Two days late for the saint’s feast, and two days early for the worldwide day of prayer and fasting, but here is the prayer I pieced together for a group meeting yesterday:
Music
Da pacem, Domine (Grant peace, Lord.) (Jacques Berthier, Taizé)
Reflection with Saint Gregory the Great
Let us then pursue what makes for peace. (Romans 14:19a)
Let us then pursue what makes for peace.
When our hearts are reluctant
we often have to compel ourselves
to pray for our enemies,
to pour out prayer for those who are against us.
Let us then pursue what makes for peace.
Would that our hearts were filled with love!
How frequently we offer a prayer for our enemies,
but do it because we are commanded to,
not out of love for them.
Let us then pursue what makes for peace.
We ask the gift of life for them
even while we are afraid that our prayer may be heard.
The judge of our soul considers our hearts
rather than our words.
Those who do not pray for their enemies out of love
are not asking anything for their benefit.
Let us then pursue what makes for peace.
Jesus, our advocate,
has composed a prayer for our case.
And our advocate is also our judge.
Let us then pursue what makes for peace.
He has inserted a condition in the prayer that reads:
Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Sometimes we say these words
without carrying them out.
Thus our words bind us more tightly.
Let us then pursue what makes for peace.
Intercessions
Lord’s Prayer
Exchange of Peace
Final Word
My life has had a single strain:
to see Jesus in every human being,
to realize that each one is inviolable and sacred in the eyes of God,
and then to translate that into everything I do. (Eileen Egan)
Music
Da pacem, Domine (Grant peace, Lord.) (Jacques Berthier, Taizé)
Anybody planning to do anything Saturday for the declared day?
Catholic Sensibility 