Lord God,
You know how hard it is for human beings not to return insult for insult,
to bless those who don’t love us.
We see it in our own lives, and in global conflicts between countries
where the escalation of violence seems inexorable, blind and brutal.
Hope has been shattered and anxiety has taken hold of our hearts.
What remains of the love from which we expected marvels?
Repair our cracks, Lord, you who built the foundations of the universe.
Consolidate our existence, You who fashioned us to be the dwelling place of Your unalterable beauty,
of Your infinite goodness, eternally

Lord God
As you know, witnessing is not a crusade,
nor is it about proving anything.
Baptised in Christ, renewed in the Spirit,
we speak, we love, we weep, we doubt,
we work, we laugh, we suffer, we hope,
like all men, we live!
But Lord, we beg you to allow us to lead a humble and unostentatious life,
a daily existence that is clearly founded on Christ and his Gospel.
In this way, animated by the Spirit, we will forge ever deeper links
with all humanity and with You, faithful God, for ever and ever.

Your Spirit, Lord, is like the wind:
no one knows where it comes from, but we can see the traces of its passage
whenever there is peace, trust, love and joy.
We pray to you: may it dwell in our prayer, guide our steps
and may our actions and words
to continue your act of creation and blessing.

Before the dawn of the day, your Spirit is already here, Lord our God:
May it awaken in us the desire to know You and to trust You
May He speak to us of Your longing to meet us, You who seek us like the merchant
who leaves everything to find his precious pearl.
May it help us to hear Your voice in the men and women who cross our path today.
May He communicate to us Your joy of giving and forgiving, without measure and at every moment.
May it make our interdependence a springboard for true solidarity, where each of us feels responsible for the happiness of others,
feels responsible for the happiness of others.

Stay with us Lord, now it’s evening
and we have not yet recognised your face in the poorest of the poor.
Stay with us Lord, evening is coming
And we have not yet shared your bread in thanksgiving with those in need.
Stay with us Lord, evening is coming
And we have not yet heard your call through the distress of the excluded.
Stay with us Lord, evening is coming
And our hearts are still so slow to believe that you had to die
to rise again and that you are in our midst…
Stay with us, Lord!

Lord, in the depths of our silence, your name sings.
At the heart of our weaknesses, there is your resurrection that renews life.
In the depths of our discord, there is a gentle breath that makes peace.
In the questions of our lives, it’s not your answer,
It is you yourself, infinitely present, who helps us to answer.
This, Lord, is what we know about you
and today our poor hearts have been filled.
Blessed are you, now and always.

Lord, you are the Master of time and the God of our spaces,
You go ahead of us and lead us through the years,
You are our guide and our path.

You who watch silently over the heart of our lives,
You who give us courage in our darkest despair?
You are our light and our path.

You who walk with us and in our midst with no other power than your Love,
Your silences and Your words lead us to follow You towards a new dawn.
You are our Saviour and our way.

Is that not our faith?
Acclaiming Jesus Christ, our Master and Lord, one day,
crucifying him next day, refusing to follow him on the path of total trust in the Father,
discovering tomorrow his presence by our side in spite of everything.
Is this not our love?
Acclaiming one day the one who gave his life to save ours?
crucifying him next day when selfishness, jealousy and selfishness take over our hearts,
discovering tomorrow, in spite of everything, the presence of the Risen One
who has overcome evil and death.
For faith and love renewed by the sap of spring,
by the mystery of Christ’s Passover,
we give you thanks, God of our life.

Lord our God,
something is stirring in your Church,
as if Moses’ bush were secretly on fire again,
calling us to new exoduses after so many deserts.
Help us to understand that we are not walking alone,
that others elsewhere are reaching out to us
to pave the way for peace, for the salvation of the world, for compassion.
Give us the strength to move forward together, in deep water
and recognise your footsteps, you, the God of our faith,
Father of Jesus Christ.

Christ our brother,
you lead us to this slow interior transfiguration to conform us to you, little by little.
Give us the gift of being your healing hands,
your Word that comforts,
your action that lifts us up
so that none of the least of these may be crushed, and so that your praise may rise to the Father with ours
through your Spirit of Love.

Dear Lord,
may the memory of what you lived among us, in patience and trust
inspire us even today. May we, freed from our slavery
may we move forward together towards the land of brotherhood.
We pray this through Jesus, the mediator of your covenant of peace for all.

Lord, we have built a world of noise and agitation,
you wait for us in silence and peace. Bring us back.
Lord, we have built a world of privilege and misery,
You await us in communion. Bring us back, Lord.
Lord, we have built a world where so many peoples are oppressed,
you await us in respect and justice. Bring us back, Lord.
Lord, we have built a world on the law of the strongest and on exclusion,
you are waiting for us in the gratuitousness of love. Bring us back, Lord.
Lord, we have built a world of violence and contempt,
you are waiting for us in welcome and wonder. Bring us back, Lord.

Lord God,
There are words that bring glad tidings when they spread kindness and forgiveness
human kindness and forgiveness.
There are gestures that herald glad tidings and show its light when they
build the human earth on justice and peace.
There are actions that herald the good news and show its presence when they build the human
on tenderness and justice.
To waiting hearts, to awakened minds, you show your tireless closeness.
We bless you for this, God our Father.
Give us the gift of making ourselves available to your life,
To let ourselves be seduced by your passion for humanity.

Lord, you often tell us in the Scriptures that we must get down to work. That we must not
lament the situation we are experiencing today in the Church and in the world.
There is a challenge of mission. We pray to you, Lord, asking for a greater time to
to renew our hope. Help us to become aware once again that our baptism makes us
a missionary of the Good News and a builder of fraternal communion. As we approach
of the Feast of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, may we experience in a common journey the joy of the Beatitudes and the challenge to love.

Lord,
From the depths of our precariousness, we do not give up, we raise our hands to You!
We will not bow to fate, but we will bow to You,
because you are the master of all possibilities, and you want us to stand on our own two feet.
We stretch out our hands: prayer is our dignity.
It is the breath that keeps us alive. It is part of your movement of life,
it creates in us a current of hope. It cleanses and renews all our judgements.
We stretch out our hands to you, Lord, our hands that break bread every day.
Make them better able to share, quicker to give. Let them reach out and touch one another,
to enlarge this body of humanity that sanctifies your Father’s name, in Jesus Christ and in the Spirit.

God our Father,
love enlightens all things
and Jesus Christ himself is our torch.
You invite us to look at him, to contemplate the face he gives to your word.
The face in which you yourself reveal yourself to us.
The disfigured face of the Crucified One who calls us to follow him
to discover the true face of the humanity we are.
Convert us to listening to his words, which are the wisdom of life,
to faith in his daily presence.
Let the Gospel of Peace shine on our faces, so that we may pass on to the world
the light with which he is eternally clothed.

A day is drawing to a close
full of you, Lord.
a day
full of your Word
May it not be forgotten,
suffocated, swallowed up by the passing of life.
A day
full of fraternal presence.
May we remember the faces
that lit up our own.
A day
full of the sacrament
that gives life and puts us back in communion with you,
with others, day after day…

Lord, it’s cold on earth because of the loneliness and distress of so many people.
Lighting a fire to warm up is a simple gesture, one that each of us is capable of…
Lord our God, help us to do this without ceasing:
In the image of Christ Jesus, burning with love for this world, teach us to warm, to listen, to console
those who are alone in their anguish and destitution.
On the threshold of this Lent, renew our hearts in the gift of ourselves,
In Jesus, your beloved son, our Master and Lord.

Your silence, Lord, is not the silence of abandonment.
It is the silence of a friend who discreetly stands by the one he loves.
Help us to respect and love your silence.

Your discretion, Lord, is not indifference towards us.
It shows the deep respect you have for us.
Help us to appreciate and love your discretion.

We know it, we believe it, Lord,
in silence and discretion
You are always close to us and we thank you for it.

Lord, we know our fears, our weariness and our resignation.
But we also know your tireless desire to challenge us to new beginnings.
May listening to your word and the assurance of your Presence rekindle in us the desire to respond to the call
that you keep issuing to us.
May the Spirit who makes all things new, keep us in the joy of being with Jesus and in communion
with our sisters and brothers along the way for all time.

Lord our God, you are overflowing with love for us and we are still calculating.
Teach us about your generosity!
You run to meet us and we are still reluctant to take a step.
Give us a share in your momentum!
You commit yourself without counting the cost and we are still waiting for certainty.
Open our hearts to your grace!
Just when we think we’ve arrived, you’re there, ahead of us, encouraging us to keep going.
Give us faith in your presence!
You are always ready to sow with great gestures and large hands, trusting in the seed that will
germinate.
Don’t stop believing in us.

Holy Spirit, open to us the path of the desert,
This place of the heart where, in the face of oneself, weapons are silenced;
This place of listening, where the word of peace is heard in the midst of words;
This place of trust and friendship where we can live together in peace.
Holy Spirit, open to us the path of the desert,
The path of life, of the new life that is the fruit of Jesus’ Passover,
Offered to our thirst, given like manna for our journey.
Holy Spirit, guide us on the way of Jesus.

Lord God, you created us in your image, modeled with the fine dust of the ground, you clothed us with the beauty of the divine nature. But we have broken this alliance, lost the likeness, closed our hands on the vanity of idols…So you sent your Son Jesus so that his humanity may clothe these beings of dust that we are with Your light, and that his Spirit may regenerate us! Our dry bones, you want them to live and dance, for your service and the service of our sisters and brothers.

In this time of Lent, we resume our walk, on the dusty soil of this world, but already renewed in faith, hope and charity, by the grace of the Resurrection of Christ, your only Son and our brother.

Lord, God of Life, how many times in the course of this year have we walked through reality as if on a thread above the abyss, with faith in a Promise heard in the hollow of our ears as the only support for our steps, while wars and injustices continue to turn our world upside down? How often, in the midst of threat, has an unsuspected space opened up, a space in which love, creation and relationships are still possible?

Your coming in our flesh, Lord, did not establish peace or justice on our earth. You have not eliminated evil, you have not protected us from any pain, but you have opened the way to another fullness. That of Tenderness that makes us love life even when we don’t understand it, even when the tragic or the absurd seem to take over.

For this look that comes to us through the face of Emmanuel and that reminds us that we are all inevitably promised to your Life, Father, we give you thanks, this evening and until the last day.

Since the dawn of time, Lord, the Child has danced with the wind, the stars have come to life beneath his feet, and his steps have woven gold into the void: Blessed art thou for He who saves us!

The Child is born with a gaze from which there is no escape. A gaze capable of stopping all the world’s wars in an instant. A mirror of the Mystery. Summoned to live, the Child in turn summons.

The Child casts his gaze over the world like a watchful radar, a lie detector, a blotter of truth. He summons us to be who we are, in the truest sense of ourselves.

The new-born Child in the midst of uncertainty tells us that we are permanently vulnerable, that there is not much earth under our feet and not much shelter over our heads. But it also tells us that being vulnerable can be the best part of our lives.

The Child who is born is the emergence of Life at the height of chaos. The intimate intertwining of life and danger. It is the cross that our baptisms as the living draw on all our foreheads. Blessed are you, Lord, for He who saves us!

Lord, God of the impossible, this morning a newborn child bears the Hope of the world. He stands there, in the breach, in almost nothing. But in height and depth, everything is immense: everything is possible. May we know how to stand there with the Child, in the vibrant moment of perhaps, in you, God, at the Source of Life, to carry the Hope of the world, together.

As COP 28 gets underway, bless you for reminding us, along with Pope Francis, that the suffering of mankind and the earth are inextricably linked.

Blessed are you for reminding us that we all have a share of responsibility, however small our gestures of conversion and sobriety;

Blessed are you for reminding us that our horizons touch and that what happens far away has origins and repercussions in what we have set in motion here;

Blessed are you for reminding us that thousands of brothers and sisters must flee a land that has become uninhabitable and that we have a duty to welcome them because we are responsible for what has ruined their economic balance, their land and their cultural know-how;

Blessed are you for reminding us that neither the earth, nor the oceans, nor the forests belong to us and are not commodities that can be bought and sold for the benefit of the rich.

The fire still rages today, often in the midst of general indifference. You have said how blessed we are to be persecuted, but we who have suffered so little for your name’s sake, dare we praise you for them?
They are robbed of their possessions and accept the conditions of pariah citizens. For their destitution and for their faith, be praised Lord.
They lose their jobs and suffer discrimination and injustice. For their perseverance and for their faith, praise the Lord.
Their places of worship are burnt down and they are forced to go underground to gather. For their courage and faith, Lord, be praised.
They share in the mystery of your Cross and draw their hope from the victory of Easter. For their joy and for their faith, be praised Lord.
For these sisters and brothers who honour your Name and carry us in the half-heartedness of our faith, we dare to call you Father.

Blessed are you, Lord our God, for the joy of journeying together as a people! This evening we want to graft our prayer onto the one that rises up to you from Saint Peter’s Square in Rome, where sisters and brothers in Christ have gathered from all over the world. On them, as on all of us, we call your Holy Spirit, Counsellor and Guide.

On the brothers of Taizé who are at the origin of this gathering, on the young people who have come to join them, on the members of the Synodal Assembly of the Catholic Church, on the leaders and delegates of the different Churches and Christian Communities, on the multitude of other people throughout the world who, like us, are in prayer this evening.

With all these people, we give you thanks, God, Source of all gifts, for the steps already taken along the synodal path since its opening in 2021.

Thanks be to you for the journey towards Christian Unity, a Unity that is already very real, experienced in so many places, and which allows us to hope that theological reflection will also follow.

Thanks be to you for helping us to discover that the other is a gift, that those whom we see as marginalised, in society and in the Church, truly help us to widen the space of the tent.

Thanks be to you for all those who create peace around them, for the witnesses who, in the midst of our wars or in the midst of an exodus, live and act as sons and daughters of God, inhabited by the Peace of the Risen Christ.

Thanks be to you for the gift of Creation and for those who commit body and soul to caring for our Common Home.

Receive as our evening offering, God our Father, our hearts filled with gratitude, our willingness to walk together and unite our voices in prayer, our hope that one day all your people will come together as one.

For we are all different faces of the same humanity that you love, always and forever.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

No one can reach the dawn without passing through the path of the night.

Lord, God of our Fathers, throughout this Lenten season, you have tilled our hearts with your Word.

In these Holy Days when we are once again approaching the Paschal Mystery, give us the grace to know how to accompany your Son.
– Faced with temptations in the desert, Jesus uses only one weapon against the Adversary: the Word. Blessed be you, O our God!
– On Tabor, when Peter, James and John learn that their Master is threatened with exodus and Passion, they see him bathed in an Easter light, consolation and encouragement for their faith as disciples and for ours: Blessed be you, O our God!
– At the edge of a well, at the same time as the Samaritan woman, Jesus led us into the long work of the Word exchanged, the work of giving birth that sets each of us on the road to our deepest thirst, imprinted with your own Life in us: Blessed be you, O our God!
– Like the blind man, we want to leave the darkness that holds us captive, to follow Him who is already drawing our misfortunes into His victory and denying them the power to harm us: blessed be you, O our God!
– In the company of the sisters of Lazarus, we call down on our world the power of the Word of Jesus, which goes even into death. It makes life out of what is dead: blessed be you, O our God!

Lord God, she must have trembled, Mary, on that eve, because more than anyone else she felt the fragility of the enthusiasm that was stirring up the crowd. Like every woman, she sensed.

To all those who today are afraid, who ache for those they love, give them the support of a strong woman.

We ask this in the name of Jesus, in the fidelity of his Spirit who prays in us, as he prayed in Mary.

Blessed are you, Jesus, gentle and humble Messiah, for welcoming the acclaim of this crowd of little people.

It is true that they do not know the Law, they will not reproach you for breaking the Sabbath, they do not trap your every word, but they have seen your gestures, they have drunk your words, they have touched your cloak, their hearts have melted before the healings…
So you are happy, for a moment, to bathe in their joy, to welcome their spontaneous ovation: Hosanna, Son of David, our King!

May it prefigure the one that all ages, all lands, have always been waiting for, the one where, together, we will all stand before you and acknowledge: Yes, Jesus, you are the one who was and who is to come, the Prince of Peace for ever!

In our journey through the desert, we have come to a halt. Lord Jesus Christ, we need you to rest and quench our thirst.

For all around us, and even more so in the distance, the earth is dry from not having enough rain, the earth is burnt by huge fires, devastated by bombs or earthquakes – and how many hearts throughout the world are dried up by the desolation of daily life or the anguish of tomorrow…

In you we recognise the One who illuminates the dry places in us so that we can work on them, and who, by his own journey and the gift of his life, offers us living, purifying and thirst-quenching water, ready to flow over the barren lands to irrigate the future.

For this oasis of hope at the edge of your well, Lord Jesus, we bless you.

Lord, teach us to make integral ecology our own.

Draw us out of the torpor of a light and insidious irresponsibility towards the state of the world.

May this lucidity, far from making us give up, give us the necessary impetus to change the world step by step, with your help!

The wind is blowing hard.

The storm refreshes us, and scares us a little, too.

Lord, what if it was our sister and mother earth that was crying out in revolt?
So much plunder, pollution and abuse committed against her!

And, why not, what if it was your anger, Good God, who no longer knows how to make us hear your call, your warning:

“My beloved children, you are on the wrong path.
Change your ways of producing and consuming, of housing and feeding yourselves, of working and travelling!

Yet, Lord, do not cease to speak to us, to call us and to hope in us.

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!