Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to
be still before God.
Opening Prayer: O God, our Heavenly Father, who created us
beautifully and wonderfully, may we always look to You for our value and worth,
remembering that we are a unique expression of your infinite love, care, and
creativity. Help us, O Lord, to see
ourselves as you see us in Christ—objects of your extravagant love and tender
affection. Amen.
Scripture Reading for the Day: Luke 15:11-32
Reading for Reflection:
It’s true, Lord, that
you are always thinking of us. It’s true
from the beginning of time, before we existed, even before the world existed, you
have been dreaming of me, thinking of me, loving me. Not assembly line, but unique, the first one
so made, and the last, indispensable to humanity. It’s true that you have an eternal plan for
me alone, a wonderful plan that you have always cherished in your heart, as a
father thinks over the smallest details in the life of his little one still
unborn. It’s true that, always bending
over me, you guide me to bring your plan about, light on my path and strength
for my soul. It’s true that you are
saddened when I stray or run away, but that you hasten to pick me up if I
stumble or fall.
Lord, you make beautiful lives, you, the
divine Attentive One, the divine Patient One, the divine Present One, see that
at no time I forget your presence. I
don’t ask you to bless what I have decided to do, but give me the grace to
discover and to live what you have dreamed for me.
Lord, living in your grace, let me share a
little, through the attention I give to others, your loving care for us. Let me, on my knees, adore in them the
mystery of your created love. Let me
respect your idea of them without trying to impose my own. May I allow them to follow the path that you
have marked out for them without trying to take them along mine. May I realize that they are indispensable to
the world, and that I can’t do without the least of them. May I never tire of looking at them and
enriching myself with the treasures you have entrusted to them. Help me to praise you in their journeyings,
to find you in their lives. Grant that
not an instant of their existence go by, not a hair of their heads fall, by me,
as by you, unheeded. (Prayers
of Life by Michael Quoist)
Reflection and Listening: silent and written
Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
Closing Prayer: O Thou who art the only-begotten Son, teach
us, we beseech Thee, to pray, “Our Father.”
We thank Thee, Lord, for these Living Blessed Words which Thou hast
given us. We than Thee for the millions
who in them have learnt to know and worship the Father, and for what they have
been to us. (With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray)
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