NIGHT PRAYER: Sunday 5/14

On Sundays, Night Prayer will focus on an element from the day's celebration of Mass. Tonight we'll take our lead from a verse in today's second reading (which was also the subject of my homily).

Always be ready

    to give an explanation   

to anyone who asks you

    for a reason for your hope…

For years now, in Advent, I've posted Reubem Alves' reflection on hope.  I hope you'll agree that the Easter season is an equally apt time to pray with his words.  (My Night Prayer and a song follow below.)

What is hope?

It is the presentiment

    that imagination is more real

    and reality is less real

    than it looks.

Hope is the hunch

    that the overwhelming brutality of facts

    that oppress and repress us

    is not the last word.

It is the suspicion that reality is more complex

    than the realists want us to believe -

that the frontiers of the possible

    are not determined by the limits of the actual -

and in a miraculous and unexplained way,

    life is opening up creative events

    which will open the way

    to freedom and resurrection.

But the two – suffering and hope –

    must live from each other.

Suffering without hope

    produces resentment and despair.

But, hope without suffering

    creates illusions, naivete and drunkenness.

So let us plant dates -

    even though we who plant them will never eat them.*

We must live by the love of what we will never see.

That is the secret discipline.

It is the refusal to let our creative act

    be dissolved by our need for immediate sense experience

and it is a struggled commitment

    to the future of our grandchildren.

Such disciplined hope

    is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints,

    the courage to die for the future they envisage.

They make their own bodies

    the seed of their highest hopes.   

- Ruben Alves

*Date palms don't bear fruit for 7-10 years after planting!

Lord, I can be so easily weighed down

    by my struggles, my burdens, my pain,

    by the harsh realities of my daily life...

Sometimes, I fear I'll lose hope,

    in you,

    in tomorrow, 

    in others,

    and in myself...

 

So I pray you'll help me trust,

help me hope

    that the peace I imagine,

    the peace I pray for,

    the peace I long for,

    the peace you promise

        is stronger and greater,

        deeper and wider,

        than any problem I face...

 

Let hope be my hunch, Lord:

    my hope that my future's not fixed

        by the scope of my present trials;

    my hope that the troubles I face

        won't have the final word;

    my hope that my sorrows and burdens 

        are truly a prelude to joy...

 

Give me hope 

    in the midst of my suffering, Lord:

        I know that's the path of your love,

        I know it's the way that leads me to you...

Help me see how my troubles prepare me today:

    for the peace your reign will bring;

    for the gift of your healing mercy and presence;

    and then, at last, for the harvest of hope,

        my hunch proved right by your grace...

 

Protect me, Lord, while I'm awake

    and watch over me while I asleep

that awake, I might keep watch with you

    and asleep, rest in your peace...

 

Amen.

There Is A Hope by Stuart Townend 

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