October 2024

Lord,
you have entrusted us with your Good News,
you entrusted it to us for the poor, for those left behind;
Lord,
you have entrusted us with your Good News
you have entrusted it to us for those who weep and cannot be consoled,
whose silence we can only perhaps share;
Lord,
you have entrusted us with your Good News,
You have entrusted it to us for those who hunger for justice, for the peacemakers
who persevere despite so many defeats;
Lord
you have entrusted us with your Good News,
You have also entrusted it to us for the powerful, those who dominate, those who enrich themselves.
For them and for us, may your life, Christ, be Good News!

Lord our God, to guide us on the path where you yourself come to meet us, you give us a single word that contains all the others: ‘You will love! Let it be the lamp of our steps.
Your Word is like bread. Let us savour it, share it and draw strength from it for the journey ahead.
Your Word is like water. May it irrigate everything in us that is barren or dried up and draw us towards its source.
Your Word is like fire. May it enlighten us and warm us, burning us with the desire for communion.
Your Word is like the earth. Root us in it so that we may experience the solidity and constancy of all that you give, demand and promise…

Father, give us strength every day to believe that life is stronger than evil.
May there be a way out and light beyond every dead end, every night.
May love deliver us from death.
May we listen to the source of true happiness,
to the disconcerting and inexhaustible calls of life,
of what rises up from the immense interior spaces within us.
Give us the ability to recognise the new that is happening,
to marvel at it, to help it grow,
with that passion for love that never lets us rest.
Give us the ability to believe in what we are doing together,
by welcoming others in all their differences,
by becoming freer of ourselves every day.

Lord, we have tried again today to repeat your gestures in memory of you,
But what did you do that you didn’t borrow from us?
But we wanted to repeat your words to ourselves,
But what words did you use that we didn’t teach you?
Blessed are you for having said of God what comes to you from man!
May your ideal remain constantly present in our actions and our words, so that they never lose the unique dimension that, in your name, they have forged.
unique dimension they have found in your name.
Lord, take us into your praise!

Lord, may the wind of the Spirit blow over us and the world to open up new paths
of humanity. May our life together have a taste of the Gospel and radiate its joy. We pray
through Jesus who walks before us, who wants everyone to know the love with which you love us,
today and until the day of our never-ending gathering.

Beginning is always a wound, because we are tearing day from the swamps of night, but the Spirit
watches over the dawn of the first morning…
Beginning is always a birth, because something new bursts into the closed field of the familiar.
familiar, but the Spirit takes on the cries of the world in need of birth …
Beginning is always courageous, because we build with ardour, even if the storm threatens and
the Spirit is a bulwark of fire all around the house …
Beginning is always hopeful, because a tree is planted even if the earth is parched, and the Spirit
is the source from which the roots flow: with you, Lord, today we begin.

Jesus Lord,
two thousand years ago you stood up
and nothing has been able to stop the freedom of your Word.
For the life you awakened,
for the energies you inspired,
for the hope that has shattered destiny,
may your Church be a proud heir in word and deed
to continue what your Spirit awakens in her
for the great glory of your Father and our Father.

Praise and glory to the Creator,
praise to you, Lord, for all that lives and breathes!
Blessed are you for this autumn, which remembers its fragile growth in spring
and now shines with the summer sun that nourished its fruit.
Blessed are you for the air we breathe, for the firm ground beneath our feet.
Blessed are you for the rising and setting sun
and the knots that sometimes hide them from our eyes.
Blessed are you for Jesus Christ and all those who put respect for creatures before efficiency,
love before the law.
Blessed are you for Hope, unshakeable as our surrounding mountains.
Blessed are you for the day that passes and gives us joy like the flower of the field
and the bird that flies and sings and flies away.
And bless you for your Spirit who hovers over this world in the making
and reconciles all life with Jesus Christ, at all times and into eternity.

Lord, you provoke our voice, your word frees our prayer,
you draw us to the spring waters where your path leads,
in your most intimate footsteps, towards the waters of life.
Just as a tree bears witness in the sky to the light invested in the earth,
our human voice bears witness to the weight of the great secret of creation,
your Word awakens our memory and inspires our praise.
It crosses our possessions to our poor calling,
the call of our birth…