Liturgy Alive Wednesday, Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Lord, God of the rich and the poor,
let the message of Jesus your Son
strike us and shake us up
from our certainties and securities.
Indeed, may we use our riches
of mind and heart and faith and goods
in the service of the poor,
our power for the benefit of others,
our abundance to be shared
and to get us out of our self-satisfaction,
our happiness to console
and bring your joy, not ours.
Make us poor in pride, hungry for justice,
weeping for the evil we have caused.
And let people insult us
when we do not live up to the gospel
of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Liturgy of the Word
First Reading Introduction
The Christian who has been baptized has received a new life from God and is a new person, re-created in Christ. What we are now we have received. From now on we must live not in our merely human world of thought and action, but in the new world of Christ. This is not easy to do. This new life in Christ is to be rebuilt constantly. It is a task that never ends.
Gospel Introduction
Luke is the only evangelist coming from paganism - a world of slavery, fear and oppression, and of moral license. He is so struck by the fact that Christ had a place for the poor and for marginal people, for whom nobody cared in his milieu, that this concern of Christ is one of the major emphases in his gospel, particularly in its social aspects. For example, he says, not like Matthew, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," but "Blessed are you, the poor. Woe to you, the rich..."
General Intercessions
- For the poor, that God may fill their expectations; for the satisfied, that God may change their hearts and make them capable of sharing, we pray:
- For those who are hungry, that the Lord himself may give them the bread of life and inspire us to give them the bread of every day, we pray:
- For those who now weep, that the Lord may console them with his love; for those who now laugh, that he may remind them of the seriousness of life and make them capable of reflection, we pray:
Prayer over the Gifts
God, with bread and wine
we celebrate the death and suffering
of your Son Jesus Christ.
Teach us here, by his example,
that sickness and pain make sense,
that even death is a seed of life.
In humility and with shame
we accept this insight, Lord,
and ask you to let it inspire us.
May we accept it also
as a hard but saving reality,
by which we try to live, in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Prayer after Communion
Lord our God,
you let the Word of your Son upset us,
but this eucharist gives us the strength
to take his word with open hearts and minds.
Let our riches in any form
not satisfy us but others,
that there may be room in us for hope.
Let us feel the weight of our limitations,
that we may keep hungering
for love and justice and freedom.
Give us tears to weep
that we have not dared to be
your sign of contradiction in this world.
Bless us, Lord, that we may praise and bless you
and your Son, now and for ever.
Blessing
Blessed are you… What God wants is our happiness. He leaves us free: we are the ones to make the choice what we are going to do with our lives. May God give you the right insight and bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
