Liturgical Seasons Prayers

 

Lenten Prayer

 

Holy mystery,

we offer praise for the slowly warming winds

and for the lengthening of daylight hours

calling forth the blossoms of springtime,

for the re-creation of hope and growth.

We are filled with gratitude

for the changing rhythm of the natural order

and the ways it brings nourishment and joy.

We give you thanks,

O gracious one,

for you have touched our soul.

You have loved us from the moment of our conception

and held us in grief and happiness.

As we travel our path,

call us forth from the prisons and bondage

we have created

by our narrow patterns of being and believing,

our limited acceptance of ourselves and others.

Show us a way through our wilderness.

Most generous lover

grace us with your presence.

You welcome us home.

You awaken our slumbering hearts

to the fullness of our humanity

so that we may claim our awesomeness

and fragile beauty.

We seek to be encouraged by your truth

so that we might restore compassion

to the human family,

renew the face of the earth and

give expression to your light

in the midst of the world’s wilderness.

Christ spirit, in these days of Lenten prayer,

stir up our dream of true peace with justice.

We believe prayer to be

a radical act of faith,

a spirited give and take with ultimate mystery.

Show us the ways to give speech to the longings

of our world and of ourselves and

to extend that speech into action.

 

 


 

Palm Sunday and Holy Week

 

Gracious, eternal one,

we celebrate this morning in the tradition of Palm Sunday,

offering our Hosannas of praise and thanksgiving

for Jesus and the way he lived his life.

We offer praise

for the expressions of your covenant with us through him.

We gratefully acknowledge

our tradition that also proclaims this Passion Sunday

and are thankful that

Jesus was a person of deep compassion,

willing to accept the consequences of such love.

We embrace with gratitude

his willingness to ride a lowly donkey into the city,

realizing the limits of his power

to bring change to that city

and to change the actions of his followers.

Compassionate womb,

awaken in us a fresh awareness of the richness

the images of Holy Week offer.

Remind us that Jesus’ actions throughout the week

were on behalf of the whole world.

Encourage our understanding of how

taking up our cross means

abandoning neutrality,

making the invisible visible,

sharing God’s vision.

We offer prayers of intercession

as our compassionate response to your call

to join Jesus’ Holy Week journey.

 

 


The Easter Story

 

Eternal, empowering, Holy One,

we praise you

for the promise and fresh energy

the Easter story brings into our lives.

We are thankful

that Jesus continues to show himself to us in new ways

and that we can experience

his love, presence and vision for the world

in our own lives and times.

Gracious God,

we praise and thank you for

the witness of the women who went to the tomb.

The scripture describes

the fears as well as the joys and relief they experienced.

We too are caught

between the fears and doubts of our faith

and the joy and affirmation of what we have seen and known.

It is good to recognize ourselves

as part of the history of your people struggling

between fear of what is and has been

and a desire to affirm

an open and unknown future.

Unexpected, moving, evolving spirit of God,

you bring about powerful reversals

in the world and in our lives.

The mystery of your created universe is

a constant reminder

of the ways you create and re-create

through cycles of death and new life,

through change and fresh beginnings.

As your Easter people,

we want this new life to be offered and experienced

by people and situations all over our world,

for hope to be known and embraced.

 


 

Easter

 

Risen, living Christ,

we embrace your gift of resurrection power.

We open our whole being to your invitation to

join you in moving from deadness into fullness of life.

We respond,

“Yes!”

to your call to live.

Jesus, spirit, companion, friend,

you embrace the whole world with human/divine love and caring.

You ask each of us to show our love for you

by tending and feeding your world and its people.

Enable us to recognize the people and places

to whom we are being sent.

Enable us to offer love.

Open us to fresh expressions

of your loving of us,

so that we can be more whole and more accepting of ourselves

and out of that acceptance

move toward others with trusting hearts.

Turn us from mourning into dancing.

Loosen our sackcloth.

Gird us with gladness.

Christ spirit,

you go before us and call us into the future.

Encourage our community

as we form and re-form ourselves as your Body.

Just as the revelations of Easter

energized the first disciples,

so we would be energized to dream new visions

and be open to new risks

and to the unknown.

We join your embrace of the whole world

with our prayers.

 


 

Veni Sancte Spiritu

 

Holy one, we come

ready to receive anew the gifts of your spirit

that will give us vision

to form and reform ourselves as a people of Pentecost.

Come, Holy Spirit, come and be a new reality.

Free us from fear.

Give us courage to speak of your marvelous ways

and of your hope

so that we may live each day fully.

Come, Holy Spirit, come and be a new reality.

Awaken us so that we may be bold to be

the body of Christ’s presence in the world,

renewing our life together,

renewing the world.

Come, Holy Spirit, come and be a new reality.

Spirited wind of change

enable the bending of what is rigid,

the reversal of what has gone astray,

the freshness of new possibility.

Come, Holy Spirit, come and be a new reality.

Come as comforter and offer us and all people

relief, consolation and companionship.

Tend to our woundedness.

Restore us to life that we may be healers.

Come, Holy Spirit, come and be a new reality.

Reconcilor and spirit for justice,

empower our prophet’s voice

that it may be heard throughout the land

retelling the gospel vision,

praying for the unity of all true spirits.

Come, Holy Spirit, come.

You are the reason

this gathering is a holy place.

Come, Holy Spirit, and be a new reality.

 

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An Interview with Sonya Dyer