Evening Prayer Tuesday, 1 December 2020

Che Fece… Il Gran Refiuto

For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,

he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right no—
drags him down all his life.

C.P. Cavafy (Alexandria, 1863-1933)
[translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard]

Good evening and welcome to Evening Prayer

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

Breathe in

Breathe out

Be still…

Come, O Spirit of God,
and make within us your dwelling place and home.
May our darkness be dispelled by your light,
and our troubles calmed by your peace;
may all evil be redeemed by your love,
all pain transformed through the suffering of Christ,
and all dying glorified in his risen life.
Amen. 

Presence

Lord, when I am feeling lonely,
remind me of your promise,
“You are never alone,
I am with you always,
Yes, to the end of time”.

Freedom

I need to close out the noise, to rise above the noise;
The noise that interrupts, that separates,
The noise that isolates.
I need to listen to God again.

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 

1 Thessalonians 2:4-5  

but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted
with the message of the gospel, even so we speak,
not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts.
As you know and as God is our witness,
we never came with words of flattery
or with a pretext for greed; 

WORDS OF WISDOM 

One should not await some presumably propitious moment, but instead begin at once to live by a new set of values. “The future will be different,” [Peter] announced in typical style, “if we make the present different.” [1] And the revolution began with oneself. There was no need to form a committee to study the problem; the commandments of Christ were there before us, and all that remained was to give flesh to those words, to translate the Gospel into action, and attract others to the cause. [2]

Theologian Marvin Mich (1948‒2018) shows how Maurin’s radical commitment flowed from his reading of the New Testament, and his own Catholic faith:

Maurin brought with him a “gentle personalism,” which was a Catholic radicalism based on the literal interpretation of the Beatitudes. He rejected the liberal institutions of capitalism and the modern state and their faith in material progress and technology. . . . He proposed [instead] a radical imitation of the gospel life of voluntary poverty in solidarity with the weak, the poor, the sick, and the alienated. The Catholic Worker movement’s consistent intellectual position was based on a radical interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and on papal social encyclicals. . . .

The Worker encouraged communal living, ecumenism, and the concept of laypeople as missionaries. The movement is best known for its “direct action” on behalf of the poor. They started Houses of Hospitality, imitating the medieval hospice. These were soup kitchens, meeting rooms, clothing centers, and places of reflection.

Finally, Dorothy Day reflects on how Peter Maurin’s love for God and people inspired the same in others:

Peter made you feel a sense of his mission as soon as you met him. He did not begin by tearing down, or by painting so intense a picture of misery and injustice that you burned to change the world. Instead, he aroused in you a sense of your own capacities for work, for accomplishment. He made you feel that you and all [people] had great and generous hearts with which to love God. If you once recognized this fact in yourself you would expect and find it in others. . . . But it was seeing Christ in others, loving the Christ you saw in others. Greater than this, it was having faith in the Christ in others without being able to see Him. Blessed is he that believes without seeing.”

Robert Ellsberg

https://cac.org/the-catholic-worker-movement-2020-12-01/
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. 

Final Prayer 

Abide with us, Lord, for it is evening,
and day is drawing to a close.
Abide with us and with
your whole Church,
in the evening of the day,
in the evening of life,
in the evening of the world;
abide with us and with all
your faithful ones, O Lord,
in time and in eternity.

Amen. 

THE BLESSING

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
wherever He may send you.
May He guide you through the wilderness,
protect you through the storm.
May He bring you home rejoicing
at the wonders He has shown you.
May He bring you home rejoicing
once again into our doors.

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen 

Thank you for join us. Goodnight and God bless.

Revd. Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriaga