Previous Page PETITIONS COLLECTION PETITION Lord in this broken world where you have placed us open our ears to the voices that call crying for help, for direction, for comfort ease for the pain and relief overall Open our eyes O Lord that you can show us how to bring healing and help for their pain give us the wisdom and strength you have promised speak through your servants we pray once again Open our hearts O Lord show your love through us telling of you who alone can restore lifting and healing the broken in spirit offering your peace and a joy evermore amen ---------------------------------------------------- Let us be present to the now. Its all we have and its where God will always speak to us. The now holds everything, rejects nothing and therefore can receive God too. Help us be present to the place we are the most afraid of, because it always feels empty, it always feels like its not enough. Help us find some space within that we don't try to fill with ideas or opinions. Help us find space so you loving God ,can show yourself in that place where we are hungry and empty.Keep us out of the way, so there is always room enough for you. Good God, we believe that you are here and your presence gives us hope. We thank you for each day of our lives. We thank you for so many further chances to understand, to forgive again, to trust again and to love. We thank you that we live now, that our problems are soul sized. We ask that you teach us and lead us, that you put the thoughts into our mind that you want us to think, the feelings into our hearts that you want us to feel. Reconstruct us O Lord. Put us together because we don't know how to do it ourselves. We trust that you are hearing this prayer, and that you care for the answer more than we do. We pray therefore not alone, but with the whole body of Christ in Jesus name, amen. Fr.Richard Rohr OFM ------------------------------------------------------------- Christ our advocate, we pray for our sisters and brothers throughout the world: out of our poverty and theirs, may we not stumble by judging each other. Christ, brother of the poor, in the faces of our partners may we see your love. In our faces may they see your love. Together may we abide in you, celebrating the risen life of the Kingdom. Christ, bridge-builder, help us to work with you and for you. Through the power of the Spirit help us to rebuild God’s community of diving purpose in partnership with all your people. ------------------------------------------------------------ Lord, Teach me what it is to be poor not just poor with the absence of material wealth But poor in spirit the kind of poverty that will make me empty and create space for you. Help me let go of the false securities, the material props that are so easy to cling to. Show me what it is to be truly bereft. Teach me what it is to be poor – Then Lord, you will be my all and my priorities will be in order – Then lord, I will know what it is to truly love. Teach me Lord, show me what it is to be poor – show me, teach me now! ------------------------------------------------------- O, Lord, you have said to us, 'Peace I leave with you'. This peace that you give is not that of the world: it is not the peace of order, when order oppresses; it is not the peace of silence, when silence is born of suppression; it is not the peace of resignation, when such resignation is unworthy. Your peace is love for all people, is justice for all people, is truth for all people, the truth that liberates and stimulates growth. Lord, it is this peace we believe in because of your promise. Grant us peace, and we will give this peace to others. Amen. --------------------------------------------------------- A PRAYER FOR A POOR NEIGHBORHOOD God of Creation, Redemption, and Reconciliation. You call us to live together in peace. Your Word speaks of reconciliation. Your Spirit brings justice. Look upon us and judge what we have done with our stewardship. Witness the burned houses, meth labs, crack houses, drug dealers, slumlords, and prostitutes. See the emptiness and false promises, the alienation and despair, injustice and oppressions, that bring these tragedies among us. Hear the gunfire that breaks the peace! How many lives are swallowed up in these tragedies! How much pain and how much sorrow do they cause! Heal this place, God of mercy and forgiveness. Send your love and grace upon all prostitutes, drug dealers, slumlords, loan sharks, bankers, lawyers, politicians. Bring them to conversion of heart and life. Cause those who are responsible to cease from their oppressions, stop their crimes, and to keep the peace in our neighborhoods. Fill the emptiness that is the source of these sorrows, with love, peace, mercy, and justice. Give us courage, so that we may show them of your love, Teach us to respect all people as human beings, not forgetting all prostitutes, drug dealers, slumlords, loan sharks, bankers, lawyers, and politicians. These blessings we ask, in the name of the One who became poverty, who will judge the deeds of all humanity, on that great day when justice reigns in every neighborhood, on every street, and among all nations. Amen. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Jesus, Reconciler; be the encourager and sustainer of those who strive for human reconciliation now. Through all doubts and difficulties keep alive in them the vision of your better way. A better way God of peace, overturn our warring; God of mercy, awaken our forgiveness; God of healing, guide us to a better way. For the unity of humanity God, you have made us of one blood, your common people, and sent Jesus, to restore us by the shedding of his blood; so direct us by your spirit, that recovering our common humanity your world may be renewed in peace. Where there is turmoil God, whose word brought order out of chaos, Hear our plea for communities whose lives are in turmoil: Overcome disorder with stability, Rancor with harmony, and Violence with peace, That all may know The blessings of life free from fear. ----------------------------------------------------------- A Prayer for Peace Lead us from death to Life, from falsehood to Truth. Lead us from despair to Hope, from fear to Trust. Lead us from hate to Love, from war to Peace. Let Peace fill our heart, our world, our universe. Lord, come to our assistance O Lord, you came to bring peace, to offer reconciliation, to heal the separation between people, and to show how it is possible for men and women to overcome their differences and celebrate their unity. You revealed your Father as a Father of all people, a Father without resentments or desires for revenge, a Father who cares for each one of his children with an infinite love and mercy and who does not hesitate to invite them into his own home. But our world today does not look like a world that knows you Father. Our nations are torn by chaos, hatred, violence and war. In many places death rules. O Lord, do not forget the world into which you came to save your people; Do not turn your back on your children who desire to live in harmony but who are constantly entangled in lust, violence, greed, suspicion, jealousy and hunger for power. Bring your peace to this world, a peace we cannot make ourselves. Awaken the consciousness of all peoples and their leaders; Raise up those who can speak and act for peace, and show us new ways in which hatred can be left behind, wounds can be healed, and unity restored. O God, come to our assistance. O Lord, make haste to help us. --------------------------------------------------------- Pray for God to give us His heart for the poor. Ask God to burden us for those who are caught up in cycles of poverty and despair. Pray that Christians will be like the Good Samaritan, who took the time and exerted the energy to help someone in need. Ask God to grant to us a spirit of generosity that we might share freely with those in need. Pray that the Lord will give wisdom, that we might meet physical and spiritual needs in ways that foster dignity and stability, while not minimizing the reality and destructiveness of sin. Pray that we will show to the needy, who are all around us, the compassion of Jesus, the One who came to "preach good news to the poor." (Luke 4:18) ------------------------------------------------------------ Asking God for Things O gracious and holy Father, give us wisdom to perceive you, intelligence to understand you, diligence to seek you, patience to wait for you, a heart to meditate upon you, and a life to proclaim you, through the power of the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. —St. Benedict ---------------------------------------------------- O, God, grant me light in my heart and light in my tomb, light in my hearing and light in my seeing, light in my flesh, light in my blood and light in my bones. Light before me, light behind me, light to right of me, light to left of me, light above me, light beneath me. O God, increase my light and give me the greatest light of all. Of thy mercy grant me light, O thou most merciful. —Abu Hamid Al-Ghu ------------------------------------------------- Help us so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. —St. Augustine of Hippo ------------------------------------------------- I pray not for wealth, I pray not for honors, I pray not for pleasures, or even the joys of poetry. I only pray that during all my life I may have love: that I may have pure love to love Thee. —Chaitanya ------------------------------------------------------------ Dear Lord You have shown us your love in so many ways. Now you want to show me even more clearly how much you love me. Knowing that your Father has put everything into your hands, that you you have come from God and are returning to God, you remove your outer garments and taking a towel, you wrap it around your waist, pour water into a basin and begin to wash my feet and then wipe them with the towel you are wearing. O Lord you kneel before me you hold my naked feet with your hands and you look up at me and smile. Within me I feel the protest arising ‘No Lord you shall never wash my feet’ It is as if I were resisting the love you offer me. I want to say ‘You don’t really know me, my dark feelings, my pride, my lust, my greed. I may speak the right words but my heart is far from you. No, I am not good enough to belong to you. You must have someone else in mind. Not me.’ But you look at me with utter tenderness saying ‘I want you to be with me. I want you to have full share in my life, I want you to belong to my Father. I want to wash you completely clean so that you and I can be one and so that you can do to others what I have done to you.’ Help us to let go of all our fears, distrust, doubt and anguish and simply let you wash us clean and make us your friend whom you love with a love that has no bounds In Jesus name Amen --------------------------------------------------------------