Foundation Day Prayer 2021

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Introduction

Today, we join Sisters, Associates and Colleagues throughout the world to celebrate one hundred eighty-eight years of fidelity to Blessed Theresa’s vision and charism.  In communion and solidarity with the worldwide community present here and elsewhere, let us pray.

(Contemplative Pause)

Opening Prayer

Loving Triune God, you call us forth into the heart of our fractured world, in a time when our charism of making one is sorely needed.  Help us deepen our communion with You and all people wherever we are—in every place, in every time and in every situation. 

Give us the grace to see that this sense of oneness flows from your Triune life and is our way of partnering with You in your continued creating, redeeming and sanctifying mission in our world. Amen.

Reading

Love Gives Everything! What a wonderful way of expressing the inexpressible reality of our Triune God, and our own participation in God’s life of mission! That God is Love Giving Everything points to the metaphor that God is a verb, a mystery…of flourishing relationship, a loving that moves out of itself and draws others in—humans, animals every particle of creation.  Theology in its own stuttering way tells us that the divine “persons” are persons not in their own right, but only insofar as they participate in relationship—with one another and with everything that exists. 

And so, it is with us. The famous African proverb tells us that “I am because we are,” and that is true because we are made in God’s image. As Richard Rohr has put it beautifully, God is not being but interbeing, the Trinity is not the dancers, but the dance itself . And so, it is with us and everything. As images of God, we exist as interbeings, caught up in the dance…It is this Love Giving Everything, this “Verb in in which all beings participate, move, and have their being. … not limited by any object but soaring everywhere,”  that is the ground of the church’s mission.

Stephen Bevans, SVD  Love Gives Everything! The Trinity as Ground of Mission, Interculturality, Inculturation and JPIC
Symposium on the Triune God, July 27-30, 2021

[1] Richard Rohr, Disk One of The Divine Dance: Exploring the Mystery of the Trinity, 2004
[1] Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 239.
Johnson, of course, is alluding to Acts 17:28.

Meditation 

Click here The Holy Trinity (Carmel Boyle)

Faith Sharing

How have you experienced being called to partner in the mission of our Triune God?

Prayers of the Community

Prayer Leader: We hear the voice of Blessed Theresa who says to all of us, Sisters, Associates and Colleagues, “I solemnly commend all…to the most Holy Trinity.”

Response: We call on the Triune God to be with us during these times, to be our inspiration and our guide as we continue the mission of SSND.

Prayer Leader: “May God the Father care for you all and keep you steadfast and faithful in your holy vocation!”

Response: We call on the Creator, to imbue us with a Spirit of Faith, Hope and Love to respond to the urgent needs of our time.

 

Prayer Leader: “May God the Son deliver you from all evil of sin and be the way you walk, the truth you follow, and the life you lead!”

 

Response: May Christ be the one whom we proclaim, transforming minds and hearts among us and in our places of ministry.

 

Prayer Leader: “May the Holy Spirit preserve you in love and grace!” 

 

Response: May the Holy Spirit be in our hearts and on our lips as we work to promote justice and peace in our world.