Author: Eric Mathews

prayer about growing old

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image by Vinoth Chandar via Flickr CC BY 2.0 DEED
 
 
When the signs of age begin to mark my body 
    and still more when they touch my mind;
when the illness that is to diminish me or carry me off
    strikes from without or is born within me;
when the painful moment comes 
    in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that
    I am ill or growing old;
in all these dark moments, O God, 
    grant that I may understand that it is you, 
        provided only my faith is strong enough,
    who are painfully parting the fibers of my being
    in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance
        and bear me away within yourself.
 
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 1881 – 1955, French philosopher and Jesuit priest
 
___________________________
 
 
Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
    all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from before your birth,
    carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
    and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
    I will carry and will save.

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Who are you, that you love us so much?

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Francesco Londonio ~1750, photo by Dall’Orto, via Wikimedia Commons
 
How meek you are, Jesus, yet how mighty!
Your judgment is mighty, but your love is sweet.
Who can stand against you?
 
If we seek who you really are, your true nature is hidden in heaven,
    in the essence of the mighty Triune God.
But if a person were to seek your face,
    they could have found you in the lap of Mary.
 
Who can realize your depth, 
    you who are a great sea that made itself so small?
We come to see you as God, and see?
    You are a man!
Or if we came to see you as a man,
    the light of your Godhead shone brightly.
 
Who would believe that you are the heir of David’s throne?
From all his beds, you inherited an animal’s feeding trough.
From his palaces you received a cave.
And instead of his chariots, a young donkey.
 
How fearless you are, 
    allowing everyone to carry you in their arms.
You met all with a smile, 
    making no distinctions between family and stranger,
    between your mother and others.
 
Was it your love – you, who love all?
What moved you to let everyone have you,
    the rich and the poor alike?
How could you not return anger for anger, 
    fear for threat?
You are above returning injury for injury.
 
Who are you, Jesus, that you love us so much?
Amen.
 
Ephrem the Syrian, c.306-373, Syrian hymn writer and theologian
_____________________________
 
 
And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. 
She gave birth to her firstborn son. 
She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, 
    because there was no lodging available for them.

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Advent light

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Sovereign Lord,
We thank you for being our Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.
In the fullness of time you, the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us …
    full of grace and truth.
Open our eyes to the great significance of the Incarnation,
    for you have visited and redeemed your people.
You have tented among us.
You have come that we might have life!
    O Come, Thou Day-Spring,
        Come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here,
    And drive away the shades of night,
        And pierce the clouds and bring us light.
 
Yes, Lord, pierce the clouds that dim our trust in you:
    the clouds of grief,
    the clouds of loss,
    the clouds of disappointment,
    the clouds that make us wonder in our difficulties,
        Where are you?
 
O blessed Savior, light of my life,
    Holy Ghost, with light divine,
        Shine upon this heart of mine.
    Chase the shades of night away,
        Turn my darkness into day.
In doing this, Lord, I ask that you enable me 
    to henceforth walk in the light.
 
Sun of Righteousness, we do not yet know what we shall be,
    but we do believe that when Jesus shall appear,
        we shall be like him.
So in between these two Advents,
    may our longing,
    our expectation,
    our hope in him
        make us pure even as he is pure.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
 
Wendell C. Hawley,  American pastor
 
____________________
 
 
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; 
    those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.

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Allow us to live in today’s Advent

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O Lord, today we know once more, and in quite practical terms,
    what it means to clear away rubble and make paths smooth again.
We will have to know it and do it for years to come.
Let the crying voices ring out, pointing out the wilderness 
    and overcoming the devastation from within.
May the Advent figure of John,
    the relentless envoy and prophet in God’s name,
    be no stranger in our wilderness of ruins.
For how shall we hear unless someone cries out
    above the tumult and destruction and delusion?
 
Your Advent message comes out of an encounter of man
    with the absolute, the final, the gospel.
It is thus the message that shakes – 
    so that in the end the world shall be shaken.
The fact that the Son of Man shall come 
    is more than a historic prophecy;
  it is also a decree, 
    that Your coming and the shaking of humanity 
        are somehow connected.
If we are inwardly unshaken, 
    inwardly incapable of being genuinely shaken,
if we become obstinate and hard and superficial and cheap,
    then You will yourself intervene in world events
    and teach us what it means to be placed in this agitation 
    and stirred inwardly.
 
Allow us to live in today’s Advent, for it is the time of promise.
To eyes that do not see, it still seems that the final dice 
    are being cast down in these valleys, on those battlefields,
    in those camps and prisons and bomb shelters.
But just beyond the horizon the eternal realities
    stand silent in their age-old longing.
There shines on us the first mild light 
    of the radiant fulfillment to come.
From afar sound the first notes as of pipes and singing,
    not yet discernable as a song or melody.
It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold.
But it is happening. This is today.
And tomorrow the angels will tell what has happened 
    with loud rejoicing voices,
  and we shall know it and be glad,
    if we have believed and trusted in Advent.
 
Alfred Delp, 1907-1945, German Jesuit, executed for resistance to Nazism
Watch for the Light freely adapted
 
_______________________
 
 
In those days John the Baptist came, 
   preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, 
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

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meet us in our wilderness

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photo by Daniel Born on Unsplash

 
Loving God
when we stand in our own wildernesses
when we stand in the midst of our questions
when we stand surrounded by our hurts and darknesses
may we meet you
in the same place
a God not scared to meet us
in that which is liminal
shadowy
uncomfortable
and imagine a God
who dares breathe new life
in the arid moments

God
may we live in such an advent
a moment of life
a place of promise
that takes all we are
the cracks and bruises
and speaks with promise
with vision
reimagining everything we are
and says
you are renewed
you are reborn
you are alive again
 
In such a place as this
where deserts bloom
and new roadways are made
may we grow again
dare believe in something more
and live into such a way
and that we begin here
this moment
this place
this community

a birthing place
a promise place
an unconditional place
of love
in skin
and among us

May we live within that promise
forever
So be it
Amen

 
Roddy Hamilton, New Kilpatrick Parish Church Scotland
 
__________________________
 
 
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
    that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

A voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.

 

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plowshares beat into swords

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image via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED
 
 
And now their plowshares are beat into swords—as are ours,
    now their pruning hooks are beat into spears—as are ours.
        Not only swords and spears,
        but bullets, and bombs, and missiles,
            of steel on flesh,
            of power against bodies …
And you, in your indignation sound your mantra,
    “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

We dare to believe they are the aggressor,
    and we are the peacemaker.
Yet in sober night dream, we glance otherwise
    and think we may be aggressor,
    as we vision rubbled homes,
        murdered civilians
        and charred babies.
And you, in our sadness, sound your mantra,
    “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

We do not love war,
we yearn for peace,
    but we have lost much will for peace
    even while we dream of order.
And you, in your hope, sound your mantra,
    “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Deliver us from excessive certitude about ourselves.
Hold us in the deep ambiguity where we find ourselves,
Show us yet again the gaping space
    between your will and our feeble imagination.
Sound your mantra with more authority,
    with more indignation,
    through sadness,
    in hope … “Blessed be the peacemakers.”

Only peacemakers are blessed.
            We find ourselves well short of blessed.
Give us freedom for your deep otherwise,
finally to be blessed,
    in the name of the Peacemaker
    who gave and did not take. Amen.
 
Walter Brueggemann, 1933 -,  American Old Testament theologian
Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth
 
___________________________
 

Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
    so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore.

Come, descendants of Jacob,
    let us walk in the light of the Lord.

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Living puzzles and the Kingdom of God

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All praise to you, Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ,
    who Spirits your church into being,
    making us members one of another.
It is a great mystery that we are your body.
But we praise you for it,
    for otherwise we would be alone – 
    condemned to live alone, to die alone.
But you have given us one another in all shapes and sizes.
 
We do not fit together all that well,
    but we pray that the puzzles of our lives 
    may please you and entertain you,
  so that in the end we add up to be your kingdom.
Help us to live with the confidence of that kingdom,
    in light of your Son’s resurrection,
  so that when all is said and done, this may be said:
“They were a strange lot, but look how they loved one another.”
Amen
 
Stanley Hauerwas, 1940- , American ethicist and theologian
____________________
 
 
Together, we are his house, 
    built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. 
And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. 
We are carefully joined together in him, 
    becoming a holy temple for the Lord.  
Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling
    where God lives by his Spirit.

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Thanksgiving for Jesus

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Eternal God, our heavenly Father,
From whom comes every good and perfect gift,
we thank and praise your name for all your mercies,
    and for every blessing we have received from you.
We praise you, God, for health and strength,
    for food and raiment,
    for shelter, friends, and family,
    for comfort in sorrow, deliverance from danger,
    strength in weakness, help in adversity,
    consolation in affliction.
For all the tokens of your faithfulness,
    and for all the proofs of your mercy and love, we praise you.
 
We give you thanks, O God, for your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
    No one in history compares with him.
He is the Good Shepherd –
    the One who has guided us each step of the way.
He is the Rock of Refuge –
    the One who has held us securely when all around was sinking.
He is the Bread of Life –
    the One who has satisfied our soul’s hunger.
He is the Light of the World –
    the One who has delivered us from spiritual darkness.
He is the Resurrection –
    the One who is our life and our life to come.
 
Wendell C. Hawley,  American pastor
 
____________________
 
 
And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. 
For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. 
And always be thankful.
Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. 
Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. 
Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. 
And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, 
    giving thanks through him to God the Father.

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Decorate our homes with your goodness

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Highland Hospitality, John Frederick Lewis, via Wikimedia Commons
 
Lord, we want to invite you into our homes.
So we decorate them with giving to the needy, with prayers, with requests,
    and with vigils that focus increasingly on the needs of others.
There are the decorations of Christ the King.
 
We are not ashamed then of having a humble house,
    if it has this kind of furniture.
 
But the decorations that come from unstoppable greed
    are the enemy of Christ.
May those of us who are rich not pride ourselves 
    on having an expensive home.
Rather let us hide our faces, turn away from greed,
    and seek the other kind of decoration.
 
In so doing let us receive Christ in this life on earth,
    and there enjoy the eternal home,
by the grace and love you have for us in Jesus Christ,
    to whom be glory and might, world without end, amen.
 
John Chrysostom, c.349-407, Archbishop of Constantinople
_____________________________
 
 
He said also to the man who had invited him, 
    “When you give a dinner or a banquet, 
        do not invite your friends or your brothers
         or your relatives or rich neighbors, 
    lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 
But when you give a feast, invite the poor, 
    the crippled, the lame, the blind, 
    and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. 
For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
 

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expel the devil from this man

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image by Lawrence OP via Flickr
 
O Lord, holy Father,
almighty and eternal God,
expel the devil
and the paganism from this man,
    from his head, from his hair,
    from his brain, from his back,
    from his front, from his eyes,
    from his ears, from his nostrils,
    from his lips, from his mouth,
    from his tongue, from under his tongue,
    from his jaws, from his throat,
    from his neck, from his heart,
    from his whole body, from all of his members,
    from inside and the outside of him,
    from his bones, from his veins,
    from his nerves, from his blood,
    from his senses, from his thoughts,
    from his words, from all his works,
    from his strength,
    from all manner of conversation,
    for this, and in the life to come,.
But may the power of Christ, our mediator,
work in you, that we may attain life eternal,
through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, Amen.
 
Antiphonary of Bangor, Prayer over a Person who has a Devil, #96
 
___________________________
 
 
And he called to him his twelve disciples 
    and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, 
    and to heal every disease and every affliction.

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