Prayer to the Holy Spirit

Holy Spirit of Fire: Lead us on our faith journey.

Give us the courage to face difficult issues with honesty and integrity. 

Help us to recognize wisdom even from unlikely sources.

Show us life-giving ways to be Church today.

Challenge us to forgive one another.

Sow seeds of unity, love and peace in our hearts.

Keep us faithful to the Spirit of the gospel.

Set our hearts on fire with love for you.

     Amen ~ Fr. Joe Weiss

Holy Spirit of Fire: Lead us on our faith journey.
Written by Cindy Nedved, Director of Liturgy & Music for the West Campus

Holy Spirit of Fire:

Light

Energy

All consuming Love

Empowering

Breath of Life

Transforming Presence

Purity of heart

Fire that warms

Fire that thaws cold hearts

Fire that limbers cold hands

Fire that illumines our path

Fire that burns within us

Faith is a walk with God.

Living by faith in God is a journey, not a destination.

Living by faith is movement, not sitting still or

planting ourselves and waiting for something to happen.

Faith happens when we are alive.

People see that we have faith by how we live our everyday lives,

not because we declare that we have faith.

Where would I be today without God’s presence in

the events of my life?

On this journey of faith let us open our hearts, our beings,

to the Spirit of Life,

the Breath that sustains us and gives us life,

the Fire that lights our way as we walk with God.

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Give us the courage to face difficult issues with honesty and integrity.
Written by Sister Josetta Marie Spencer, SSND, Director of Pastoral Care

Holy Spirit of Fire

Before you the whole universe is but a grain or like a glistening drop of morning dew! Lover of all and loather of nothing you have made, preserve all that has been called forth from Your hand, ever opening us to your imperishable Spirit among us.
Wisdom 11:22-12-2

Give us the courage
To praise and bless you name at all times, for you are gracious and great in kindness, compassionate toward all you works, ever lifting up all who fall and always raising up all who feel bowed down.
Psalm 145

to face difficult issues
We pray always to be worthy of our calling to fulfill every good purpose in our assembly by bringing our faith powerfully to fulfillment, not being shaken or alarmed our of our minds, so that the name of Jesus may truly be glorified.
2 Thessalonians 1: 11-22

with honesty and integrity
Though being short in stature like sinful Zacchaeus, yet we long to see who Jesus is now and to hear, "Today I must stay at your house!" Reminded by each other that we are sinners, Jesus reassures: "I have come to save what was lost."
Luke 9: 1-10

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Help us to recognize wisdom even from unlikely sources
Written by Renee Sherman, Finance Manager

Nearly every one of us can think of a person we trust as a source of wisdom. Perhaps a parent, teacher, counselor, coach, expert or priest. God is the ultimate source of divine, profound wisdom, although sometimes His wisdom is hard for us to glean.

The Holy Spirit challenges us to seek wisdom from unexpected sources, to gain understanding from someone new. Let’s take the first step to wisdom by opening our hearts, and our ears to truly listen to those around us.

As Mark Nepo, a spiritual writer notes, “To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.”

Do we hear wise words from our children? From our friends? From the person next to us in line at the grocery store? What about from our elderly neighbor that watches us come and go? How will we take some extra time this week to listen to someone new?

Perhaps through listening to others, we will see new glimpses of God’s will for us. God is always there, waiting for us to tune in to His message for us. God’s will may become clear to us in the words of someone unexpected this week – we just need to listen for it.

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Challenge us to forgive one another
Written by Mary Ann Zervas, Director of Faith Formation

Holy Spirit call us to forgiveness

Help us be aware of our lack of

Forgiveness

Guide us to choose love

Teach us the patience to transform

From day to day

As we await the final grace of

Forgiveness

Help us let go of our blindness

See that in releasing the other

We heal ourselves

We ask you this through God the

Holy One

Amen

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Show us life-giving ways to be Church today.
Written by Reverend Joe Weiss, S. J., Ph.D., Pastor

“To be Church in life-giving ways…” The Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium #1) teaches us that our membership of the Church is, before else, the expression of our relationship with God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Church is called to be a communion of love modeled on the Trinitarian communion of God. As communion, the Church must itself in its internal relationships model that mutuality of love existing within God.

Communion, therefore, means much more than being linked together at a social level, like members of a club or even a nation. It means more than being just a community with a common purpose. It means being in a relationship whose intimacy flows from our relationship with the three divine persons – the Trinity.

Such an understanding of what it means to be Church demands that we share a common spirituality, a “spirituality of communion” or a “spirituality of relationships”, flowing from the communion among the divine persons.

We are never more truly Church as communion than when we gather together around the table of the Lord, as brothers and sisters in Christ. There we share the living Word of God, the body and blood of Christ, and our communion with one another in the Spirit. It is through the Eucharist that the Church is truly a communion of love, with the power to attract and energize others. The Eucharist is where we experience communion and are empowered for mission. Holy Spirit of Fire: Show us life-giving ways to be Church today.

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Sow seeds of unity, love and peace in our hearts.
Written by Dana McCarthy, Director of Liturgy and Music for the East Campus

Music in worship draws hearts and voices together in prayer. It works and waters the loamy soil of our souls, drawing us ever deeper into Divine Mystery – ever closer to the Messiah. May our Advent Song sow seeds of unity, love and peace in our hearts:

We lift our souls to you, O Lord. Make us know your ways, teach us your paths and keep us in the way of your truth. (Psalm 25)

O Christ, redeemer of us all, bend near, and hear us when we call:

Let your love be born in us ‘til peace and justice fill the earth.

Give us a love that never dies, a vision of the world to come when

all oppression ends, all the homeless find a home, all the hungry have their fill; guns and bombs no longer kill.

O Spirit, grant us your wisdom, love and grace.

(Creator of the Stars of Night)

Come, O Morning; come, O Light! Let us see your day breaking bright.

Let us declare what God has spoken: Peace to the people of God everywhere.

Let faithful love and truth embrace; let peace and justice come face to face.

Let God’s truth water the earth like a spring – God’s mercy, like rain on

our face.

(Psalm 85 / Your Mercy Like Rain)

O come, Desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of humankind;

O bid our sad divisions cease, and be for us our King of Peace.

(O Come, O Come, Emmanuel)

Yes, O Lord, in this our Advent song, we lift our souls to you – and we rejoice

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Keep us faithful to the Spirit of the gospel.
Written by Reverend Joe Weiss, S. J., Ph.D., Pastor

“To be faithful to the spirit of the Gospel…”
When Jesus set out from his home town of Nazareth, empowered by the Spirit, he saw his mission in terms of proclaiming the reign of God, the God to whom he prayed as Abba. The phrase “the reign of God” which he used would have evoked in his hearers the great promise of God recounted throughout the history of the Jewish people. It was that, despite all obstacles, God would ultimately reign over all those forces that prevented God’s plan for this world from being achieved.

That plan envisaged a particular way of life for human beings. By his teachings and his actions, Jesus showed humanity how to live, above all with love and compassion. He sought to bring in outcasts and welcome home sinners, to draw the hurt, unloved, suffering, the lost and the excluded into closeness and friendship with him, and therefore with God.

Jesus’ mission was to draw all back into communion with God and right relationships with each other.

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Set our hearts on fire with love for you.
Written by Lonnie Ellis, Director of Social Ministries

The Holy Spirit just set your heart ablaze.
You wanted to start the fire yourself, a controlled burn.
Some heat and light to bring to parts of your life when you’re ready. But the Holy Spirit just torched the place.

You're now wildly in love with God and all of God's creation.
You grin at nothing, forgive more, and cry a whole lot more.

You exclaim things like, "Yeah, well what about the poor!" at
socially inappropriate times. And you reach out to your loved ones in the spirit of the poem by St. Francis of Assisi:
"Tell me about your heart," my every word says.
Speak to me as if we both lay wounded in a field and are gazing
in wonder as our spirits rise.

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