Due to Memorial Day traveling, there will be no online group prayer this week. As always, please feel welcome to use this resource for individual prayer or any prayer group that you might lead.
Leader Let Us gather in the welcome of our Triune God, Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.
Gathered: Lord, it is good for us to be here.
Lighting the Christ candle
Leader Jesus Christ is the Light of the world.
Gathered: The Light no darkness can overcome
Were not our hearts burning as He spoke
Were not His words words we longed to hear
Were not our eyes opened in the breaking of the bread
Were not our hearts burn -ing as He spoke
Our God is here He walks among us
When two or three of us are gathered in his name
Our God is here and he surrounds us
And all creation sings the glory of his name
And we shall rise, as he is risen
And though he promised us we did not understand
Yes we shall rise as he is risen
And we will know him when he calls to us by name.
Lectio Divina Guidelines
Leader: - During the first reading, listen for the overall sense of the passage. Select a word or phrase that captures your attention, as though the Holy Spirit were flashing a light from the text to your heart, asking you to notice it. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, allow your eyes to be opened and your heart to be warmed as God speaks to you.
Leader: During the second reading let us listen for the feelings, sensations and connections that God's Word stirs in us. What message might God be speaking into your life now?.
Leader: - During the final reading let us attend to our own hearts for a response to God’s love. What response will you carry forth from this encounter with the Living Word into the world?
Leader: Let us now rest in the silence and attend once more to the presence of Christ among us. We hold a quiet space to hear God speaking in our hearts
"Christ Crucified and Risen," freestanding sculpture, Bagulo, Philippines
John 17:20-26. Christ's prayer for his disciples
20 "I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 "Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them."
Lord’s Prayer (from "Celtic Benediction," by John Phillip Newell)
Holy One beyond all names, Eternal Wellspring,
May love rise again in us today
with food for every table, shelter for ever person,
and reverence for every living being.
Forgive us our failings in love, and free us from all falseness,
that the light of our souls may shine
and the strength of our spirits endure for earth and all its people
this day, tonight, and forever. Amen.
Closing Prayer
O God, we offer our prayers on behalf of the universe in which we are privileged to live and of our neighbors with whom we share it. Open our hearts to your power moving around us and between us and within us, until your glory is revealed in our love of both friend and enemy, in communities transformed by justice and compassion, and in the healing of all that is broken. Amen.
