Opening Prayer Series:
OPENING PRAYER
The Opening Prayer for the Fourth Sunday of
year A reads as follows:
Let us pray
(for a greater love
of God and our fellow men)
Lord our God,
help us to love You
with all our hearts
and to love all men
as You love them.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
In making this prayer tangible for
this week, the following reflection questions emerged.
1.
Do I know what God's love is? Have I
experienced it in my life?
2.
Why do I need a greater love of God?
3.
Why do I need a greater love of my
fellow men?
4.
How will I obtain a greater love of
God and my fellow men this week?
5.
What obstacles/hindrances do I put in
the way to loving God with all my heart?
6.
What obstacles/hindrances do I put in
the way of loving all men as You love them?
GOSPEL REFLECTION
Chapter 5 of
Matthew's Gospel is most well-known but is a challenge to put into practice in
our lives. With God, we do not need to be totally successful or perfect, since
we are a creation in progress, but we do need to try. That is what God asks of
us. To do this, we may wish to personalize this text so that it may be concrete
for our lives this coming week. For example: who are in the poor in
spirit, who are the gentle, who are those who mourn etc Let us be
practical with our answers- identify these groups of people in our lives- is it
our neighbour next door or 2 doors up, a parishioner down the road or a work
colleague that other colleagues ridicule or simply ignore?
Then our beatitude may read:
Then our beatitude may read:
happy my work colleague Mr Smith who
is merciful when I do not meet a deadline,
I will show him mercy when he makes
mistakes in his work this week.
Above all the beatitude is made up of
2 words- be attitude. It is the attitude that we need to be that God asks of us
in the sermon on the mount. Let us listen and read this sermon on the
mount again during the week and try our best to practice it in our lives.
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