As our Taizé liturgy is cancelled this week due to the extreme weather, you might like to take time to follow the planned liturgy through these texts and pieces of music.
A leaflet to accompany this is here: taize-leaflet-1st-march.
“>Bless The Lord
Welcome and Introduction
A very warm welcome one and all to our Taizé prayer for Lent.
We continue our prayer evenings as part of the parish preparation for the World Meeting of Families. Our icon at the centre of our focus is the one written specially for this event this year.
This week the preparation looks at ‘God’s dream for love’. If we accept that God’s love is unconditional, then we will become capable of showing boundless love and forgiveness. We give thanks for the experiences of love we receive in our families.
In our Scripture last week we went onto the mountain with Jesus. Tonight we experience his anger in the Temple. It may be difficult for us to see him angry and yet it is a natural reaction.
The invitation tonight is to come into the experience and to reflect on what it calls me to become.
Opening Prayer
Let us pray,
Lord, help us to really SEE you,
as someone really in love with us,
intensely present wherever we are:
working , playing, creating,
there at the desk, in the kitchen,
checking the smartphone,
watching the game, shopping,
chatting with a friend, drinking in the pub.
There is no place where you are not
accompanying us; nothing separates you from us.
You want us to sense, feel, taste and touch
Your love for us.
Help us to stop being afraid to believe this.
Let us give you delight by trusting you completely. Amen
Join in our music now and allow it to draw you deeply into a place of stillness in this presence of our God: Bonum est confidere in Domino …… It is better to trust in the Lord …
“>Bonum est Confidere
“>The Lord is My Light
Scripture: John 2:13-25
Just before the Jewish Passover Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and in the Temple he found people selling cattle and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting at their counters there.
Making a whip out of some cord, he drove them all out of the Temple, cattle and sheep as well, scattered the money-changers’ coins, knocked their tables over and said to the pigeon-sellers, ‘Take all this out of here and stop turning my Father’s house into a market.’
Then his disciples remembered the words of scripture: Zeal for your house will devour me. The Jews intervened and said, ‘What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?’
Jesus answered, ‘Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this sanctuary: are you going to raise it up in three days?’
But he was speaking of the sanctuary that was his body, and when Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the words he had said.
Pointers For Reflection
Take a period of quiet to allow the words to resonate and to reflect on this scripture passage:
1. Jesus sees the temple trading as a distraction from the real activity of God’s house. What is the true activity of God’s house today?
2. Who is like Jesus in our country, in our world, in our Church, disturbing, disrupting what we take for granted?
3. Who in our lives and in our Church is like Jesus and consumed with passion and zeal for the things of God?
4. How are we like the disciples for whom the penny drops? What insights about the Lord and about life have we eventually come to see?
“>Adoramus Te Domine
Responding to Period of Reflection through prayer of intercession
We address our intercessions directly to God, who is present here among us as we gather.
For the Church, your people oh God:
that your covenant with us will move our hearts to a deeper relationship with you and greater service to our neighbours. We pray to you Lord
For an openness to your Word:
that our family life will be renewed by the life giving teaching of your Gospel, and help us to follow the example of your son, Jesus, more closely. We pray to you Lord
For a deepening of hope:
that your Spirit will lead us into a deeper experience of the length and breadth of your love and renew within us the call to discipleship. We pray to you Lord
For refugees, for those held unjustly and for those fleeing danger:
that you will lead them to safety and stir others to provide for their needs. We pray to you Lord
For an end to violence:
that our hearts may be stirred to take action to free those bound unjustly and lift the burdens from those who are oppressed. We pray to you Lord
We gather all of our prayers from this night and place them in the tender care of you God, our Father, as we say together:
Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
Bringing towards a Close – Invitation to action
Let us, this week, be open to hearing the voices in our country, in our world, in our Church, disturbing, disrupting what we take for granted?
Do we listen?
We will take a few moments of quiet to internalise what it is that we are taking away from here this night. What did you hear, what are you taking away with you?
We met an angry Jesus in our scripture this night. He sees the trading taking place in the Temple as a distraction from the real activity of God’s house.
“>Our Darkness is never darkness (La Tenebre)
Closing Prayer
Let us pray,
God, we come to you through our unknowing, because you are always greater, greater than our minds, greater than our hearts.
Help us to stand before the bright darkness of your mysterious Being that we may come to know you as you really are.
We make our prayer through your Son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen
The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end, Amen.
“>Wait for the Lord
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