Solidarity with Sisters Communal Contemplative Prayer (2020)
We gather on Zoom on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM Eastern and Wednesdays at 2 PM Eastern.
Wherever we are, we enter holy silence together, open to divine movement within us and among us.
Email if you'd like to be with us. Our reflection changes week to week. Below is a sample.
(Also available as a PDF or as a Word document for you to modify.)
Wherever we are, we enter holy silence together, open to divine movement within us and among us.
Email if you'd like to be with us. Our reflection changes week to week. Below is a sample.
(Also available as a PDF or as a Word document for you to modify.)
GATHERING
O God who creates and who gives breath,
be with us now as we come to you
with the great longings of our world
and of our selves.
We come together
trusting that the Spirit will be at work in us
as breath that gives us life
and as fire that impels us.
Help us to let go and to let come.
Help us to live the questions
and to move with you, in you, and toward you,
ever open to what is waiting to be born in us.
BEING HERE: Come as you are, in divine presence
We are moving from coming here to being here. Sit in a position that feels stable and comfortable. Let your breath slow and deepen and find its natural pace. As you exhale, let tensions flow out. As you inhale, welcome God into you. Let’s take 10 minutes of silence to offer our full attention to God and to ask the Holy Spirit to inhabit us.
(10 minutes of silence)
AWARENESS
When the world is shifting under our feet, what does it mean to embody the Spirit of Jesus? As we move toward 20 minutes of silence together, let us listen to two voices: Dr. C. Vanessa White in her Pentecost homily, and Congressman John Lewis, the great civil rights leader.
“The Holy Spirit is a living Spirit that moves the community from fear to fearlessness, from faltering to faith, from powerlessness to passionate power. Today we celebrate that the Spirit transformed individuals into an inclusive community that then became a missionary church.” [Brief pause]
“You have to have this sense of faith that what you’re moving toward is already done. It’s already happened. And you live as if you’re already there, that you’re already in that community, part of that sense of one family, one house. If you visualize it, if you can even have faith that it’s there, for you it is already there…
“It’s not something that is natural. You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence. In the religious sense, in the moral sense, you can say that in the bosom of every human being, there is a spark of the divine. So you don’t have a right as a human to abuse that spark of the divine in your fellow human being.
“From time to time, we would discuss that, if you have someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person. So you try to appeal to the goodness of every human being and you don’t give up. You never give up on anyone.
“You’re on a path and you have to be consistent and you have to be persistent. And patient.”
As we enter 20 minutes of silence, we ask the Spirit to lead us from these words to wherever God is waiting for us.
(20 MINUTES OF SILENCE)
INTENTION
Let’s invite each other to share the prayers that arise in us now.
Our response will be: Spirit of Peace, hear our prayer.
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious and Catholic sisters continually ask themselves how they are to embody the Spirit in this immediate time and place. May we also persist in this question, in solidarity with them and with gratitude for their steadfastness. For this we pray. Spirit of Peace, hear our prayer.
(Shared prayers.)
CLOSING
We place all of our prayers, those spoken and those unspoken, into your loving care, and we entrust the outcome to you. As we do, we use the words of Sister Pat Farrell. “There is so much more going on within and around us than we will ever be able to perceive. The unseen movement of Love is creatively holding everything together in ways infinitely beyond what we could ask or imagine.” We ask the Spirit to “open space in us to flow with what we cannot see, with what is beyond us. Yet the path remains always a walk in the dark. We walk it together, summoning one another to deepening faith in the invisible energy of Love that surrounds and carries us.” And so we pray together: Come, Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.
SIGN OF PEACE
O God who creates and who gives breath,
be with us now as we come to you
with the great longings of our world
and of our selves.
We come together
trusting that the Spirit will be at work in us
as breath that gives us life
and as fire that impels us.
Help us to let go and to let come.
Help us to live the questions
and to move with you, in you, and toward you,
ever open to what is waiting to be born in us.
BEING HERE: Come as you are, in divine presence
We are moving from coming here to being here. Sit in a position that feels stable and comfortable. Let your breath slow and deepen and find its natural pace. As you exhale, let tensions flow out. As you inhale, welcome God into you. Let’s take 10 minutes of silence to offer our full attention to God and to ask the Holy Spirit to inhabit us.
(10 minutes of silence)
AWARENESS
When the world is shifting under our feet, what does it mean to embody the Spirit of Jesus? As we move toward 20 minutes of silence together, let us listen to two voices: Dr. C. Vanessa White in her Pentecost homily, and Congressman John Lewis, the great civil rights leader.
“The Holy Spirit is a living Spirit that moves the community from fear to fearlessness, from faltering to faith, from powerlessness to passionate power. Today we celebrate that the Spirit transformed individuals into an inclusive community that then became a missionary church.” [Brief pause]
“You have to have this sense of faith that what you’re moving toward is already done. It’s already happened. And you live as if you’re already there, that you’re already in that community, part of that sense of one family, one house. If you visualize it, if you can even have faith that it’s there, for you it is already there…
“It’s not something that is natural. You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence. In the religious sense, in the moral sense, you can say that in the bosom of every human being, there is a spark of the divine. So you don’t have a right as a human to abuse that spark of the divine in your fellow human being.
“From time to time, we would discuss that, if you have someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person. So you try to appeal to the goodness of every human being and you don’t give up. You never give up on anyone.
“You’re on a path and you have to be consistent and you have to be persistent. And patient.”
As we enter 20 minutes of silence, we ask the Spirit to lead us from these words to wherever God is waiting for us.
(20 MINUTES OF SILENCE)
INTENTION
Let’s invite each other to share the prayers that arise in us now.
Our response will be: Spirit of Peace, hear our prayer.
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious and Catholic sisters continually ask themselves how they are to embody the Spirit in this immediate time and place. May we also persist in this question, in solidarity with them and with gratitude for their steadfastness. For this we pray. Spirit of Peace, hear our prayer.
(Shared prayers.)
CLOSING
We place all of our prayers, those spoken and those unspoken, into your loving care, and we entrust the outcome to you. As we do, we use the words of Sister Pat Farrell. “There is so much more going on within and around us than we will ever be able to perceive. The unseen movement of Love is creatively holding everything together in ways infinitely beyond what we could ask or imagine.” We ask the Spirit to “open space in us to flow with what we cannot see, with what is beyond us. Yet the path remains always a walk in the dark. We walk it together, summoning one another to deepening faith in the invisible energy of Love that surrounds and carries us.” And so we pray together: Come, Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.
SIGN OF PEACE