PRIEST: The familiar story in today’s Gospel – the Pharisee and the sinner – reveals God’s way of looking at the sinful one and the religious person. Not at all what we might expect! Jesus’ words challenge every form of religious pride, as well as our hardness of heart. God urges us today, in this One World Week, to be bearers of reconciling and forgiving love, to throw wide open the doors of God’s mercy. May we allow his word to challenge our easy assumptions about both God and people. Let us commit ourselves afresh as ‘ambassadors of reconciliation’ and peace in our contemporary world.
READER: For the times and ways that we judge others as inferior to us,
more sinful than us, less worthy than us…
LORD HAVE MERCY …
For the pride that boasts of our virtues and ignores our vices
whenever we look down on others
because they do not practice their faith like us…
CHRIST HAVE MERCY …
For our unwillingness to welcome God’s compassion
and forgiveness into our own lives,
for hardness of heart that withholds mercy from another…
LORD HAVE MERCY …
PRIEST: May the God and Father of all compassion hold us in his love;
may our redeeming Brother, Jesus, free us from all sin
and heal all our wounds;
may the Holy Spirit’s fire purify our hearts
sending us bearers of reconciliation to our world,
bringing us to everlasting life…
AMEN!