Eternal God –
We ask you to send forth your sweet and peace-filled Holy Spirit. Help it flow through us as we stand witness to a moment of transition.
Help us to remember that today, as every day, the struggles of our world persist.
It feels sometimes like the darkness has overcome us.
Chasms seem unbridgeable.
Hunger grows.
Work is tenuous.
Preventable death stalks us.
Collective moral imagination stumbles.
Racism rages.
Beloved members of our communities are ridiculed; we do not hear them.
Others are excluded; we do not see them.
Still others are discarded entirely; we do not know them or think of them as human.
But, whether in a whisper or with a wail, help us to speak a simple truth –
It does not have to be this way.
And so we ask you God, in the name of Jesus, and in the unity offered us through your Spirit, for the grace to bring about a revolution of the heart, and to remember that transition is change.
We ask you to bless our leaders.
We ask you to give them courage.
We ask you to keep them safe.
And, God, we ask you to help us.
Help us, as Peter Maurin says, to create a world in which it is easy to do good.
Help us, as Dr. King says, to go on anyhow.
Help us, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin says, to remember that we are one, after all.
Help us, as the prophet Micah says, to do justice, to love goodness, and to walk humbly with you.
As Dorothy Day says, we do this one brick at a time, and we take one step at a time.
We desperately need you, God, in this transition. We need your ever-presence among us.
You are the God of the last four years, and the God of the next four.
You are the God that was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Amen.
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Catholic News Service photo by Tyler Orsburn
