Profiles in Catholicism

Prayers

 

A prayer to protect the environment

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“Incorporation”

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Dear Lord, you grew from the gift of your nourishing mother, Mary,

Who had drunk from the water and eaten from the food of the land:

What splashes of light, dazzled, broke and burst from the jars, as they

Filled to the brim, were scooped off to drink and poured off to wash.

What sounds of work, whether choosing and carrying the wood of a

Carpenter, toiling in the heat and sheltering in the shade of the foliage.

What contrasts in the flowers, colored shadows, coolness in the night,

Nurturing listening, listening again, and again talking with the Father.

Oh Creator-God, how amazing are the atomic particles which glue

As water whooshing, swirling and umbrelling into flowing shapes

Challenging us to think liquid, droplets, vapour and solid as the

Rise and fall of heat transports a “sticky” flow from state to state.

Dear Lord, you were baptised by the Baptist, in the Jordon waters

off mountains, passed by the land, into the liturgy of entering the Church:

What numberless times you healed broken hearts and bodies in Israel

So tendrils of praise reached, like in a lightning storm, to your Father.

What skies shone in the firmament, showing through from the Beginning,

the out of reach splendour of colouring swathes of heaven.

What time you gave to giving us a whole life, unhampered in the

Giving, taking into life all who came and did come and are coming.

Oh Creator-God, how human you have made us, making us to be 

Among each other, like the community that you are, giving each

One of us a unique identity, conceived-in-relationship, raised in relationship,

ready to meet you and us in this “place of meeting”.

Dear Lord, you were born into a family, extended over time by the welcome of others,

whether their parents died or were too ill to care.

What gathering of others and being gathered, whether walking and

Working with Joseph, helping to bear the load of low-income living.

What is left of your garments, woven from plant threads, fibre science

Passed from generation to generation, woven well into a single whole.

What everyday delights in the spaces between home and being away,

In the fruit of the land, in the Synagogue and in the singing of psalms.

Oh Creator-God, how many gifts you poured into men and Women,

from the use of human hands to shape and write, sing, invent, to philosophise,

to understand, like good doctors, how to work with the grain of growth

and to give a word from you to help.

Dear Lord, you took to yourself the goodness of creation and there,

beheld, that wheat and grapes, worked by human hands, are changed:

What hours of work, from preparing the ground to planting, to

Carefully picking off the slugs and bugs and giving them another diet.

What suffering as a blight takes hold and defeats the ingenuity of man,

Who bleeds from his heart as the earth’s yield diminishes and drops.

What hope arises with the help of God to persevere and plant again,

Joined in so many ways to the help of others, sending grain-as-gifts.

Oh Creator-God, how intricately woven are the tiny organs,

Encased within seeds, embryonic unfolding of plants, shooting

Down and rising up, twirling around sticks, flowering orangy-red,

Hosting insects, losing colour and growing beans and flowering.

Dear Lord, how we wrought a thorny crown out of what had grown,

nails and hammer out of the ore of the earth and a cross from a tree.

What mangling of the human body we have practiced, especially

Upon the innocent, the vulnerable, the undefended, in denial of death.

What freezing, experimentation, plans of torment we have explored

In the flesh of the living, imagining we will not answer to our Maker.

What hidden wounds we have inflicted on ourselves at each turn of

The pain that wells up, when we are addressed by our very actions.

Oh Creator-God, how beautiful is the recreation of the lost,

the Poor and poor of heart, the broken and abandoned, the renewal of

Planet home, the replanting, recycling, revisiting the places of

Hatred with songs of reconciliation and understanding of wounds.

Dear Lord of the Resurrection, let us rise with you in time,

hoping to begin the transfiguring ascent, taking what love everlastingly does!

by Francis Etheredge Profiles in Catholicism