each other; we commit ourselves again to offering Eucharist and to mutual service.  Amen.

Holy Wednesday, April 5, 2023

O Christ the sun, your light was eclipsed by the darkness and shadows of death for your Tenebrae; give us grace in our tenebrae to survive the hours and days when it seems as though Hope has lost.  Amen.

Holy Tuesday, April 4, 2023

O Continuous Plenitude, we know you by having Eternal Word found us as human beings with language, and we define the beginningless and the endless Continuity with stories; we thank for the stories of Holy Week which challenge us to come to meaningful engagement with life and death and to enhance the meanings of our lives with justice.  Amen.

Holy Monday, April 3, 2023

God of time, give to us a week of holy remembering of the events in the life of Jesus and so interweave their meanings with our lives in search of continuous meaning of what love means for us and our world.  Amen.

Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday, April 2, 2023

God of justice, when just people hear either Hosanna or Crucify him, let us be with the crowd who valorizes love and justice for all.  Amen.

Saturday in 5 Lent, April 1, 2023

Encompassing God beyond life and death, help us not to use the cross of Jesus to minimize the actual horrors of the event of death in the feelings of those who suffer the loss of their loved ones.  Give us faith to live with uncertainty and the delay in knowing the meaning of pain and death.  Amen.

Friday in 5 Lent, March 31, 2023

God of freedom, we suffer under the deeply sad inconveniences of death and harm when they happen before reaching the ages of life expectancy; in our untimely losses the field of probability becomes changed and we beseech your grace to live hopefully within new horizons of imminent probabilities.  Amen.

 Thursday in 5 Lent, March 30, 2023

God of all, give us grace to discern what we do within our identity in the crowd with whom we lodge; give us boldness to leave the former influences of our lives when love and justice is not the motive for peer actions.  Amen.

Wednesday in 5 Lent, March 29, 2023

God, whose Son ask for his killers to be forgiven because of their ignorance; enlighten us to move each day from our ignorances to see more clearly what wisdom asks of us in the cause of love and justice.  Amen.

Tuesday in 5 Lent, March 28, 2023

God of Mystery, we are amazed at the continuity of the confessed personal relationship with Jesus of so many throughout history when so many others in history are forgotten; we honor the knowable Christ found in our lives today.  Amen.

Monday in 5 Lent, March 27, 2023

Gracious God, the death of Jesus came to be called a good death in the providential confession of those who knew him in his afterlife; let us not diminish life by over-glorifying his death unless we use the power the inspiration of his death to prolong abundant life for as many as possible.  Amen.

Sunday, 5 Lent, March 26, 2023

Everlasting God of Time, we continually wait with hope for ordinary history to be understood as a surpassing providence of goodness for our lives and the life of our world, and in faith we hold on to resurrection reparation of all things with justice, forgiveness, and love. Amen.

Saturday in 4 Lent, March 25, 2023

God, whose image is buried within everything, you creatively are always already resurrecting previous occasions to new occasions which retain likeness of the previous.  Give us grace to be in the flow of creativity and with freedom add to new life with excellence.  Amen.

Friday in 4 Lent, March 24, 2023

God, you are the poetry of Plenitude, the endless reservoir of Word creating words to come along side what we experience and provide us with the meanings to grow in love and justice.  Inspire us to translate the poetry of Plenitude into the words and deeds of love, grace, and just today.  Amen.

Thursday in 4 Lent, March 23, 2023

God, who is Word, you have give the words Bread, Way, Life, Resurrection, Truth, Vine, and Lamb of God as metaphors for teaching us the many ways in which you are with us.  Thank you for being as close to us as our language is close to us.  Amen.

Wednesday in 4 Lent, March 22, 2023

God of former times, current time and future time; you let us know in Jesus that the divine omnipresence is resurrection life always for everyone.  Give us the grace of aware of such resurrection life even now.  Amen.

Tuesday in 4 Lent, March 21, 2023

God of all seasons happening everywhere, when it is spring for us, it is fall for others; we invoke your presence upon the time of our life today and we beseech your favor upon us to spread love, kindness, and justice in all the seasons of our life.  Amen.

Monday in 4 Lent, March 20, 2023

God of life, you give us the sense of afterlife before we die and this hope strengthens us in our progressive demise; let the hope of betterment motivate our lives today.  Amen.

Sunday, 4 Lent, March 19, 2023

God of such Light, our seeing eyes are ever adjusting to your brightness; help us to see more clearly today the ways in which we can be rightly related to everything, everyone, our own histories, and in ways which are honest, just, and loving.  Amen.

Saturday in 3 Lent, March 18, 2023

Gracious God, your perfection keeps us moving and changing and improving our seeing of what is good, right and just.  Forgive us our judgments from our continuous comparisons of each other and of we once were and let not our imperfection make us timid in progressing toward what is more just and loving.  Amen.

Friday in 3 Lent, March 17, 2023

God of love and justice, keep us on alert about new paradigms of thought and action which will make more manifest the practice in our world, the truth of love and justice.  Amen.

Thursday in 3 Lent, March 16, 2023

God of Time and Future, as we wait for the future to fill the fuller meanings of what is happening now, let us not procrastinate to do love and justice now.  Inspire us to know that justice and love always results in a better future.  Amen.

Wednesday in 3 Lent, March 15, 2023

All-Knowing God, we are grateful that you do not hold us accountable for what we do not yet know because of our situation and capacity; keep us open hearted and open minded about the new insights which can yet transform our lives in excellence.  Amen.

Tuesday in 3 Lent, March 14, 2023

God of Light, let your light enlighten us to see beyond mere appearances and plumb the nuances of inward grace and let us be inspired to let the moving words of Scripture make us very literally and externally loving and justice.  Amen.

Monday in 3 Lent, March 13, 2023

Gracious God whose Spirit inspires self control, give us grace to be good orchestrators of the multiverses which can accompany our conscious lives from within.  Give us wisdom and arising insights to propel us to be better at love and justice in our various situations.  Amen.

Sunday, 3 Lent, March 12, 2023

Gracious Word of God, let our words and deeds today give cause to know that love and justice can be empirically verified by those who consistently experience them in our lives.  Amen.

Saturday in 2 Lent, March 11, 2023

Eternal Word, you have made us to realize that we are worded beings who come to signify everything in and with words; give us the grace of good word ability to be able to sew together our inward lives from which words are born, with our outer world as we try to make the life of love and justice actual in our various locations.  Amen.

Friday in 2 Lent, March 10, 2023

God, who is All, let us not reduce you to dogma to divide us from people who don't agree with us; let us respect the mystery that is appropriate to the Infinity which should make our humility inevitable.  Amen.

Thursday in 2 Lent, March 9, 2023

Creating God, from the plenitude of all that is past a new present arrives; give us grace to integrate the old with the new arisings and let that integration be completed with the goal of more kindness and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 2 Lent, March 8, 2023

O God, on whom we project language use even to the confession as the equivalence of God with Eternal Word; give us the grace of wise use of the language in our lives in our speaking, writing, and behaviors.  Amen.

Tuesday in 2 Lent, March 7, 2023

Gracious Word of God, words have come to code and classify our interior lives and our outer world; give us grace on how we use classifying words and let the qualifying words of love and justice be prominent is how to elevate our worded lives in speaking, writing, and body language acts.  Amen.

Monday in 2 Lent, March 6, 2023

God, whom we don't see; help us to be awaken to our perpetual inwardness as what often is seen as seeming negligible inner linguistic programming of how we have been coded to act.  Let the insight of Christ as eternal Word open us to new inner re-programming toward becoming more Christlike and allowing the divine nature to be through us.  Amen.

Sunday, 2 Lent, March 5, 2023

Gracious God of past, present, and future; keep us curious about what might be new in our future especially the potential insights which might help us to surpass ourselves in excellence.  Amen.

Saturday in 1 Lent, March 4, 2024

Grant us, O God, the grace to ever be born again as we embrace our continuous future rebirths int time as surpassing ourselves in the practice of love and justice in our future states.  Amen.

Friday in 1 Lent, March 3, 2023

God, who is mighty, our world lives too often by conferring on the mighty the right to own the majority of land and resources; teach us the power of restraint and the power to transform wealth, education, and power to care for others.  Amen.

Thursday in 1 Lent, March 2, 2023

God of time and history, Jesus left so that the Risen Christ could become fresh in new unfolding of love and justice within all time; give us grace to do the hard and necessary adjustments to the requirement of love and justice in our time.  Amen.

Wednesday in 1 Lent, March 1, 2023

God of love, who is love, and who loves the world; you sent Jesus to be for us the example of love and when his body was killed out of life, his love continued with many more showings.  Give us more showings of love today that we too might be showings of your love.  Amen.

Tuesday in 1 Lent, February 28, 2023

God of our spiritual transformation, you lead us into even new interpretations of spiritual meanings; give us grace to leave misreadings for our lives which have kept us in bad thinking, emotional infancy, and wrong behaviors.  Amen.

Monday in 1 Lent, February 27, 2023

Gracious Lover of the world, your Son Jesus became manifest as a sign of your love for us and as an Exemplar for us to love and be loved; keep us occupied in the perpetual enterprise of loving today.  Amen.

First Sunday in Lent, February 26, 2023

Second Adam Jesus Christ, you met the serpent who seeks to poison humanity with constant mistimings of words and deeds; give us grace to bring our lives in a holy timing of always doing the propitious things.  Amen.

1 Saturday in Lent, February 25, 2023

Gracious Christ, following your example let the human gifts of creativity be used for good and not for megalomaniacal exhibitionism of prideful person; give humanity the grace to resist using their abilities divorced from the service of others.  Amen.

1st Friday in Lent, February 24, 2023

Jesus Christ, most gifted of all; you were tempted to use your gifts for the wrong motives; in humility you chose the path of suffering with us so that our suffering could known as God with us in the worst probable conditions of life and death.  Amen.

1st Thursday in Lent, February 23, 2023

God, who presides over all probabilities, we are faced with inward and outward ordeals which challenge us to lose appropriate timing in when and how we should behave.  Give us the Christly timing and Christly resistance to the temptations which seek to throw off the timing to do right at the right times.  Amen.

 Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Creator God, the story of our dust spiritualized into our unified being reminds us of our future separation from our bodies as they become dust again; Give us grace to cherish and care for our lives in our bodies with love and justice and let our Lenten journeys be known to result in progress in repentance.  Amen.

Saturday, April 16, 2022

Prayers for Lent 2022

Holy Saturday, April 16, 2022

Almighty God, we remember today that Jesus, the farmer, harrowed the regions of hell in the nether journey of his death.  In preaching good news to all the prior dead, he restored the communion of the people of the past with the people of the present. Thank you Jesus for being a cosmic traveler throughout time and throughout all that is and has been visible and invisible.  Thank you for making good news accessible to every place in creation.  Amen.

Good Friday, April 15, 2022

My God, our God, why have we so often forsaken you and each other with terrible harming behaviors driving people to a trapped loneliness with no apparent intervening aid and comfort?  We denounce the forces which oppress to herd people into the experience of forsakenness, and we ask for the grace to be those who are gifted to keep people in the comfort and esteem of community aid.  Amen.

Maundy Thursday, April 14, 2022

Gracious God, your Son gave us the Eucharist to eat together in public and in so doing you gave us the accountability to make sure that everyone has enough to eat.  Help us not to divorce the ritualized bread and wine from the daily bread and the cup of life joy which all people need.  Amen.

Wednesday in Holy Week, April 13, 2022

God, who comprehends all changes and variations in life, your Son Jesus had three days of significant transitions in his life, and in the different conditions which he bore, he provided a place of spiritual identity for us to abide in as we faces the many transitions in our personal and community life.  Give us grace always to understand the optimism of hope as being the driving energy of change.  Amen.

Tuesday in Holy Week, April 12, 2022

God of the full range of probabilities in the field of freedom, we focus this week on the worst of what can go wrong as a way cherishing the days in our mortality, and as we mourn what has gone wrong and prepare for what can go wrong, we always keep open the power of our lives being surprised by, punctuated by the hope which inspires the analgesic of joy.  As we walk the way of sorrow, let us not forget the Hope that lies before us.  Amen.

 Monday in Holy Week, April 11, 2022

Lord Jesus Christ, we walk with you in sorrow this week for our world, for the suffering in Ukraine, for the evil roles which soldiers are compelled to act because of the evil orders of a deranged powerful person.  And if we don't walk toward resurrection, the grief would hinder us from the work of overcoming evil with good.  Grant us strength in the work of good, O Christ.  Amen.

Palm Sunday and Sunday of the Passion, April 10, 2022

God who bears the diversity of the freedom of humanity, on this day we survey the different crowds of people who received Jesus as king and who mocked you as a pretending king ruling from a cross.  Give us the consistent character to enthrone in our lives the Risen Christ of love and justice for this world.  Amen.

Saturday in the Fifth Week of Lent, April 9, 2022

Gracious God, who suffers and dies with us because you honor the moral significance of true freedom given to humanity; let the power of the cross and suffering be seen in our spiritual transformation to die to all that is unworthy in us because of our selfish formation which does not manifest impulse control in the sublimation of the gift of desire as the energy of our lives.  Let us learn how to make our desire be the energy for love, goodness, kindness, and justice.  Amen.

Friday in the Fifth Week of Lent, April 8, 2022

God of omnipresence, who uses human presence to make apparent your care; help us to accept our roles to be the apparent presence of your love and care for the people whose life experience leaves them feeling forsaken.  Grant us to be real presences of Christ in our world.  Amen.

Thursday in the Fifth Week of Lent, April 7, 2022

O God, whose power is counter-intuitive to the power images of humanity; help us to understand humility, love, kindness, justice, care, empathy, and patience as the expression of divine power in a world which is ever in need of proving moral and spiritual significance in the true freedoms which have been given to us.  Amen.

Wednesday in the Fifth Week of Lent, April 6, 2022

God, our Great Expanding Container, in that you allow our freedom to genuinely contribute to your future Self-Surpassing States; give us grace to fill the divine environment with goodness, love, and justice so that the majority of goodness as normalcy can be seen to triumph over the deprivation of goodness, called evil.  In the name of your sustaining grace we pray.  Amen.

 Tuesday in the Fifth Week of Lent, April 5, 2022

God of Power and Might, strong even to be in conflict with human notions of power and might; teach us to learn from war not to do it anymore instead of using our creative energies to do war in more devastating way.  Teach us that the greatness of power is to be creative in our social, economic and technological lives to care for one another, especially the poor and the underrepresented.  Amen.

Monday in the Fifth Week of Lent, April 4, 2022, Commemorating the Martyrdom of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gracious God of freedom, such freedom allowed the untimely death of your servant Martin Luther King, Jr., even as we know the dynamic witness of his message of justice, love, and peace has inspired many people.  We ask for the day when there will be no martyrs needed, when your reign of peace orchestrates the lives of all people.  Amen.

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 3, 2022

Christ, the Eternal Word, whose presence is as obvious and as close as the words which are always, already constituting our lives; help us like Mary of Bethany to honor your presence by placing ourselves under the feet of your continual presence with the perfume of our contemplation, so that we can arise and attend to the poor who are always with us because of our own human greed.  Amen.

Saturday in Fourth Week in Lent, April 2, 2022

God of patience, for humanity when we cannot keep ourselves from harming each others in degrading ways, even to causing the many untimely deaths and injuries because of war, we ask for the wise to intervene and keep the triggers from being pull or the arms of destruction being propelled against the innocent and undefended.  Teach us to study war no more.  Amen.

Friday in the Fourth Week in Lent, April 1, 2022

Wise God and Eternal Word, let us be fools for Christ, if it means discerning between the inward truth experiences which change our lives toward the helpful wisdom of manifesting love and justice in our lives.  Forgive us the foolishness for the times when we do not present the wisdom of you as the omni-Becoming giver of genuine freedom who is comfortable enough with using love's lure to convince us to use our freedom in the best way for the care of our world and for the practice of love and justice with each other.  Amen.

Thursday in the Fourth Week in Lent, March 31, 2022

Almighty God, how is it that 7.9 billion people cannot stop one person who destroys people, environment, and his own soldiers and country?  Could not one person be inspired to intervene and enable our world to begin to heal from a terrible war?  Humanity is willing to allow one life to be regarded to be worth more than billions of other people.  We pray for help on behalf of 7.9 billion powerless people.  Amen.

Wednesday in the Fourth Week in Lent, March 30, 2022

O Cornerstone of our lives, Jesus, you wept over Jerusalem as a presaged textual musing of its complete destruction.  We and you weep over the bombed out and destroyed cities of Ukraine and we hope for rebuilt cities in Ukraine inspired by the interior symbol of the new Jerusalem being a universal inspiration for renewal of the human family needing each other and you in living together in peace.  Amen.

Tuesday in the Fourth Week in Lent, March 29, 2022

God of our resurrected future reconstitutions in the divine eternal memory; like Lazarus who lived again, we live again in identity with the Risen Christ even before we physically die.  We thank you for the assurance of future reconstitution of ourselves in our afterlives, even as this knowledge gives us pre-death hope now.  Amen.

Monday in the Fourth Week in Lent, March 28, 2022

Eternal Christ, your Jesus feet were anointed by a woman of excessive love; give us the grace to find the direction of our excess as a way of transforming tendency to lack impulse control in our lives.  Let the direction of our love excess toward you reorganize all of the energies of our lives.  Amen.

The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 27, 2022

Loving God, we confess that we have often been prodigal in our ways, but also proudly judgmental of others whose spiritual paths are different than our own. Teach us to be like you as a loving parent who welcomes all and who is coaxing everyone to accept their heritage as being made in the image of God.  Grant that the rising of the Christ nature in everyone and everything will bring eventual harmonies.  Amen.

Saturday in the Third Week of Lent, March 26, 2022

God of Freedom in Time, the seeming impossible task with freedom and time is to find harmonious timing when harm is avoided and with timing as aging with phases having expiration dates before their transitions, what is our task when faced with many significant transitions in time?  Help us to preserve good timing in the transitions which happen in life and protect all from human caused transitions to death, especially the violence of war.  Amen.

 Friday in the Third Week of Lent, March 25, 2022

God, on this commemoration of the announcement of  the impending conception of the Christ Christ, let the announcement ring eternal in Christ being born within all people and let the Christ nature rise up in all to bring about the peace which our world so badly needs.  Amen.

Thursday in the Third Week of Lent, March 24, 2022

God who inspires good shepherds, after the witness of Jesus; please save this world from megalomaniacal, narcissistic leaders who lead millions astray for their own pride and wealth, and let us know the peace of leaders who care for their people.  Amen.

 Wednesday in the Third Week of Lent, March 23, 2022

Eternal Word of God, you have left us with the task of interpreting al words and how we do it results in how we treat each other.  Help us to interpret all words of life through the lenses of love and justice, through Christ the Eternal Word of God.  Amen.

Tuesday in the Third Week of Lent, March 22, 2022

O God of the Bible, we have inherited a presentation of you as of old being associated with war and taking sides among tribes which fought; In Jesus you submitted to the tyranny of an Empire and left us his impossible words of loving enemies and being good to those who do us harm.  And we do not find much about defending the vulnerable, but Scripture indicates that you defend the poor and the needy and Jesus had harsh words for those who treated children badly.  We beseech the defending Lord of the needy to apply such defense today on behalf of the people of Ukraine.  Amen.

Monday in the Third Week of Lent, March 21, 2022

Gracious God, we live in Nature's clock and we embrace a new spring with the joy that encompasses more than just what is happy in our lives today.  How can we be joyful about falling bombs on the innocent, unless we balance the deeply degrading with all of the heroic which has arisen.  We are joyful for the heroes in Ukraine who never wanted to be heroes in the way that they are, and we ask for a blessing with hope for their heroism today.  Amen.

The Third Sunday in Lent, March 20, 2022

God of great permissive freedom, we ask for the ability of self correction of the free systems in our world so that when evil is given such singular power to harm so many, there may be a rallying of the forces of goodness to expel and end the reign of such concentrated evil.  Let this expulsion of the evil occur for the safety of the innocent.  Amen.

Saturday in the Second Week of Lent, March 19, 2022

God, our sustainer, we hypocritically ask you to sustain even as we do not practice good sustaining habits for the extended life of the world, and especially as horrendous war takes away from duration in sustainability of our planet.  Help us to cherish earth and life on it as our spiritual sacrifice to be pleasing to you, and respectful of others.  Amen.

Friday in the Second Week of Lent, March 18, 2022

God of all power, accurate power, deploy your smart bombs which release atmospheric love and inner love into the warring sides of people, and let your holy angels deliver such smart love speedily, in the name of the gift of love to us Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Thursday in the Second Week of Lent, March 17, 2022

God of all people, who brings love and calling to people in diverse ways; we thank you for Patrick, though a slave in Ireland, came to love the people so much that he was called to return even after his freedom.  We ask for love and calling from Christ to free everyone from slavery, and experience the reconciliation of honest mutual love of people from diverse backgrounds.  Amen.

Wednesday in the Second Week of Lent, March 16, 2022

God, we are dealing with our failure to be able to control the widespread destruction of bombs on innocent people through the concentration of power in one person to destroys so many people and their supporting environments.  Human laws have left us in helpless stalemates to stop tyrants, and we appeal to your high power aid for those who are dying, even as we know that Jesus lived with the tyrants of his time.  We seek an end to tyrants in the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Tuesday in the Second Week of Lent, March 15, 2022

God, we commit to you the person or persons who decide and have the power to indiscriminately bomb helpless people;  we ask for an Ides of March moment that can bring an end to those who for no reason but devilish, and cruel power let the banality of bombing destroy peoples' lives and environments.  We invoke the restraining angels on behalf of the those in harm's way.  Amen.

Monday in the Second Week of Lent, March 14, 2022

Gracious God, let war but be the poignant contrast of the state of war ceasing and people beginning to recover normal life in the conditions of peace.  Let war be but the reminder of what we never want to occur, and bring war to an end in the name of Jesus.  Amen.

The Second Sunday in Lent, March 13, 2022

Gracious God, in the words of Jesus, he could wish to be a mothering hen caring for her brood; whatever is perfect about mothering, is what we need in our world today as there are many vulnerable who need to be protected from the results of war and abuse.  We ask that the presence of a mothering God would be known through just and mercy mutual mothering of people in world today.  Amen.

Saturday in the First Week in Lent, March 12, 2022

O Divine Expanding Container of All, who because of true freedom, allow all lesser free agents to make genuine free contributions to the expanding Context; we ponder the freedom of human agents to wage war especially when the human atrocities rise to such opposite extremes of our preferred definition of you as Love.  We ask for love to begin to win the day, in our hearts, but also even in the hearts of the tyrants who may be contemplating being the last person alive.  Let your love even convert the lonely tyrant who is afraid of more people doing more loving of each other.  We ask for the rise of people caring for each other in such an abundance as to overthrow the monopoly on power of the tyrant. Amen.

Friday in the First Week in Lent, March 11, 2022

O God, we have to adjust our providence of your care for the well-being of the people who are victims of war to the afterlives of those who have died, since they have been cut off from completing their prior opportunity to live to at least the probable average age in achieving a natural death.  Your timelessness embraces the seen and invisible world of the continuing identities of those who have died; we ask for the comfort for the people who have lost family and friends and the places of their homes.  In our helplessness in the face of our own inhumanity, we ask for your help.  Amen.

Thursday in the First Week in Lent, March 10, 2022

O God of peace, convert the warmongers to the ways of peace by exposing the sheer waste of human lives and the environments where people live.  War is its own punishment to the offenders and to those forced to defend and we ask for the offending leaders to be restored to right mindedness or interdicted so that the lives of the innocent can be saved.  O God of angelic messengers, let your angelic messages of peace swamp and spam the warring minds until peace convert them to the reasonable common good of all.  Amen.

Wednesday in the First Week in Lent, March 9, 2022

Holy Jesus, your words relayed in the early church were conferring a blessing on the peacemakers.  We ponder the dilemma of being peacemakers and dying to establish that peace and the right for peace-loving people to defend themselves and their children.  There can be a peace in accepting servitude to tyrants and a peace without equality of love between neighbors is not really the peace of Christ.  Let the peace of equality prevail in Ukraine and in our world and let the tyrant become converted to an equal mutual loving neighbor.  This is peace we seek.  Amen.

Tuesday in the First Week in Lent, March 8, 2022

Holy Jesus, to whom we attribute the martial arts of the beatitudes as a way for oppressed people to survive oppression; inspire the defense of the people of Ukraine as they are attacked and bombed without cause except the sheer singular desire of one man to subjugate.  Holy defender of the weak and vulnerable; let your protection be made known today.  Amen.

Monday in the First Sunday of Lent, March 7, 2022

God of Word and Language, we find ourselves using language hyperbolically and stereotypically to write off entire groups of people because of the behaviors of but a few; as truth is a victim in war, let us be honest about our tendency to cover truth in stereotypes which victimizes many people wrongly, and allows tyrants to falsely claim unanimity.  Restore us in the truth of honest in our use of words.  Amen.

First Sunday in Lent, March 6, 2022

God, whose will is not for innocent suffering to happen, in freedom you have permitted humanity to reveal its cruelty to ourselves.  Let the inhumanity of cruel war be exposed once and for all as no way to value human life and living, and may the Holy Spirit as an interior force of conviction bring all people in power to peace.  Amen.

1st Saturday in Lent, March 5, 2022

O God, when innocent people are dying in an aggressive war, and we are helpless from afar, we can only asks you to do an inside job on people who are ruled by a motive to cause harm to the innocent.  We ask for speedy interdiction in manifold ways to save the innocent.  Amen.

1st Friday in Lent, March 4, 2022

O God, whom we call powerful perhaps because of your restraint when humanity's behavior is at its worst; we ask for your higher power resolution when the world is held hostage by a person devoid of empathy except for his own immediate power needs.  We ask for the malfunction of the war machines of the aggressors who seek to harm innocent people for the selfish gain of one person.  We ask for wisdom in the resolution for one who has been trapped by his own hubris and has come to believe that destroying another country is his only way out.  Good Lord, deliver us from this evil and spare the innocent.  Amen.

1st Thursday in Lent, March 3, 2022

God of freedom, we often feel abandoned to the consequences of our own actions, especially in the fog of war.  Give those who who cause harm a vision of the children in this world for whom we want to leave this world as a better place.   Give our leaders a vision of life for those of the future and interdict the harmful war guided by singular narcissism of evil and corrupt power.  Amen.

Ash Wednesday, March 2, 2022

God who mixed dust with deity to make us, we place ashes as icons of our future bodies upon our foreheads and we mourn the eventual separation of spirit from our dust-to-become bodies.  Teach us to during this season of Lent to honor the original formula of our composition as we seek to honor the divine image on our lives, and upon all existence.  Amen

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Forty Prayers for Lent

Forty Prayers for Lent

 

1-God of mercy, we can’t help but feel that we have been tricked within the free conditions of this world to lose the best path of our life.  We thank you that you provided us with a guide to find our way by subjecting Jesus to a forty day fast when he was made completely vulnerable to an accusing foe.   Thank you that hero Jesus, did it once and for all and that he gave us the example to resist the Diablo.  Amen.

 

2-God of ideal timing, help us who are so often tempted to mistime what we do and say in our lives.  Thank you for making all things good, but giving them ideal release occasions which make them good, right and appropriate in their use for the good of our lives in community.  God, as one who can get us to the right place at the right time, help us to be in-sync with the Holy Spirit as our Global Positioning System.  Amen.

 

3-Gracious Heavenly Parent, you gave us a sibling, Jesus, who was like us in his needs, his esteem, and in having a human death date, but was obedient to the heavenly timing of his needs, his fame and glory esteem, and the purposeful way in which he was to die. Grant to us the ability to discern and obey God’s will for our lives as we seek to be ever appropriate to the times, places and people of our lives.  Amen.

 

4-God of discernment, you gave us the example of Jesus to expose the accuser, Satan.  Give us the power of resisting the accuser’s lies even as we discern the accuser attaining a personality when riding upon all the accusing voices of the imperfect diminishers of our lives who in our memories leave their echoing loud voices.  Give us strength to say, “get behind me Satan, in the name of my hero Jesus,” when the accuser rides as a parasite upon the memories of all our lives’ worst moments.  Amen.

 

5-Loving God, help us not to despair of perpetually missing the mark toward the target of perfection.  Help us to know that if we are aiming in the right direction with our life activity, then your angels will carry our falling short efforts to the mark on the wings of God’s grace as we can only be complete in you.  Amen.

 

6-O Divine Just one, how can we know where to aim the words and deeds of our lives unless you give us a model?  Yes, you did in Jesus give us a model, to inspire us to apply love and justice to all the activities of our lives.  Amen.

 

7-O God, if I could see you, touch you, and hear you, I’m sure that I would make idols out of such sensorial contacts and pretend to capture mystery in a bottle to add to my museum of mystical experiences.  Let me accept the traces of your mysterious touches in the guise of the ordinary and know that I cannot limit or contain you as I accept that I and everything else are contained in you.  Amen.

 

 

8-Eternal Word as God, through you, I know you even as I am a linguistic cipher within the total lexicon of the Divine Eternal Word. Let the words of my life and body language deeds articulate the fact that through Word as Communication, the Eternal Word is always communicating.  Amen.

 

9-Divine Christ, you are All and in All, and when you took bread and said, “This is my body,” you showed us that your presence did not end at your skin so that you are bread and the entire world which enters your purview.  Help us not to limit your presence to bread and wine and Bible, since these cannot exhaust You who are All and in All.  Amen.

 

10-O God, we love your showings in familiar places but we also like the surprise, “Peek a boo,” occasions when you appear without our knowing or even practicing to be prepared to greet you.  And when we smile without knowing why we smile, we thank you the uncaused one for the delightful touch.  Amen.

 

11-God, deliver us from perfectionism, especially when we judge others who are not gifted in the areas where we are gifted.  And deliver us when we are attempted to bemoan the fact that we are not perfect and falsely presume that we should be in the place of the perfect one.  Help us not to take on the role of omni-competence in self-reliant presumption so that we don’t hold ourselves responsible for something we can never be, because that role has been ever held by Thee.  Amen.

 

12-O great God, help us to know that you contain us, more than we contain you, because we live and move and have our being in you.  Give us grace to make love and justice the practice in our lesser environments located in your great Home of all that is.  Amen.

 

 

13-God beyond all, help me to accept my limited capacity and the provisional insights which come to me on the path to receive perhaps, more surpassing insights tomorrow.  Amen.

 

 

14-God of involvement with all, let me not demand of you final answers about anything, but adequate answers to the moment of need. Amen.

 

15-O God of beauty, let me be but a shard within your grand kaleidoscope, turning in time and being perpetually rearranged with all other shards, to give you a pleasing view.  Amen.

 

 

16-O God, remind me how natural it should be to be humble, with an infinite number of things all being in infinite number of relationships and with each person having a vantage point on a very limited number of things.  So, why God, am I tempted to over-value my very partial view when the realization of this should make me unavoidably humble?   Let me have the grace to be but a member of your orchestra blending to the glory of the One God.  Amen.

 

17-O Spirit of God, are you the literal breath within?  Are you the invisible wind blowing the trees?  Or are you behind the metaphor we must use to refer to the mystery of the animation of life itself?  Amen.

 

18-God, we endeavor to be awe struck fans seeking the divine autographs to be written on things as a proof like a tag on a product stating, “Made in and By God.” Amen.

 

19-God of greatness, while we want your signature to stand out in particular things, you perhaps are saying to us that all things are your signature. And with our prayers we acknowledge that we are signed, sealed and delivered by you.  Amen.

 

20-O God of discerning rebuke; teach us not to use intercession for others as a guise for us confessing for them, the sins which we think that they have.  Amen.

 

21-God of wisdom, please forgive my worry based upon the assumption that I can know and invent the problems of the future before they happen.  Please transform my anxiety energy into calm wise planning for probable outcomes and not worst-case scenarios.  Amen.

 

22-O God, with the arising of Jesus within a human family, you made it natural for human words and knowing to be valid ways of knowing you.  And you gave us hope for empathy by showing us that our experience is relevant to understanding all beings.  Amen.

 

23-Creator Genius God, like each unique snowflake you have made each of us unique in personal constitution and experience, and such uniqueness can also be experienced as being quite alone.  But who is more unique than you?  And through you we can experience the choir of other unique beings and proclaim that we are mutually unique with each other.  Amen.

 

24-God of creativity, thank you for stamping each person with singular uniqueness so that from the mist of personal aloneness creativity can arise to bless the community.  Amen.

 

25-God of comfort, when I feel that nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, let me be reminded that nobody has known the joys, the smiles, and the love that I have known in precisely the unique ways in which I have known them.  Help me to balance the uniqueness of my troubles with the uniqueness of my joys.  Amen.

 

26-God, forgive me of the arrogance of thinking that I have thought of things which you haven’t which result in the events of worry.  When my worry is but thoughts without any empirical verification, please teach me to value myself so that I don’t choose disaster for my mental entertainment.  Please transform the thoughts about future probabilities into intercession for others and wise planning toward beneficial outcomes.  Amen.

 

 

 

27-O God, you are synchronous with all becoming, you have subjected us to the binary of time, events of either before or after.  And with each “after” event we mark our age and note the differences between who we were before and how we are after and we can fall into regret of what we were not before, or nostalgia of what we are not now.  Give us grace to accept the continual flow of the before and after and to embrace transformation as the God given action of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

28-Forgive us God, when we have been fickle within the crowd, and when it has been safe to shout “Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in God’s name.”  But in another crowd, we have been crying, “Crucify him,” when we have been involved in the victimization of those who are already suffering.  Give us discernment when we see those who have been made victims, and give us the courage to support and stand up for the wrongly ostracized.  Amen.

 

29-Lord Jesus Christ, how often we would like to keep you as an “external” icon to gaze upon or as a story in the Gospels.  Let us accept our identity with you and let your Christ nature see through us, pray through us and act through us.  Amen.

 

30-Bless Holy Trinity, who is unavoidable as a Father Plenitude from whom we came, live and will return to.  Who is Jesus the Christ, to assume human life so that we might assume knowledge of divine life in a valid way.  Who is Holy Spirit as the omnipresence allowing us to conduct mutual experience and know that we are not alone.  We bless you, O unavoidable Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

31-Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for giving us the Eucharist as a meal to promote the future gathering of your expanding family.  Keep us loyal to the family meal, and let us not forget that this meal is connected with the needs of the hungry people of our world.  Amen.

 

32-God of all people, you have made us feel so welcome, we can in our privilege think that our religious experience is more valid than those who equally claim the dignity of Christ.  Give us grace to open our hearts to all who want the equal dignity of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

33-God, you have funneled knowledge of you to comply with our human smallness, but with that wonderful knowledge you have given us the ability to surpass what we ever thought that we could be.  Thank you for being Word made flesh in Jesus; please dear Word of God, be made flesh again and again in us.  Amen.

 

34-O God, our heavenly parent, you have given us your Son Jesus to help us be formed into a family with a new identity.  Give us a love of our identity with the life of Christ who lives in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

35-Gracious God, we look forward with hope for the return of the excessive use of the praise word of the Easter celebration.  As we have fasted from the unique Easter praise word, let our lungs be ready to return to the Easter excess of holy noise in praise of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

36-God of all praise, prepare us for the intensity of Holy Week, when we will recount the final week of the life of Jesus in his earthy body.  Let the remembrance of these events be dynamic so that their power can be made manifest again in us in new events of remembrance.  Amen.

 

37-Christ, to be in you, is to erase the ego of lesser identities, like ethnic, gender, and social and economic differences.  But to be in you is to uplift to equality people in their differences to know that you delight to dwell in each person in giving everyone a sense of an original experience of you.  Amen.

 

38-Lord Jesus Christ, in your death on the Cross, you showed us that God suffers with us in our lives even to the suffering of death.  We thank you that you preserved genuine freedom, by allowing the worst of all to happen, even to your Son.  We ask that we might be shocked by the worst that happens to be inspired to overcome evil with good through your blessed example.  Amen.

 

39-God of all Patience, we wonder why you tolerate so much in life, even as we know life would be all programmed outcomes without genuine freedom.  Help us to respect freedom so much that we would in the democracy of freedom, cast our votes for goodness, so the goodness will finally win the day.  Amen.

 

40-God of our Easter destiny, you call us during Lent to our Easter of hope.  We thank you that hope, itself, received a wonderful story in the resurrection of Jesus.  We thank you that Easter hope always gives us a future, in this life and the next.  Amen.

 

 

 

 

 


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