Author name: admin8206

19 July 2023

God, our Father, we come to pray, we come to the source.

Because our world has dried up and we are dying, caught as we are between the consumerism of some – of which we are sometimes one – and the crying poverty of others.

Because our world feeds its senseless wars and starves entire populations.

We have come to pray, to listen to your Word above all, to remind ourselves that a Source exists and that it can spring up and spring up again, that deserts can bloom again.

That there is a Way – a sacred path – that is never defiled, and that deep down in each one of us, in every living being, this Way has already been traced, that it is already being made.

If we are willing to let you open our eyes, open our ears deafened by well-being, free our voices from indifference.

So that the song of hope sung by the young woman Mary for the poor of her people may still spring forth in us and through us.A song that the Spirit knows how to revive, from age to age, as soon as it finds a passage in some good will.

17 July 2023

Jesus, Lord,

Mary’s prayer is full of the prayers of so many mothers today…

The plea of the mother whose child is in the grip of a terrible illness.

The desperation of the mother whose child is crying out for food, when in so many parts of the world today there is nothing left to eat.

The torment of the mother whose child has taken up arms against his brothers, or has taken to the sea to flee to a high-risk El Dorado.

The helplessness of the mother whose child has lost his way in drugs, delinquency and the violence of recent days.

Jesus, Mary’s prayer is full of the prayers of these mothers who feel understood, listened to and comforted by her.

Lord, listen and hear the prayer of your Mother!

16 July 2023 – Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Lord, God of Elijah and Mary, on this feast day for the Carmelite Order we stand before you, aware both of the beauty and relevance of our vocation and of the fragility of the future for our communities.

And yet we believe that we have and will have a place to hold at the heart of this world. A place that is often discreet and hidden, but no less essential.

When you call, Lord, it is always so that we set out on our journey. This implies that we risk the unknown, that we leave behind our certainties, and that we do so not just once but every day anew. Only then will we be able to allow the truth to burrow into us and through us into the heart of our societies, which are struggling to stay the course. Only in this way will we discover the promised hundredfold, and will our joy be able to make a sign. Only then will our journeys be able to encourage others not to be afraid of facing their own.

Lord, awaken in our hearts that first love that gives itself so desperately and hopes for everything.

Awaken and mobilise in us this Easter faith that will make your power of Life effective. For it has already crossed all our deserts and our nights, and we bless you for it, God, who can do everything in those who trust in you.

15 July 2023

Yes, Father, let the desert and the barren land be full of joy, let the hands that weaken and the knees that wobble be strengthened. Your Spirit can do this again and again, if we offer him the very little of our faith and our unquestioning acquiescence. May Mary, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, support our prayer this evening, in the name of Jesus, the Christ, our Lord and our Brother.

11 June 2023 – Blessed Sacrament Sunday

We would like to clear your name when it is used to justify an act of barbarity!

We would like to reiterate that you never legitimised any violence or vengeance, that you revealed a God of Love, unconditional love for everyone. Love taken to that extreme… of letting yourself be eaten! So that, nourished by this love, humanity will gradually assimilate it until the day when it will be transformed from within.

“I will put a new spirit within you, and I will remove the stony heart from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” – a promise made by the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 35:26).

If the Church makes the Eucharist, there are too many empty places in our celebrations! There are those who no longer come to Mass because they don’t understand anything about it. And there are those who choose to attend Masses where they understand neither the language nor the ritual, believing that they are thus preserving transcendence and mystery.
Lord, this mystery is indeed too great, too inexhaustible, it “understands” us, it envelops us too much, even in our bodies, for us to ever give up trying to approach it. May your Holy Spirit revive our theological work, and above all may we know how to renew the liturgical and ecclesial translations that flow from it.

28 May 2023 – Pentecost

Holy Spirit, you are visitation on our daily soil, germination in depth,

a call to be born, a joy that dances,

a burst of life!

Come, Holy Spirit, visit us!

It is you who weave our silent hours and into the hidden fibres of our beings,

you chisel away at our soil.

You make our fears crack, you break down the dams that hold back the great flood of Life!

Come Holy Spirit, visit us!

Come and intercede with us for those who suffer,

for those who hurt and destroy,

for those whose humanity is in danger.

Come, Holy Spirit, make your Pentecost burst forth in our hearts

and blow a wind of peace over the world!

You who make all things new, come! Visit us!

10 April 2023 – Easter

Up! Up!

Jesus, young dead of spring

in haste, unseen, unbeknownst to us,

before the sun,

You rolled away the stone that imprisoned life

Like a door freed from its hinges, it flutters to the four winds!

And we, astonished with joy

overwhelmed by daring to believe,

the song comes to our lips before the words:

Alleluia, Alleluia!

Praise be to you, Jesus, the First Living!

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!