Evening Prayer Monday, 12 October 2020
Have patience with everything
unresolved in your heart,
and try to love the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms
or books written in a very foreign language.
Do not search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually,
without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Good evening and welcome to Evening Prayer
The Lord almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.
Amen.
Our help is in the name of the Lord
who made heaven and earth
That this evening may be holy, good and peaceful,
let us pray with one heart and mind.
Silence is kept.
As our evening prayer rises before you, O God,
so may your mercy come down upon us
to cleanse our hearts
and set us free to sing your praise
now and for ever.
Amen.
Presence
Lord, help me to be fully alive to your Holy presence.
Enfold me in your love.
Let my heart become one with yours.
Freedom
Lord, you created me to live in freedom.
May your Holy Spirit guide me to follow you freely.
Instil in my heart a desire
To know and love you more each day.
Consciousness
Lord you have called me ‘the light of the world’.
Let me be always conscious of those you want me to serve,
The hungry and the homeless,
The sick and the destitute,
The stranger and the refugee.
THE WORD OF GOD
Luke 11:29-32
When the crowds were increasing,
Jesus began to say, “This generation is an evil generation;
it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to
it except the sign of Jonah.
For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh,
so the Son of Man will be to this generation.
The queen of the South will rise at the judgment
with the people of this generation and condemn them,
because she came from the ends of the earth to
listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see,
something greater than Solomon is here!
The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment
with this generation and condemn it,
because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah,
and see, something greater than Jonah is here!”
WORDS OF WISDOM
Over the years, it has become increasingly clear to me that we are confused about the nature of evil. We don’t seem to understand what evil is, how it operates, or what we can do, personally or collectively, to reduce its power over us and its impact on our world. We really must face these questions, even if they are difficult and unpleasant to think about. Our planet’s life-sustaining systems are disintegrating. Authoritarianism is emerging all over the world. Since the pandemic began, the physical and mental health of millions has been deteriorating. Evil is clearly at work in our world, but what can we do about it?
I do not pretend to have the answers to such a big question, but what I can offer is the wisdom of the Christian tradition. For the first thousand years of Catholic Christianity, it was assumed that there were three sources of evil: the world, the flesh, and the devil. I will unpack the meaning of these three sources of evil this week.
Over centuries, we became very used to equating evil with individual “sins” and we lost a sense of its collective nature. The word “sin” often serves as a label applied to various cultural taboos and expectations, frequently having to do with purity codes. That seems very different from the real evils destroying the world! Of course, moral development and impulse control are important individual disciplines, but the conflation of personal sin with the source of evil is a terrible misunderstanding which has led to tragic consequences. Perhaps so many of us stopped using the word “sin” because we located it inside of our own small, cultural categories, with little awareness of the true subtlety, depth, and importance of the much more devious concept.
When small, easily forgivable transgressions are labeled “sins” and equated with evil, we trivialize the very real notion of evil and divert our attention from the real thing. Before it becomes personal and shameable, evil is often culturally agreed-upon, admired, and deemed necessary. The apostle Paul already had the prescient genius to recognize this, and I believe he taught that both sin and salvation are, first of all, corporate and social realities. In fact, this recognition could and should be acknowledged as one of his major contributions to history. I believe it still will be.
We largely missed that essential point, and thus found ourselves in the tight grip of monstrous social evils in Christian nations, all the way down to the modern era. Thus we also lost out on the benefit of a corporate notion of salvation that far exceeded anyone’s individual worthiness or unworthiness.
We are all guilty with one another’s sin and not just our own.
We are all good with one another’s goodness and not just our own.
My life is not just about “me.”
Fr Richard Rohr
https://cac.org/the-nature-of-evil-2020-10-11/
Copyright © 2018 by CAC. Used by permission of CAC. All rights reserved worldwide
PRAYERS AND INTERCESSIONS
We pray for the world…
Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
We pray for the universal church of Christ…
Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
We pray for one another and all those known to us…
Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
THE LORD’S PRAYER
As our Saviour taught us, so we pray
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.
Silence….
Visit this place, O Lord, we pray,
and drive far from it the snares of the enemy;
may your holy angels dwell with us and guard us in peace,
and may your blessing be always upon us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
See that you are at peace among yourselves, my children,
and love one another.
Follow the example of the wise and good
and God will comfort you and help you,
both in this world
and in the world which is to come.
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
THE BLESSINGS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsp2bPS-v-M
Goodnight and God bless…by the grace of God tomorrow will be a better day!
Revd. Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriaga
