31st SUNDAY OF THE YEAR C

PRIEST:       With echoes of the Holy Year of Mercy three years ago, we today celebrate God’s great yearning for us, His compassion and acceptance of us – His passionate desire that we should allow him to love us and so to change us … to restore us to our truest selves. We hear how Jesus reaches out to someone everyone else rejects and calls a corrupt, wealthy but outcast man, Zacchaeus, to conversion – coming to know the power of Jesus’ love converted him from his old life of injustice and sin to a new life of generosity and holiness. Let us now allow the mercy of God to change and convert us into the ways of the Kingdom.

READER:                When we hide from the injustice that lurks in our own hearts,
                                     the prejudices hidden in our own minds…

                                                                        LORD HAVE MERCY …

When we judge others, condemn them and shun them,
And yet are not honest about our own failures and sins…

                                                                        CHRIST HAVE MERCY …

When we are afraid to let God love us and change us,
when we fail to struggle for honesty and justice in our world…

                                                                        LORD HAVE MERCY …

PRIEST:       May the God who comes searching for us speak our name,
                         bring us forgiveness, lead us into justice and heal our hardness,
                         bringing us  all into everlasting life…

                                                                        AMEN!

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