Prayer for Peace
Introduction
In the spirit of the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God and the World Day of Peace celebrated on New Year's Day, today we will entrust ourselves and our world to Mary as we pray for peace.
MANTRA: My Peace, Taize, Youtube.com https://youtu.be/45I0PN27kFc?si=JPJ3rSFB521RMCSx
My peace I leave you, My peace I give you, Trouble not your hearts.
My peace I leave you, My peace I give you, Be not afraid.
Reading: From Pope Francis's Message for the 50th Anniversary of the World Day of Peace in 2017
On this occasion, I would like to reflect on nonviolence as a style of politics for peace. I ask God to help all of us to cultivate nonviolence in our most personal thoughts and values. May charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society and in international life. When victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become the most credible promoters of nonviolent peacemaking. In the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms.
Here is a challenge for political and religious leaders, the heads of international institutions, and business and media executives: to apply the Beatitudes in the exercise of their respective responsibilities. …
To act in this way means to choose solidarity as a way of making history and building friendship in society. Active nonviolence is a way of showing that unity is truly more powerful and more fruitful than conflict. Everything in the world is inter-connected. Certainly differences can cause frictions. But let us face them constructively and non-violently, so that "tensions and oppositions can achieve a diversified and life-giving unity, preserving "what is valid and useful on both sides."
All of us want peace. Many people build it day by day through small gestures and acts; many of them are suffering, yet patiently persevere in their efforts to be peacemakers. In 2017 (2023!), may we dedicate ourselves prayerfully and actively to banishing violence from our hearts, words and deeds, and to becoming nonviolent people and to building nonviolent communities that care for our common home. Nothing is impossible if we turn to God in prayer. Everyone can be an artisan of peace.
SILENT PRAYER
Intercessions (Our response: Hear us, O God)
For the courage to embrace nonviolence in our everyday lives, we pray ...
For the vulnerability for each of us to look deeply at our own complicity that allows violence to continue in our own hearts and in our world, we pray ...
For the openness to allow God to disarm our hearts of whatever violence might be within us, that we might be nonviolent to ourselves and to every person we meet, we pray ...
For an end to war, poverty, starvation, racism, sexism, executions, torture, murder, nuclear weapons, global warming and violence of every kind, we pray ...
Mary, Queen of Peace, we entrust our lives to you. "May we by the all-powerful grace of God, be consecrated anew to live God's mission fully in Jesus, the Incarnate Wisdom of God, by proclaiming God's love for the poor so dear to you and your Son, Jesus. Amen.”
SILENT PRAYER
MANTRA: My Peace, Taize, Youtube.com
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