Cantica Gaudia

Ordinary Time, Late Summer: Tuesday Evening Prayer

Opening: Creation waits with eager longing to be set free, and to obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God, alleluia.

Canticle: My breath, my heart, my mind, my whole life fills with joy
Because of God, who’s not forgotten me, whose strength surrounds and lifts me up.
All through the centuries that have passed
God showed patience and forgiveness;
God makes the proud and pompous folk look foolish,
And cares for the simple ones who trust the Lord.
God turns the rich and selfish into beggars.
God feeds the hungry and the poor.
All through the centuries, God is faithful
To those promised to the Lord’s friendship.
Your beauty fills the earth and the sky;
The saints and the angels sing to you
God everlasting, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Psalm: High praises
to you who raised me up
so my critics fall silent
from their death wishes
over me

Lord Most High
I called you
and I was made new

you pulled me back
from the cold lip of the grave
and I am alive

to sing to you
friends, play in his honor
band of steady hearts

his anger like death
passes in a moment
his love lasts forever

cry yourself to sleep
but when you awake
light is all around you

I thought I was experienced
nothing was going to shake me
I was serious as a mountain

Lord, you were with me and then
you were gone
I looked for your face in terror

my body was made of clay
My Lord, it is now
I call you

what good is my blood my tears
sinking in the mud
is mere dust singing

can it speak
these words on my tongue, Lord
help me

turn my heavy sighing into dance
loosen my shirt and pants
and wrap me in your glow

so my heart can find its voice
through my lips to you
warm and alive

rising
above all bitterness
high praises.

Glory be to God, who made us, who bears our pain, and who loves us. 
As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.  Amen.

Reading: Never ask your teacher to explain. But when your activity of mind is exhausted and your capacity for feeling comes to a dead end, if something should take place not unlike the cat springing upon the mouse, or the mother hen hatching her eggs, then a great flash of livingness surges up. This is the moment when the phoenix escapes from the golden net and when the crane breaks the bars of its cage.

The Lord’s Prayer

Holy One,
We honor your name.
Let the world know your justice
Here as everywhere.
Give us the food we need
For both the body and the soul.
Forgive us the wrongs we do
As we forgive the wrongs of others.
Keep us safe from the evil
At large or of our own making.
We trust you for you made us and
We are yours, now and always.  Amen.

Prayer: Steadfast God, perhaps one of the greatest mysteries is why you continue to entrust the work of your kingdom into our clumsy hands. But we are forever grateful that you do not want to change the world without us. May we become the church you dream of. Amen.

Collect: O God for whom we long as a woman in labour longs for her delivery: give us courage to wait, strength to push, and discernment to know the right time; that we may bring into the world your joyful peace, through Jesus Christ, amen.

Going Forth: May we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; to whom be glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.