Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) July 26th, 2020

We give thanks to the Father for all who have helped us to pray and to grasp something of his great love and power. We ask his blessing and empowering for all who teach and minister in his name; we ask for our worship to be an overflowing of our daily walk with him, an expression of our deepening love.

We give thanks for the beauty and diversity of the created world we inhabit. We ask for the wisdom to tend it carefully, respecting the natural laws and sharing the resources, listening to the weak as well as the strident, the poor as well as the affluent and powerful.

We give thanks for the candour and innocence of the very young, and for the joy of friendship; for all with whom we share our daily life, and those we love but seldom meet. We ask for hearts that are skilled in listening, so that we discern and respond to the real agendas, and remember that a conversation is a two-way event.

We give thanks for the advances in medical knowledge and the hope of new treatments for many diseases. We pray for all in medical research and all whose lives are crippled or disadvantaged by illness, frailty or damage. May the Lord give them comfort and reassurance healing, wholeness and peace

We call to mind all those we have known and loved who lived among us and now have died. We pray for all who made that journey unnoticed and alone. We ask that they may all know mercy and everlasting peace and joy of heaven.