Pentecost Sunday is May 31. Pentecost is a reminder that the Holy Spirit is with us to empower us always to live out the Kingdom of God our Father, here on earth. Like the winds that move across White Sands, shaping and reshaping the dunes and everything in their path, the Spirit of God moves in our hearts. We are renewed and reshaped by that same Holy Wind that came to the disciples "suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house..." Acts 2:2
Our Father, Who is in Heaven..where everything will be reversed, the first will be last and the last will be the first, but where all will be well and every manner of thing will be well.
Hallowed by Thy Name...may we always acknowledge your holiness, knowing that your ways are not our ways, and your standards are not our standards. May our reverence for you pull us out of the selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbor.
Your Kingdom Come...help us to create a world, where beyond our own needs and hurts, we will do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with you and our neighbors. Teach us our own poverty, and to receive your Kingdom as a gift by the Holy Spirit.
Your Will be Done...open our freedeom to let you in so that the completeness that characterizes you flows throu our veins, and thus the life we help generate may radiate your equal love for all and your special love for the poor. Teach us to partner with yo as you renew and redeem creation.
Give us this day...give us life and love; teach us to receive your life so that we may in turn give it away. Give not just to our own, but to everyone, including those who are very different from the narrow "us." Give us this day and not tomorrow. Do not let us push things off into some distant future so we can excuse our passivity or our apathty. Unveil to us the Presence of Your Kingdom.
Our daily bread...so that each person in the world may have what they need, enough food, clean water, clean air, adequate health care, and access to education. So that we may learn how simple are our true needs, so that we may work for a sustainable world.
And forgive us our trespasses...forgive us our blindness to our neighbor, our self-preoccupation, our racism, our sexism. Forgive us our capacity for blindness, for believing the lies about progress, for adopting a consumer lifestyle.
As we forgive those who trespass against us...help us to forgive those who take advantage of us. Help us to forgive imperfect parents, impersonal corporations, and the systems that wounded them and us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, For Yours is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever and ever. Amen.
Taken from "The Holy Longing" by Fr. Ron Rolheiser OMI (Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate).
If you found this a helpful exercise, I would suggest you take it a step further and write your own extended Lord's Prayer. Like the sun breaking through clouds, you may find yourself renewed for discipleship.
Check back next week to see what the prayer I have been working on. If you do write your own prayer, I'd be delighted to have you share it on this blog.
