Cantica Gaudia

Ordinary Time, Fall: Sunday Morning Prayer

Opening:  Alleluia, Christ is risen.

Canticle: Seek the Lord who is still to be found:
Call upon God who is yet at hand.
Return to the Lord, who will have compassion,
To our God, who will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So my ways higher than your ways,
And my thoughts than your thoughts.
For as the rain and snow come down from heaven
And return not again but water the earth,
Causing the earth to bring forth and sprout,
Giving seed to the sower and bread to the hungry,
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth,
It shall not return to me empty,
But it shall accomplish that which I desire
And achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Psalm: Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from you presence
And take not your holy Spirit from me.

Give me the joy of your saving help again
And sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.

I shall teach your ways to the wicked,
And sinners shall return to you.

Deliver me from death, O God,
And my tongue shall sing of your righteousness, O God of my salvation.

Open my lips, O Lord,
And my mouth shall proclaim your praise.

Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.

Reading: What good it is, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, "You have faith, and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe -- and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren?

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father in heaven, may Your name be sanctified; Your commandment stretches over heaven and earth, may Your compassion come upon earth as it is in heaven.  Forgive us our sin and wrongdoings, You the Lord of all good things; cause Your mercy to descend upon us, Your healing upon this sickness, and it will be healed.  Amen.

Prayer:  Teach me, O God, so to use all the circumstances of my life today that they may bring forth in me the fruits of holiness rather than the fruits of sin.

Let me use disappointments as material for patience
Let me use success as material for thankfulness
Let me use suspense as material for perseverance
Let me use danger as material for courage
Let me use reproach as material for longsuffering
Let me use praise as material for humility
Let me use pleasure as material for temperance
Let me use pains as material for endurance.

Collect:  May the glory of the arriving autumn
lie about us
fresh gold
for a time.
And when the dark comes, and the cold,
may we remember how today we stand in glory,
how we walk in bounty
heaped upon earth’s dark carpet,
how we move knee deep in abundance
… even during troubled and fear-ridden times …
flung against night’s winter curtain.
We are thankful for its coming
and for its passing.

Let it be.

Blessing: May we who have been touched by the Word made flesh be his body for the world, his hands to bring blessing, his senses to glory, in the promise of creation restored. Amen.