Carmel de la Paix (Mazille)

Prayer

• Pascal Triduum 2023

  Good Friday

  A new day dawns, and you know now, Lord Jesus, that your fate is sealed. Behind you a night of prayer and struggle. A night of solitude. But to break man’s closed heart, you accept to go so far as to break your own on the cross.

  In you, Jesus, God reveals himself as the Love that is only Love. And when love does not meet love, when it comes up against our refusals, it remains powerless. It can no longer offer anything but its own wounds.

  You find yourself alone, Jesus. You see Judas go out into the night and you say to your friends, “Where I am going, you cannot go. You take upon yourself the ultimate loneliness that the tried and tested encounter when the abyss of pain becomes a precipice where all paths end.

  You find yourself alone, Jesus, and in this you join all the wounded, lonely like yourself, the crowd of nameless strangers, all those who stand on the edge of despair, those who turn one cheek, then the other.

  In the midst of this world in disarray, in the midst of the unimaginable cruelties of which human beings are capable, in the midst of the dramas that are played out on our doorstep and the revolts that sometimes inhabit our own hearts, Jesus Lord, give us the power to stand close to you, to remain where you have known how to remain to the end: in that intimate place where God continues to dwell, silent, the first to be touched by our pain.

  May no one succumb to the dizziness of nothingness, to the night of despair. We ask this as we call upon all of us on this day the Breath of Final Silence, the bond of Love that seals the communion between you and the Father, even in death, and beyond!

  A new day is dawning, and you know now, Lord Jesus, that your fate is sealed. Behind you a night of prayer and struggle. A night of solitude. But to break man’s closed heart, you accept to go so far as to break your own on the cross.

  In you, Jesus, God reveals himself as Love who is only Love. And when love does not meet love, when it comes up against our refusals, it remains powerless. It can no longer offer anything but its own wounds.

  You find yourself alone, Jesus. You see Judas go out into the night and you say to your friends, “Where I am going, you cannot go. You take upon yourself the ultimate loneliness that the tried and tested encounter when the abyss of pain becomes a precipice where all paths end.

  You find yourself alone, Jesus, and in this you join all the wounded, lonely like yourself, the crowd of nameless strangers, all those who stand on the edge of despair, those who turn one cheek, then the other.

  In the midst of this world in disarray, in the midst of the unimaginable cruelties of which human beings are capable, in the midst of the dramas that are played out on our doorstep and the revolts that sometimes inhabit our own hearts, Jesus Lord, give us the power to stand close to you, to remain where you have known how to remain to the end: in that intimate place where God continues to dwell, silent, the first to be touched by our pain.

  Holy Satursday

  Lord, God of the Living, this Holy Saturday confuses us. Have you deserted Golgotha, powerless? “This God is worthless who does not declare his child,” we are told. What should we do with this feeling of scandal and disappointment? Even Jesus, tortured in agony, threw this ultimate incomprehension at you, when everything was falling apart. In him, our questions and our revolts are echoed. If Jesus himself launched this cry, do we dare to make it our own and let our own feelings of injustice, of anger perhaps, find their way to the cry?

  It is hard to believe that you are there, Lord: at the very heart of destitution, suffering and despair. To see you join humans in all their cries, torn, grieving.

  Bruised, destitute, inconsolable, you dare to show yourself vulnerable. But it is so unspeakable that it is your silence tonight that cries out in our midst. And your absence is the same as your presence, here and now.

  On the threshold of the Sabbath, at the hour when one can no longer distinguish a black thread from a white one, they are still standing there, the women, outside their homes, outside the place that traditions attribute to them.

  Tonight, others will light the Sabbath candles, others will welcome the immemorial light, for they are not finished with the darkness. They are not finished with your body, bruised and desolate by the breath, Jesus!

  They now have at heart the gestures to be made to surround death, to root life to the end, in a respect which you yourself have shown them the way.

  Women keep watch. They know how to stand between day and night, between death and life, between suffering and appeasement, in a fidelity from which nothing can divert them.

  Here we are with them, entering into silence together, keeping watch for those who weep tonight, for those whose wounds call for healing, liberation and forgiveness.

  Here we are, Lord. We will not leave you alone.

  Easter

  You who have seen and believed, run,

  run to all the roads and squares,

  to reveal the great secret of God!

  Go and say that the night is over,

  that everything has a meaning,

  that tears are dew,

  that every drop is a star.

  Go and say that the wounds are healing,

  go and say that the desert is blooming,

  that love has now won,

  that joy is not a dream!

  Go and say that joy has a face,

  precisely the one that has been disfigured by death,

  precisely the one that was transfigured by Easter.

  Today, precisely now, here.

• 8 April 2023 – Holy Saturday

  They try to grab you. She opens her hands, a gesture of gentleness that blocks violence. A gesture that anticipates betrayal and death and that already announces a beyond.

  Because love never resigns itself, love sees further.

  Lord, give us the ability to prolong the fragrance of the gesture of Bethany towards those around us today who suffer violence in their lives. May they know your Presence as a balm of hope and of the faithfulness of a God who is close to the most suffering of his children.

• 7 April 2023 – Good Friday

  Lord, worried, uncertain, full of questions, we are with the disciples at the hour when their capacity to follow you on this painful path on which you are embarking is at stake.

  May our hearts find in you the assurance of a fidelity that is not primarily ours, but yours.

  May your peace strengthen all those who today are still going through their Passion. May their faith not fail, and may ours be more secure…

  We beg you, you who are not ashamed to call us your sisters and brothers, Sons of the Living God!

• 6 April 2023 – Maundy Thursday

  Lord Jesus, you who said you had no stone to lay your head on, you who for months knew only the dust of the roads and the exhausting days of welcoming the lost crowds, now you ask your disciples to prepare a place for you, an upper room where you can stop, where you can share the Passover with friends. You long for this final moment for a few more essential words, testamentary gestures…

  And yet you know what we are… disciples still so immature, so unprepared to hear you, full of contradictions and even dissensions.

  This place, this moment to offer you, may your Spirit give us the power to receive it. May it pacify us, may it pray in us, and open this prayer to all those whom you wish to invite this evening, Jesus, you who see your Hour coming.

• 5 April 2023 – Holy Wednesday

  In the course of the Gospels, we have walked with you, Lord Jesus, and here we are ready to open our hearts to you and hear you say to us: It is with you that I wish to celebrate Easter.

  Give us the grace to be able to welcome you, beyond our refusals and our mediocrity, and to recognise in you, disarmed God, fragile God, the eternal yes of the tenderness of the Father who will never cease, whatever we do, to wait for us, to hope for us, in the infinite patience of the Spirit.