Evening Prayer Tuesday, 5 January 2021

Not Yet
by Pádraig Ó Tuama

 ‘You’re too young
to know about The Troubles,’
the peaceman said.

And the youngman said:

f a t h e r s h o t d e a d
m o t h e r f e l l a p a r t
b r o t h e r f e l l i n t o h i m s e l f
o t h e r b r o t h e r s e n t t o l i v e w i t h o t h e r s
a n d m e i s m o t h e r e d e v e r y t h i n g
i w a s f a r m e d a r o u n d
a n d n o w y e a r s l a t e r
w e h a v e f o u n d o u r s e l v e s b a c k b e n e a t h
a s h a r e d a n d t r o u b l e d c e i l i n g.

Not yet.

No—one’s too young
to know about The Troubles.

Copyright © 2013 by Pádraig Ó Tuama.
https://poets.org/poem/not-yet

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

I reflect for a moment on God’s presence around me and in me.
Creator of the universe, the sun and the moon, the earth,
every molecule, every atom, everything that is:
God is in every beat of my heart. God is with me, now.

Freedom

I will ask God’s help,
to be free from my own preoccupations,
to be open to God in this time of prayer,
to come to know, love and serve God more.

Consciousness

In the presence of my loving Creator,
I look honestly at my feelings over the last day,
the highs, the lows and the level ground.
Can I see where the Lord has been present?

THE WORD OF GOD 

1 Corinthians 1:10-17  

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters,
by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you should be in agreement and that
there should be no divisions
among you, but that you should be united
in the same mind and the same purpose.
For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that
there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.
What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’,
or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’
Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you?
Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that
I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius,
so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name.
(I did baptize also the household of Stephanas;
beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel,
and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ
might not be emptied of its power. 

WORDS OF WISDOM 

Give me a place to stand, and I will move the whole earth with a lever. —Archimedes

Archimedes (c. 287–c. 212 BCE), a Greek philosopher and mathematician, noticed that if a lever was balanced in the correct place, on the correct fulcrum, it could move proportionally much greater weights than the force actually applied. He calculated that if the lever stretched far enough and the fulcrum point remained fixed close to Earth, even a small weight at one end would be able to move the world at the other.

The fixed point is our place to stand. It is a contemplative stance: steady, centered, poised, and rooted. To be contemplative, we have to have a slight distance from the world to allow time for withdrawal from business as usual, for contemplation, for going into what Jesus calls our “private room” (Matthew 6:6). However, in order for this not to become escapism, we have to remain quite close to the world at the same time, loving it, feeling its pain and its joy as our pain and our joy. The fulcrum, that balancing point, must be in the real world.

True contemplation, the great teachers say, is really quite down to earth and practical, and doesn’t require life in a monastery. It is, however, an utterly different way of receiving the moment, and therefore all of life. In order to have the capacity to “move the world,” we need some distancing and detachment from the diversionary nature and delusions of mass culture and the false self. Contemplation builds on the hard bottom of reality—as it is—without ideology, denial, or fantasy.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t have a fixed place to stand, a fulcrum of critical distance, and thus we cannot find our levers, or true “delivery systems,” as Bill Plotkin calls them, by which to move our world. We do not have the steadiness of spiritual practice to keep our sight keen and alive. Those who have plenty of opportunities for spiritual practice—for example, those in monasteries—often don’t have an access point beyond religion itself from which to speak or to serve much of our world. We need a delivery system in the world to provide the capacity for building bridges and connecting the dots of life.

Some degree of inner experience is necessary for true spiritual authority, but we need some form of outer validation, too. We need to be taken seriously as competent and committed individuals and not just “inner” people. Could this perhaps be what Jesus means by being both “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16)? God offers us quiet, contemplative eyes; and God also calls us to prophetic and critical involvement in the pain and sufferings of our world—both at the same time. This is so obvious in the life and ministry of Jesus that I wonder why it has not been taught as an essential part of Christianity.

Fr. Richard Rohr 

https://cac.org/standing-still-moving-the-world-2020-12-29/
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