Cantica Gaudia

Season of Epiphany: Thursday Compline

Confession and absolution: O God, you are always true to us in love, and we are left wanting to ask forgiveness for our faithlessness to you and to on another, for our forgetting of the poor and the broken, for our failure to cherish creation.  Give us life, O God, to change, and enable us to change, that we may live.

Psalm:  I will lift up my eyes to the mountains,
But where shall I find help?
From you alone, O God, does my help come,
Creator of the ever changing hills.
You will not let me stumble on the rough pathways,
You care for me and watch over me without ceasing.
I am sure that the guardian of my people neither slumbers nor sleeps.
The God of all nations keeps watch, like a shadow spread over me
So the sun will not strike me by day, nor the moon by night
You will defend me in the presence of evil
You will guard my life.
You will defend my going out and my coming in,
This night and always.

Reading: A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.  Now the women was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin.  She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.  He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”  So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

The Lord’s Prayer: Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
Sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
Now and for ever.  Amen.

Prayer:  Lord of the wedding feast, we thank you for sharing with us the abundance of your life: in the beauty of humility may we receive with joy the stranger's gift, the water's grace, the living wine of love's desire. Amen.

Going forth: The peace of all peace be ours this night, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.