Blessed are you Lord God
For the immense beauty of your creation, in which everything is interconnected,
from the blade of grass to the constellations.
You have entrusted our mother earth to us
And we never stop plundering and polluting her.
From melting glaciers to disappearing animal species,
we endanger her very survival.
Forgive us for being so irresponsible.
Don’t let us give up in the face of the immense task ahead.
Help us in our efforts
and encourage us all to “do whatever little we can”.
Blessed are you Lord God
Who from Genesis calls out to us: “Where is your brother?
Jesus revealed our fundamental brotherhood to us
And today everything is linked:
The clamour of the earth and that of the poorest,
Victims of climatic disasters or of our fratricidal wars,
Rejected migrants, starving populations, discriminated minorities.
Forgive us for so many injustices.
Do not let us give up in the face of the conversions we must make.
Help us to banish all individualism.
Restore to us a sense of wonder before all others,
the will to work for social justice
And a taste for the relationships that alone give meaning to our lives in our common home.
Blessed are you Lord God
From clay and breath you created us
And our secular, materialistic societies forget that everything is linked within us, the body and the being,
And that there’s no point in running after ever more consumerism,
to individual success, to appearances alone,
if inside we’re suffocating.
Don’t let us give up when we have to go against the tide,
Give space to the invisible, to sobriety, to hope, to prayer
That make us breathe wider than our little egos,
And open us up to a life-giving relationship with you and with others.
Blessed are you Lord God
For everything is interconnected, and to take care of ourselves
is to accept our radical interdependence
because no one lives for himself.
We have received our health, our strength and our gifts
so that they may bear fruit in harmonious relationships of sharing, service and selflessness.
Don’t let us give up in the face of today’s disorders
which give rise to despair, multiple addictions and a mortifying self-centredness.
Convert us to the tenderness with which you envelop all your creatures,
from the flowers of the field to the birds of the air,
and how much more, each and every one of the most fragile of human children, whom your Love entrusts to us.