February 2023

Lenten prayer

God, your commandment of love is not new, but it is with a renewed heart that we want to accept it, so that it may give our lives momentum. May our implementation of the Gospel throughout this Lenten period be more than sacrifices and fasts – which nevertheless help us to detach ourselves from ourselves in order to return to what is essential – but may we be given the enthusiasm of the faith that always starts afresh! We pray to you through Christ Jesus, our brother and Lord.

The only sign that we truly recognise ourselves as sinners is that we get up, like Levi who leaves his office as a publican, to respond to the invitation to the feast! (Luke 5:27-32)

Be gracious to me, O God, for I am a rich man who loves his voice and his possessions, but I have had wind of you, I have not fled from your breath. Release me from my possessions, bind my voice to your service, and let it take wind from the poor lands.

Be gracious to me, O God, for I am of lowly water, which troubleth thy word. The earth of which thou hast made me hides dark exchanges that mar thy reflection. Do not abandon me to their power and keep me from loving them.

Be gracious to me, O God, I am but a sinner. I come to drink from the spring in the heart of Christ without knowing my sin: the joy of being invited carries me. But what other testimony can I give to my Saviour? If he had not forgiven me everything, from what place would I speak?

There are days when the foundations of the earth seem to be shaken and we experience the limits of our omnipotence.

Help each of us to discern what still carries us.

There are days when you seem to sleep in the boat of humanity and the waves want to overwhelm everything.

Yet help us to believe in your presence with us.

There are days when the words “brotherhood” and “solidarity” seem to ring hollow.

Yet turn our gaze to so many modest actions, lived in discretion and gratuity.

There are days when the disparity of our living conditions, between countries, between fellow citizens, between generations, seems inexorably to increase.

Help us not to lose those you have entrusted to us.

There are days when our capacity for commitment seems difficult to maintain in the face of the magnitude of the problems facing our time.

Help us not to give in to weariness or fatalism, give us the energy of those who truly love.

Prayer

Yes, you are the God who brings us through the waters of the sea and of death. Do not stop the work of your hands, renew what our fathers told us, do not abandon our humanity to the excesses of the elements which it may have unleashed itself! Come, save us when we perish! Our prayer appeals to the very name of Jesus, in whom you save us, today as yesterday and until the end of time.

Lord, as we look at our world and the everyday of our lives, unhappiness often seems to inhabit humanity, and despair lurks in our thoughts. And yet, at the heart of all that destabilises our lives, you come to meet us. Where there is only weakness and poverty, you come to dwell and build bridges over the walls of our impasses.
Praise be to you for being the Lord of the life of the world, for being this friend of humanity who wants to transform and renew existence so that in the depths of unhappiness, hope may dawn for what makes us happy!
Praise be to you!

Lord, you are the Living One,
you are the Living One. You live with us. You live in us.
We are at this hour the voice of those who are struggling to live, of those who face nothingness and hope for nothing, of those who are born into this world and those who die, of those who struggle so that Life may be, immense prayer, Lord.
Everything can be destroyed in this passing world, yet you make it the place of your coming Kingdom.
Praise be to you!