A Cursillista Rediscovers the Lord’s Prayer

 Inspired by God’s Grace, Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy Spirit, Matthew 6, Luke 11, and Art Simon
By Tony and Beth DeCristofaro (2/18/2006)

 Our Father. 

 Abba, we put our past, our present and our future in your hands like children totally trusting a parent.  Abba, we seek a close moment with you through Faith.  Draw us closer so that we may first know ourselves in order to listen and hear the purpose that you have in store for us, your children.  Thank you, Abba, for adopting us in love through your son, Jesus.  Be patient with us.  We are slow learners of piety, study and action. Yet we seek your grace in everything we do because the deepest desire in the human heart is always trying to find a path to you, Abba.

 Who Art in Heaven, Hallow Be Thy Name.

 Holy is your name.  Abba, may our love and obedience in faith for you become so deep and true that we honor you in all we think and say, in all we desire and do.  May we reflect the Hope, the Peace, the Love and the Justice of your kingdom. May we honor your name by placing You foremost in our minds, on our lips and in our hearts.  May we also not dishonor you in our words, in our deeds or in our silence by not responding to You and our neighbors.

 May the light of Christ shine so brightly in us that others will see the good that we do and give glory to you.  Help us not to pursue the culture of affluence like the Prodigal Son – lured by riches promised by today’s advertisers, persuaders and salesman all around us.  May we sanctify Your name through our Ideals that lead us to a just faith performing acts of personal love and public justice for the poor in spirit.

 Thy Kingdom Come

 Help us to seek first Your kingdom and Your will.  You have great hopes, dreams and plans for us as laypersons in the church.  It’s not that we desire too much, it is that we desire too little of the right things. We spend our lives chasing prosperity and pursuing material, yet all you hope for us is to turn to your Son, Jesus and carry on his works by carrying a splinter of his cross.  Help us to use that splinter as we build the City of God. 

 Help us to turn away from this kingdom and turn toward yours.  Help us to leave behind the self-centeredness that cuts us off from friends, family and you.  Help us to rise above our mistakes and turn to you, converting to a Christ-centric attitude.  We know that as we await your Kingdom, you are patiently awaiting our return and will run down the road and welcome us home because You loved us first.  Like Abraham was willing to offer Isaac, your Son withstood the ultimate test.  He offered the first Palanca – He chose the nails and the cross for us so we wouldn’t have to.  

Thy Will Be Done.

 Your will is love.  Father, in thanks for Christ’s sacrifice, give us lips that cry the Gospels with your love.  Give us eyes to see the way.  Give us ears to hear you calling.  Give us minds to understand that we are participants now in your everlasting kingdom.  May our prayers be fired with the same hope and vision as when Jesus walked the Earth.  May your will come to us now in this world of sin.  May we receive it and celebrate it even if imperfectly by our obedience in faith, your grace and the sacraments.

 Help us all to be leaders and seek the Your reign ahead of all other claims on our affection in this environment – be it the claims of a nation, family, wealth, or pleasure.  As we treasure the promise of your kingdom, may it ennoble our work on Earth.  May we keep open the door to seek Christ within the world.   Our friendships, our labor, our care for the planet, our pursuit of peace and the sharing of faith – may all these be given to you.  

 On Earth As It Is In Heaven.

 Abba, we know that you love us as we and where we are.  You love us too much to leave us there.  Help us to leave this place and return to you.  May Your will be done in our lives as we put our complete trust in You.  Fill our empty hands and hearts with the grace of forgiveness and the desire to discern, accept and act on Your wisdom, not our foolishness, Your steadfast love not our waywardness.  Take our sins and successes, our hopes and fears.  Discard what is worthless and refashion in refined silver what is good so that we do your will. Shape our work-in-progress lives.

 Abba, what do you see in me?  Help us to not just encounter Jesus but to respond to him.  Not like the rich young man who found Christianity too hard to try.  Not like Judas who abandoned you for greed, dishonesty and pride.  Not like Peter who denied you.  Instead, give us the eagerness and humility of Peter who recognized you, repented and stood up for you – who dove into the sea to get closer to you. 

 Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread.

 Give us this day and every day our daily bread and the bread of life.  Help us to encounter Christ through the saving actions of Jesus in the sacraments.  As we study our environments, help us to draw the line of temperance between enough and excess.  Lord, give bread to the hungry and hunger for you to those who have bread.  Help us to love our neighbors and our enemies. Let us seek justice in this world now and always…and work to make it a reality.

 Too many go hungry in the silent tsunami of malnutrition and disease which kills 30,000 children each day.  Forgive us for our sins of commission and sins of omission.  Give us the prudence and grace to forgive those who persecute us.  Like the returning Prodigal son and the woman who was not stoned, we enter your Kingdom through the door of reconciliation and forgiveness.  Give us the fortitude to quell our pride so it does not become an obstacle to faith.  

 Forgive Us Our Trespasses As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us.

 Let us not cast the first stones of desire and distrust, gossip and greed.  Help us to break the cycle of laziness, hatred, resentment and vengeance with the challenge to love one another in right relationships with compassion and justice.  Help us to go in peace to bring your word and works from the sanctuary to the streets by spurring our community to action.  May we participate in the kingdom by our forgiving and find refreshment in knowing that the slate is clean so we are free to ask: “Whom do I need to forgive?”

 Help us to recognize Jesus is with us – incarnate on the road to our Emmaus.  Because He is with us, we can approach You with confidence despite our trespasses and our failure to forgive. Because he is with us, we can seek your healing and draw closer to You each day.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation.

 As You restore broken lives and relationships, help us to do the same with mercy and with no expectation for anything in return. Do not lead us into the kind of extreme testing the Jesus faced.  Rescue us through temperance from the sins that attract us.  Keep us from those seemingly attractive promises we find in the study of our environment – shallow promises that lure us from our hope in You and Your purpose in our life.

 You are the vine and we are the branches.  Help us to recognize the strength you provide to resist temptation.  Help us to understand that You chose us to go forth and bear fruit. Help us to love each other in the Church of our families.

 Sometimes we are blind.  Sometimes we are afraid.  Sometimes we are imperfect.  At these times, make us willing to follow you…to love you back with thanksgiving and praise.

And Deliver us from Evil.

 Deliver us from mistaking our will for Your will.  Deliver us from judging others.  Deliver us from holding a grudge.  Deliver us from forgetting to be friendly.  Deliver us from cutting off that driver who tries to get in front of us.  Deliver us from not treating our co-workers and employees with the respect they deserve as children of God.  Deliver us from remaining silent in the face of injustice.  Deliver us from the Internet and advertising.  Deliver us from the new and deliver to us the used.

 Test us so that our faith and fortitude may increase in our community in action.  Help us to overcome evil with good toward each person.  Help us to turn to You for everything we need like Samuel crying out “Here I am Lord.”

 All your creations are good.  Help us to not misuse them.  Help us not to love the world for its own sake – materialism, lust for power, unjust domination over other people, greed.  Your actual grace assures us that this awesome challenge will not frighten us away again.  Help us to be filled with the joy in knowing You are our beloved Abba. 

 Help us to trust You for every need and gratefully tend to the needs of others and to be worthy of the promises of Christ.

 Help us to forgive and to be forgiven.  Help us to adore You and praise you in thanksgiving as we await in joyful hope the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

 Speak to us.  We are listening.  We are ready to overcome the obstacles to your grace and bear fruit through lives strengthened by each other and You through piety, study and action.

 We seek conversion by the death of our old selves.  We seek to be born again in the Spirit as Nicodemus was when he returned to the cross with Joseph so we can share our Fourth Day with you and the resurrected Lord.

 Like the woman at the well and the Prodigal son, we are ready to turn back to you and experience your real presence in our lives. We have only just begun to understand.

 Christ is counting on us to be his body, to die and rise with Him…to never, ever stop loving, or trying to heal or speaking the truth.

 We are counting on Christ to be bread for the world drawing us into union with God, the entire human community and all of God’s creation.  

 It is so and it shall be so because you are the way, the truth and the light. 

 The kingdom is You.  The power is You.  The glory is You.   

 Amen.