Leader: Friends, We are about to re-enact the great event that gives meaning to our lives, so let us put ourselves in a suitable frame of mind. This celebration is one of thanksgiving, of gratitude, for the ability to overcome evil. To appreciate this fully, let us make ourselves open to the chaos, evil and futility in our lives. To see the task we have set ourselves, let us acknowledge – in a few moments of silence – the evil that we and our way of life inflict on the whole world.
SILENCE READINGS REFLECTIONS, WITNESS, TESTIMONY BIDDING PRAYERS Eucharistic Prayer L: The love and peace of the Lord be with you.
All: And also with you.
L: Let us lift up our hearts to give thanks and praise to the Lord.
All: It is right for us to do so.
L: We give you thanks and praise that through you the vision of the kingdom has come to all humanity.
That vision you proclaimed in the Synagogue at Nazareth.
In fidelity to this vision, we have left the security of the Age of Faith and gone forth into the desert of the modern world.
We have left the fleshpots of certainty, to live in the wasteland of moral relativism.
It is in this desolation, we can build the new Jerusalem and make the desert bloom like the rose.
In this celebration, we bring together the future and the past.
The past which was your historical life.
The future which can be our making of your presence in the world.
It is through this re-enactment that we foreshadow the Messianic banquet.
When all humanity will have its fill.
When all will sit at the welcome table.
We proclaim that through you, we have the power to create Heaven on Earth.
Swords can be beaten into ploughshares and nations not learn war any more.
We proclaim the salvation of humanity, through you it no longer has any need of illusion.
It can have faith in itself.
It has come of age.
It is able to accept sole responsibility for the world.
Let us now give the sign of peace as a foreshadowing of peace on earth.
KISS OF PEACE All: The night before you died, you showed us your vision of the future. You took bread, broke it, gave it to us saying:
Eat! I shall not eat again until the Kingdom comes!
When supper was ended, you took the cup and said:
Drink! I shall not drink again until all is accomplished!
L: From this we understand how it is going to be.
When all is shared, you will be with us.
When each receives according to their needs and gives according to their ability, you will be present.
All: We have come to interpret your actions and your subsequent death as an act of self-giving.
We have come to understand this bread and wine as your flesh and blood.
COMMUNION L: So through this meal, we see that God resides only in humanity.
We declare the heavens empty, the Lord reigns only in the human heart.
God has become human, so that the human can become divine.
In this surrender of supernatural power, this kenosis, we see what we must do.
The global capitalism we have created and which we benefit from, must surrender its power to the poor.
We need to see that it is our economic choices that determine who lives and who dies in the Third World.
We must cease consuming many times our fair share of the world’s resources.
This is how the Kingdom is created in our era.
Let’s go and do it!
All: AMEN!
Peter Lumsden is a member of SoF Steering Committee. sof 74 November 2005 8 Love’s Domain:
This Eucharist, composed by Peter Lumsden, is inspired by a theology of kenosis.