Intercessions ~ Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

At the start of July we ask the blessings of good health,/ safety and well-being for all who celebrate birthdays,/ anniversaries and other days of remembrance./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for Pope Francis/ who travels to Dublin for the World Meeting of Families in August./ We ask for a re-configured world order/ which would restore hope to those families throughout the world/ where life is un-imaginably difficult,/ where the burdens are very great./ We pray to the Lord.

The apostles experience terror in the Gospel today./ We pray for those who live in fear:/ fear for their children,/ health and financial fears,/ fear of enemies and persecutors,/ personal fears of failure and loss,/ life and death fears./ For gifts of courage and faith./ We pray to the Lord.

For the safety of travelers during the World Cup games in Russia./ And as scoring goals is the aim of soccer,/ may peace,/ justice and global compassion be the real goals we set out to achieve./ We pray to the Lord.

As we have returned to the green of Ordinary Time,/ may we "green" in our capacity for self-knowledge/ and our continual need to learn how to live in God/ and to love others rightly./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for world leaders to be honorable and good people:/ civil,/ decent,/ intelligent,/ sincere./ And while serving the needs of all,/ may they have a particular commitment to the ones who are most easily ignored or forgotten./ We pray to the Lord.

Mother of God ~ Searcher for the Lost

Here is the icon of the Mother of God ~ Searcher for the Lost. Her eyes are wide open; she sees. The edge of her ear beneath her cap; she listens. The lamp's flame invites us to pray from an expanding heart.

O Lady, Searcher for the Lost,
with you I am wide awake
for the children lost to untreated disease, 
malnutrition,
abortion and infanticide.

O Lady, Searcher for the Lost,
with you I am watching
for the children lost to sex trafficking,
child-soldiering,
kidnapping and border separation.

O Lady, Searcher for the Lost,
with you I am listening 
for the children lost to murder,
domestic violence, 
parental neglect and addiction.

O Lady, Searcher for the Lost,
with you my heart is attentive
for the children lost to degradation,
poor example,
slavery and child labor.

O Lady, Searcher for the Lost,
with you my heart has room
for the children lost to gun mayhem,
rejection,
drowning and dehydration along the refugee-way.

O Lady, Searcher for the Lost,
with you my consciousness holds
the children lost in war zones,
disaster areas,
unclaimed and un-named.

O Lady, Searcher for the Lost,
with you I stand in heart-solidarity
with the children lost in terror,
tears,
broken-hearted and lonely.

O Lady, Searcher for the Lost,
patterning for us:
every child welcomed,
every child wanted.

Orca and Healing

This amazing tulip with layered petals is named Orca. It blooms early to mid-spring, orange-tangerine with gold highlights. There were a dozen of these show stoppers in the front of the house here along the blue stone walk to the chapel.  

The display lasted about two weeks before the petals fell. The leaves then lost their green  and started to decay. A friend returned a week or so later and asked, "What's happened to your tulips; they look like they're dying?"

What's happened is a normal and necessary process called Healing. The bulbs, having worked so hard in producing these wonders, have now gone into a rest period, building up reserves and even "birth-ing" bulb-lets, all of which will survive through the winter and re-appear in April of 2019. What a great name for this process - Healing.  

The word healing might well capture the Christian imagination: Jesus the Healer. But the miracles of Jesus are about much more than simply physical healing: the blind man, the deaf man, the mute, the crippled man, the bent over woman, the fevered mother in law, the little girl dead in bed, Lazaraus in his stone-tomb. They are indeed images of our present need for healing and new life in our human condition, the healing, binding up, raising up of our families, our emotional lives, our spiritual, relational, psychological, cultural, national and ecclesial lives.

He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue  on the Sabbath day as he usually did. He stood up and read, and they handed him the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll he found the place where it is written:

The Spirit of the Lord is with me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord. (Luke 4:16-19)

O Jesus, please, your healing of our family tree,
the ancestors, the long lineage of
divorce and domestic violence,
suicide, abortion and infidelity,
sex abuse, emotional brokenness,
addiction, alcoholism, poverty,
failure, desperation and depression.

O Jesus, good news for us too in the affliction of our 
loneliness,
the wounds of younger years,
sex abuse,
willful ignorance,
naivete,
our bubble world,

O Jesus, your freeing us from our enervating
greed,
selfishness,
arrogance,
superficiality,
vanity and fear,
our collecting,
our storage bins from 
sea to shining sea.

O Jesus, liberty from the slavery of our
false worship - our idolatry,
love of money,
trusting of power,
the adulation of might,
the glorification of weapons,
the sins of nationalism and
that politics...
that radio voice which keeps us from thinking freely for ourselves.

O Jesus, healing the blindness of our
hatred, 
distractions,
lack of imagination,
sight-stealing fears, 
inattention to our interior lives,
our winking at,
our confident admiration for what is repugnant to you.

O Jesus, a year of favor for us too,
anointing us with
that essential truth,
the only truth which matters really,
the truth about ourselves
as we stand before you
with the soul-seeing Father and
the Spirit of renewing life and love.


Father Stephen P. Morris