Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Prayer for the Morning
God is our saving God, and we are his people:
come, let us worship him in purity of heart.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be for ever. Amen. Alleluia!
HYMN
Before thy throne, O God, we kneel:
Give us a conscience quick to feel,
A ready mind to understand
The meaning of thy chastening hand;
Whate’er the pain and shame may be,
Bring us, O Father, nearer thee.
Search out our hearts and make us true;
Help us to give to all their due.
From love of pleasure, lust of gold,
From sins which make the heart grow cold,
Wean us and train us with thy rod;
Teach us to know our faults, O God.
For sins of heedless word and deed,
For pride ambitious to succeed,
For crafty trade and subtle snare
To catch the simple unaware,
For lives bereft of purpose high,
Forgive, forgive, O Lord, we cry.
Let the fierce fires which burn and try,
Our inmost spirits purify:
Consume the ill; purge out the shame;
O God, be with us in the flame;
A newborn people may we rise,
More pure, more true, more nobly wise.
CANTICLE OF EZEKIEL 36:24-28
A pure heart create for me, O God. (Ps 51:12a)
Stony land is like a stony heart. It is incapable of bringing forth the fruit of the Gospel, which is love. Yet God promises to give us a new heart, the heart of Christ, with which to love as Christ loved. Let us pray for the grace to accept the gift wherever our own hearts have been hardened against God or neighbor.
I will take you away from among the nations,
gather you from all the foreign lands,
and bring you back to your own land.
I will sprinkle clean water upon you
to cleanse you from all your impurities,
and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
I will give you a new heart
and place a new spirit within you,
taking from your bodies your stony hearts
and giving you natural hearts.
I will put my spirit within you
and make you live by my statutes,
careful to observe my decrees.
You shall live in the land I gave your fathers;
you shall be my people,
and I will be your God.
Glory to the Father….
Word of God (Jeremiah 31:33)
This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
You are our letter, written not in ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but
on tablets that are hearts of flesh.
(cf. 2 Cor 3:2-3)
CANTICLE OF ZECHARIAH
Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why should you die, O house of Israel? (Ez 18:31)
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel;
he has come to his people and set them free.
He has raised up for us a mighty savior,
born of the house of his servant David.
Through his holy prophets he promised of old
that he would save us from our enemies,
from the hands of all who hate us.
He promised to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant.
This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight
all the days of our life.
You, my child, shall be called the prophet
of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
to give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins.
In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
to shine on those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Glory to the Father…
INTERCESSIONS
Let us pray for the gift to love with the heart of Christ:
R/Give us a new heart, O Lord.
Where our love has worn thin: R/
Where our love has grown lukewarm: R/
Where our love has been overgrown by anger, resentment, or disdain: R/
(Personal intentions)
Our Father….
God our Father, you commanded us to love you with all our mind, heart, and soul, and to love our neighbor as Christ has loved us. Sin hardens our heart inside a shell of self-centeredness. Renew our hearts, that we may live the Gospel with eager zeal, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
