A LORD’S PRAYER FOR JUSTICE ~ by Ronald Rolheiser OMI
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OUR FATHER… who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who, by victim of circumstance, beat the heat of the day.
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OUR FATHER… who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who, by victim of circumstance, beat the heat of the day.
WHO ART IN HEAVEN... where everything will be reversed, where the first will be last and the last will be first, but where all will be well and every manner of being, will be well.
HALLOWED BE THY NAME… may we always acknowledge your holiness, respecting that your ways are not our ways, your standards are not our standards. May the reverence we give your name pull us out of the selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbor.
YOUR KINGDOM COME, YOUR WILL BE DONE… open our freedom to let you in, so that the complete mutuality that characterizes your life might flow through our veins, and thus the life that we help generate may radiate your equal love for all, and your special love for the poor.
ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN… may the work of our hands, the temples and structures we build in this world, reflect the temple and the structure of your glory so that the joy, graciousness, tenderness, and justice of heaven will show forth within all of our structures on Earth.
GIVE… life & love to us and help us see everything as a gift. Help us know that nothing comes to us by right and to realize that we must give to the poor, not because they need it, but because our own health depends upon our giving to them
US… the truly plural us…Give not just to our own but to everyone, including those who are very different than the narrow us. Give your gifts to all of us equally.
THIS DAY… not tomorrow… Do not let us push things off into some indefinite future so that we can continue to live justified lives in the face of injustice because we can make good excuses for our inactivity.
OUR DAILY BREAD… so that each person in the world may have enough food, enough clean water, enough clean air, adequate health care, sufficient access to education, so as to have the sustenance for a healthy life. Teach us to give from our sustenance and not just from our surplus
AND FORGIVE US OUR SINS… forgive us our blindness toward our neighbor, our self-preoccupation, our racism, and our incurable propensity to worry only about ourselves and our own. Forgive us our capacity to watch the evening news and do nothing about it.
DO NOT PUT US TO THE TEST…for none of us can stand before your gospel scrutiny. Give us, instead, more days to mend our ways, our selfishness, and our systems
DELIVER US FROM EVIL… that is, from the blindness that let us continue to participate in anonymous systems within which we need not see who gets less as we get more.
AMEN
AMEN
