Weekly Peace Prayer

for May 20, 2025
prepared by
Sister Carmel Little, CSJP

Constitutions:           
Christ is our peace, the source of our power.
United with him we engage in the struggle
against the reality of evil and continue the work
of establishing God’s reign of justice and peace. #2

As the biblical tradition has linked
the pursuit of justice with the gift of peace,
so we believe that the promotion of justice
is integral to our mission and spirituality. #14

Reading:     Micah 6-8
“With what shall I come before the Lord,
    and bow down  before God most high?
Shall I come before God with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

 God has told you, O Mortal, what is good;
    and what God requires of you;
only to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God.

Prayer        Creator, open our hearts
                    to provide and protect for all children of the earth.

                    Creator, open our hearts
                    to respect for the earth, and all the gifts of the earth.

                   Creator, open our hearts
                   to end exclusion, violence, and fear among all.

                  Thank-you for the gifts of this day and every day.
native american - micmac - alycia longriver - 1995

Quiet Reflection

Reading: Let us Dream by Pope Francis,
What the Lord asks of us is a culture of service, not a throwaway culture.
But we can’t serve others unless we let their reality speak to us.

To go there, you have to open your eyes and let the suffering around you touch
you  so that you hear the Spirit of God speaking to you from the margins.
That’s why I need to warn  you about three disastrous  ways of escaping reality that
block growth and the connection with reality, and especially the action of the Holy
Spirit. I am thinking of narcissism, discouragement, and pessimism.

Narcissism takes you to the mirror to look at yourself,  to center everything on you
so that’s all you see.
. . .

Discouragement leads you to lament and complain about everything so that you no
longer see what is around you nor what others offer to you, only what you think you’ve lost. 
. . .

And then there is pessimism, which is like a door that you shut on the future and the new things it can hold; a door you refuse to open in case one day there’ll be something new on your doorstep.
. . .

. . .to act against them, you have to commit to the small, concrete, positive actions you can take, whether you’re sowing hope or working for justice.
 Let us Dream,  p. 15,16

A Prayer for World Peace
We pray for the power to be gentle;
the strength to be forgiving;
the patience to be understanding;
and the endurance to accept the consequences
of holding on to what we believe to be right.

May we put our trust in the power of good to overcome evil
and the power of love to overcome hatred.

We pray for the vision to see and the faith to believe
in a world emancipated from violence,
a new world where fear shall no longer lead men or women to commit injustice,
nor selfishness make them bring suffering to others.

Help us to devote our whole life and thought and energy
to the task of making peace,
praying always for the inspiration and the power
to fulfill the destiny for which we and all men and women were created.
Author Unknown, Offered by Beth Amyot
Source – Xavier University

Quiet Reflection

Blessing:
May God’s Spirit put our faith into action,
enable us to work in love and to persevere in hope.
And may God’s peace that is beyond all understanding
guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.