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!

The Word of God inspires the words of prayer, dare we say that our words, in turn “inspire” God in his action? Perhaps, if we agree that Love is capable of everything, except indifference. Love allows itself to be reached, to be moved. Love can be pushed to invent, to re-create, to open up passages in our dead-end situations. Teresa of Avila insistes “Love demands deeds !”. Would God be content to love “with words and language” only, and not constantly translate his love into deeds and truth, which he does, and eternally! God embodies his Word, and cannot leave us strangers to His unrelenting ACTION! Continuously creating through us, the desire of the infinite desire of love, its fulfilment…