Liturgy Alive Friday, August 2, 2019

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Friday, August 2, 2019

Opening Prayer

God of joy,
you invite us to celebrate feasts
in honor of your name
as moments of intense encounter
with you and with people.
Make our drab existence explode,
at least from time to time,
with spontaneous and contagious joy
for your wonderful deeds of salvation
and for the happiness of being together.
Keep a sparkle of laughter in our eyes
as we plod along
toward the complete freedom and joy
of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Liturgy of the Word

Introduction to the First Reading

God gave feasts to the Jews and to us not merely to celebrate God's wonderful deeds of the past but to relive them in the present and to draw strength from them for the future. Modern society has largely lost the sense of festivity. We go to sport festivals or watch them on TV: they are spectacles to be watched, not to participate in. We have turned religious feasts into Sundays and holidays of obligation. But joy, spontaneity, sharing, and encounters cannot be commandeered. We have to create the sense of true community wherein there is again room for creativity, spontaneous joy, a sense of gratuitousness. Our ultimate destiny is not to work but to love…

General Intercessions

– That it may be a joy for us to celebrate the liturgy, to thank and praise the Lord for our faith and all God's love, we pray:
– That people, who have abandoned the Sunday Mass may become aware how much they miss to enrich their lives, we pray:
– That God's people may never consider the Eucharist as a duty but as a feast to celebrate with the Lord, we pray:

Prayer over the Gifts

God of hope,
in these simple signs of bread and wine
we celebrate the feast of shared bread
with your Son, Jesus Christ.
Dispose us to lose ourselves to one another
and to die with him to evil,
that our sorrows may turn into joy
and that we may rise with him
to win an overflowing happiness
that can never be taken away.
We ask you this through Christ, our Lord.

Prayer after Communion

Lord faithful God,
we have celebrated with joy
the liberating presence in our midst
of your Son, Jesus Christ.
Accompany us in life
through the Holy Spirit of your Son,
the playful Spirit of wisdom and fantasy,
of encounter and gratuitous love,
that hand in hand, we may go on
believing in the unexpected
and making the impossible come true:
the kingdom of justice and love
of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Blessing

How good that there are feasts and celebrations in our life, that is, days when we can be playful and free, relaxed and carefree like the birds in the air, because we know that we are in the hands of God, for he cares. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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