Prayer for the World April 15, 2026

Easter Hope

Introduction

During the Easter Season we are awakened to the reality of the Risen Christ in our midst.  Our challenge today, as it was for the disciples over 2000 years ago, is to recognize him in every human being.  Secondly, we are challenged to love one another as he has loved us.

Song:  Enflame Our Hearts by Monica Brown,

https://youtu.be/iSri3Y2nzdU?si=reQm6eH5kHrDkhA_

Enflame our hearts, O God of love,

May we be your light of love.

Enflame our hearts, O God of love,

Let your love burn deep in us.

Reflection

The following is a message from the former Archbishop of Canterbury to young people gathered for a European Meeting of young people in Geneva, a message concerning the life of Etty Hillesum, a young 27 year old Jewish woman who died at Auschwitz in 1943.

“As Etty faced the likelihood of deportation and death, she wrote that she felt her task was to ‘bear witness that God lived’ in the terrible circumstances around her.  She had to live so as to persuade people that God was real, even in the midst of the horror and insanity of the Nazi era.  These words still haunt me, because they offer what is surely one of the most authentic and demanding definitions of faith in the modern age.  To have faith is to be willing to live so as to show that God is alive.  And that means to live in ways which show that there are more possibilities than the world recognizes—the possibility of forgiveness, the possibility of reconciliation, the possibility of hope, the possibility of forgetting yourself and being absorbed in the needs of another…    The January-February 2025 Issue of The Catholic Worker

Question for Reflection:  How does how I live show that God is alive?

Silent Prayer

Intercessions

For those who are being deported so unjustly and for those who are in fear of deportation, we pray.

For children arriving at our borders unaccompanied, who are denied legal representation and for those who are speaking out on their behalf, we pray.

For each of us that our faith and hope might be strengthened in the possibilities of peace, justice, and reconciliation, we pray.

In gratitude for the life of Pope Francis and his powerful, loving commitment to the poor, the forgotten and the persecuted, we pray.

For a greater awakening to the harm we humans are doing to the Earth and to one another, that Pope Francis worked so hard to bring about, we pray:

Closing Reflection:  From Pope Francis’ Easter Blessing

The resurrection of Jesus is indeed the basis of our hope. For in the light of this event, hope is no longer an illusion. Thanks to Christ — crucified and risen from the dead — hope does not disappoint! “…because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5). That hope is not an evasion, but a challenge; it does not delude, but empowers us.  

Silent Prayer

Song:  Easter Hallelujah by Cassandra Star and her sister, Calahan https://youtu.be/cbL3gx5VYEs?si=AZtr_0Cr6FtDDOx9