Our inclusive language liturgies generally set the structure and theme of Sunday morning worship.
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it. But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. … I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God. In the end, God’s will, not ours, is done. Love is the victor.
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
…You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 206
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Jesus did not come to make God’s love possible,
but to make God’s love visible
–Anonymous…
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
…Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love divine;
Christina Rosetti
Love was born at Christmas; star and angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead, love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus, but wherewith for sacred sign?
Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and neighbor, love for plea and gift and sign.
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
In our secret yearnings we wait for your coming, and in our grinding despair we doubt that you will. And in this privileged place we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we and by those who despair more deeply than do we. Look upon your church … in this season of hope which runs so quickly to fatigue and in this season of yearning which becomes so easily quarrelsome. Give us the grace and the impatience to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes, to the edges of our fingertips.…