PRIEST: Today we celebrate Jesus our Prophet. In some ways it is easier for us to welcome Jesus as the centuries separate us from the simple experience of his humanity – but for his own village, family and friends it was much harder. It is understandable that they could not accept him: how many prophets, messengers of God do we not welcome because they are too familiar, too ordinary for us. Let us repent for refusing to recognise God in the simple, the everyday and the familiar.
READER: When we do not welcome others in our hearts and homes,
when we do not want to recognise their gifts and so wound them…
LORD HAVE MERCY …
When we are judgmental about others’ weaknesses
and withhold the compassion of God that can heal and forgive;
when we disown our own weakness as of no use to God…
CHRIST HAVE MERCY …
For the ways we conform to standards that are not of the Gospel;
when we quieten our conscience
and refuse to speak out against injustices of all kinds…
LORD HAVE MERCY …
PRIEST: May the God who welcomes our weakness
embrace us with mercy,
fill us with compassion,
and heal us with forgiveness,
bringing us and all the world to everlasting life…
AMEN!