Intercessions ~ Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Sexagesima

Wednesday is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes./ We pray for those who pilgrim to her great shrine in France,/ and for all who are sick,/ weak,/ poor and marginal in the world./ We pray to the Lord.

Saturday is the Feast of the priest-martyr, Valentine./ We pray for an increase of love in our world,/ mindful of those who have no family,/ friend or community./ We pray to the Lord.

In the winter-time we pray for those who are cold,/ hungry or unemployed./ We pray for those who operate shelters or places of assistance and comfort in the winter./ We pray to the Lord.

As Lent approaches/ we ask the Lord for the insights we need to live a holy Lent - promoting the life of Christ within us./ We pray to the Lord.

For persons with whom we may have resentments/ asking for our hearts/ new gifts of mercy,/ compassion and love./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for the sick,/ mindful of those who receive insufficient medical attention./ For health care providers/ and for the parents and protectors of children who are unwell physically or emotionally./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for those who have died by terrorism,/ accident,/ war or disaster./ And for those who mourn loved ones,/ we ask comforting,/ faith and hope./ We pray to the Lord.

Night Prayer

PERHAPS WAKING AT MIDNIGHT, or two or three in the morning, monks and nuns follow a prayer schedule that interrupts their sleep. The prayer takes place in the dark because the things of life and death are somehow focused in the night when people are often alone, or terrible sins and crimes are committed under cover of darkness. The monk prays in that awareness. 

Monastics also pray at night as a sign of the world's longing for light in the condition of our global darkness: the waste and destruction, the death and insults to life and human dignity.

Now and again, either because we are  tossing and turning the night away, or because something calls us out of our sleep: a bad dream, a storm, a car alarm, a baby's cry - we might call to mind that monks and nuns are praying. The prayer below invites solidarity with the world at night - even those in need who are far away and personally unknown to us.

And you know, even if we sleep like a rock, the prayer can always be used as a night time prayer before retiring. Somewhere in the world, monks and nuns are awake and praying for the world.

In this time of dark-solitude...Jesus. gladsome light.

Where monastics are awake in prayer...Jesus, Bethlehem's light.

Where children are awake in fear...Jesus, reassuring light.

Where there's night time domestic violence...Jesus, excellent light.

Where people are on the road or in the air...Jesus, who calls himself the light.

By deathbeds and in emergency rooms...Jesus, light of a new day.

With parents over sickbeds...Jesus, comforting light.

With doctors and nurses through the night...Jesus, land of light. 

Where there's sleepless worrying about tomorrow...Jesus, God-bearing light.

Where dark schemes are evolving...Jesus, growth-encouraging light.

Where night shadows conceal exploitation and desperation...Jesus, robed in light.

In the darkness of addiction...Jesus, house of light.

With the homeless poor...Jesus, hope-instilling light.

With prisoners awake...Jesus, joy-restoring light.

With mourners who will bury the dead tomorrow...Jesus, Resurrection light.

With those whose hunger prevents sleep...Jesus, strengthening light.

In prayer for those who are stealing or harming...Jesus, truth-carrying light.

For those whose homes are ruined by war...Jesus, shadow-dispersing light.

For those who intend violence and death tomorrow...Jesus, mind-changing light.

Near those arguing out of hatred, anger and fear...Jesus, healing light.

When physical pain relentlessly sears...Jesus, soothing hand of light.


Now perhaps click on the photo of the young Carthusian novice praying in his hermitage through the night. The monks are chanting the Lord's Prayer in Latin. It is very beautiful.

Link Pater Noster ~ The Lord's Prayer

Septuagesima

UNTIL THE CALENDAR REFORMS OF 1969, today would have been called Septuagesima Sunday - the first of three Sundays in a row with curious Latin names that served as a countdown to the start of Lent. Septuagesima translates seventy - roughly seventy days to Easter. 

The world spends a great deal of time getting ready for the things that matter to it: years of preparing for the Olympics, wedding preparations, a young lawyer wanna-be preparing for the boards, preparing one's face and hair for a major date, preparing the room for the baby's arrival, preparing for vacation, preparing for surgery, preparing for retirement...(oh, good God) preparing for the Superbowl.

So I think it's a mistake that the church dropped the three Sundays of Lenten preparation. Instead it's just imagined that we'll jump into Lent on Ash Wednesday and debate whether the Sundays of Lent "count." An unfortunate compromise with the flip side of the culture: zooming along and breathlessly playing catch-up.

Anyway, here on this blog-page we can acknowledge Septuagesima and its liturgical theme of humanity exhausted and bereft, the world's misery in need of a remedy. The Adam and Eve account in the book of Genesis tells us that somewhere along the line we spoiled things with wrong choosing, wanting to be equal to God in a bite and losing our God-Given Paradise. We need God for our repair. 

Sin weighs heavily upon us: lies and power abuse, exploitation and corruption, violence and death as our problem-solver, hatred and revenge. The Gospel at Mass today used to be Matthew 20: 1-16 - the vineyard owner who gave the same pay to those who worked only briefly  as those who'd worked through the long, hard and hot hours of the full day. The message: Be glad and get on board, in response to God who gives to us so generously, as God wills and as we need.

Septuagesima Sunday says it's not too soon to start preparing for Lent - considering how we might reflect God's own project of  love. And Therese of Lisieux lays it out for us.

"True charity consists in putting up with one's neighbor's faults, never being surprised by her weakness, and being inspired by the least of her virtues."

I've changed the pronouns from him to her only because Therese lived in a close community of twenty-one1 women and we must be absolutely certain that she knew exactly what she was talking about because of the challenges that kind of community would have presented. The picture above illustrates it. Laundry was done at a shallow pool, each nun squeezed up against the other, wooden paddles beating dirty clothes, water flying. Indeed, Therese writes of one laundry partner (deliberately?) splashing her with dirty water and Therese coming to imagine that it was the priest sprinkling her with Holy Water at the start of Mass! Therese wrote:

"If the people knew what went on in this house, they would burn it to the ground."

"Sometimes I feel as if I'm living inside a volcano."

In another place Therese writes of a nun in chapel who continually clanked her rosary against the wooden bench or whose loose false teeth clacked away.Therese imagining it was music. Or the cantankerous old nun who castigated Therese for walking her either too quickly or too so slowly. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't," we say.

So maybe this year we can grow our Lent with three practical life-steps given to us by this much loved saint, essential ingredients for the God-remedy of our world:

• putting up with the faults of others
• taking no surprise at the weaknesses of others
• taking inspiration at even the least of virtues we discern in others.

This is harder than the most rigorous fasting from desired desserts and drink and a dimension of Lent most ignored or forgotten.