Prayer before Meal and Conversation in the Year of the Martyrs

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(this prayer was offered at a luncheon during the Ignatian Teach-In, September 2009)

Let us pray:
Holy and Loving God,
We come together today in gratitude for the gifts of food and conversation set before us.
We ask your blessing upon our food,
remembering all those whose hands have worked to bring it to our table
and remembering all those who are forced to go without
in our world of unjustly distributed resources.

We ask for the freedom to be moved
and inspired by the stories of the witnesses to your kingdom
that we remember in a special way during this year of remembrance.
We pray for the grace
to be shaped by the lessons of their lives of integrity
and to honor their journeys of deep faith, courageous witness, and radical, abiding love
in the ways that we live out our own particular callings.

Be with us in our conversation and reflection
and inspire in us the holy desire
to do everything for your glory,
and in the service of a new reality here on earth
in which justice and peace prevail.

We ask all this
in the holy name of the one who came
to show us how to live in right relationship
with you and each other and all of creation,
the one who taught us to seek out and love
those who society forgets and disgraces,
the one who welcomed all to the table
to eat of the living bread, the eternal feast,
the one who asks us to do the same:
Our Teacher, Friend, and Redeemer:
Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Submitted by, Mary Lou Bozza, Campus Ministry

Posted in Special Times of the Year, Times Together, Times of Need, Times of Seeking | Comments closed

Daily Prayer for Spiritual Perspective and Awareness of God

Thank you Lord for all with which you have blessed me, but mostly for those blessings that I do not fully recognize…Lord, increase my awareness of You in my life today.

Lord, Your gifts for me have included some things that I would never have chosen for myself…among these I have found some of my greatest blessings and spiritual growth…certainly, Your ways differ than mine.

Conversely, I have prayed for some things that, if granted, may not have been in my best spiritual interests…again, our ways have differed.

You teach me to simply pray each day for the grace to discern Your will and Your way for my life and for the faith and trust/courage to then lovingly do what You would have me do…Amen.

By: Ralph Ostermueller

Posted in Through All Times, Times of Need, Times of Praise, Times of Thanksgiving | Comments closed

Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference. 

Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next.  Amen

By: Reinhold Niebuhr

Posted in Through All Times, Times of Need, Times of Seeking | Comments closed

A Teacher’s Prayer

Holy Spirit, my heart is a humble home, but I open its doors to you.
Come: stay with me. Make of my being your dwelling place.
From within me, guide the steps of my life.

Give me new powers of listening, that I may hear even the quiet anguish of the lonely and forgotten.
Give me the courage and compassion to seek out the silent cries of devastation and shyness when no one else can hear them.
Give me the yearning heart to stay with the lost, neglected one
I find—and listen, even when all the voice this child of yours brings forth is a pair of searching, terrified eyes and two trembling hands, reaching out.

There, in this wordless voice, let me hear my own; but mingled with it,
yours—let the two of us hear yours: that whisper of hope that ever bids us human beings rise, together, and walk again in joy.

By, Mark Clark
English Department

Posted in Times Together, Times of Need | Comments closed

Athlete’s Prayer

We thank you, God, for the opportunity to participate in this basketball game. For it is Your gift of our basketball talent and our response of hard work, practice, and teamwork that have brought us here.

Today, we play by man-made rules and, at game’s end, we accept the outcome of the scoreboard on the wall. We are reminded, too, of Your scoreboard, the scoreboard etched in our hearts, which asks 3 questions:

(1) Did we play fair?
(2) Did we play hard and to the best of our abilities?
(3) And most of all, did we have fun?

We play this game, through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

By: Ken Clark, Alum

Posted in Special Times of the Year, Through All Times, Times Together | Comments closed