Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, November 2012
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Our parish opens our daily hospitality center by first gathering staff and volunteers around a large table. We gather so people can introduce themselves, to learn names and basic information of other volunteers. We strive to build community with people who offer their presence to others in the morning. A staff member invites someone to read out loud the gospel passage for the upcoming Sunday. He invites people into silence and offers that silence in peace for the community who are still waiting outside. We offer our reflections on what we heard in the gospel. Another staff member then creates teams that will facilitate the morning of hospitality, offering food, clothing, and hygiene products and much more.

We begin every morning creating a community of nonviolence in a neighborhood that is stripped of dignity.  Our neighbors struggle with the violence of poverty. We cling to the gospel message for the week that forms our volunteers in the yearlong pattern of the liturgical year. We live out hospitality of nonviolence, of welcoming people into peace and a moment of emotional security.

The language of this collect of Ash Wednesday creates conflict within me. The language of war in the collect that begins our journey of conversion does not rest easily in my heart. This violent language counters every aspect of how we live the liturgy in serving God’s people in poverty. Violence creates more division than healing, more separation than community, and more reliance on our own power than on God’s love for us.

The “campaign of Christian service” in other words, almsgiving, comes from a deep understanding that we serve God’s beloved because of our connection to other people’s human dignity. We serve not because of a battle with God. Almsgiving begins with knowing our common poverty, our common humanity, and our common need for God. We serve because Christ’s healing must rein in the violence of poverty, homelessness and mental illness.

I cringe at the language when we pray, “as we take up battle against spiritual evils.”  I have learned that so often people in poverty are blamed for their situations. I hear people accuse others for their poverty. People curse people who have AIDS or who have survived storms, floods and crime. Poverty, mental illness and homeless often are seen by people as a spiritual evil, as the result of lives of sin, neglect and blame. Our common prayer at the Eucharist must not blame people for their life situations or to suggest that war, violence, battles and weapons are going to solve the issues of genuine service and offering hope for people.

The phrase, “we may be armed with weapons of self-restraint,” creates tension within me. Our conversion in the Lenten season must open our hearts to people who most need our hearts to be in love. We cannot envision our prayer, fasting and almsgiving as weapons, but instead experience them as invitations to live in Christ. We cannot substitute our deep reliance on the power of God to feed us, to love us and to call us among the poor for our own power, our weapons of self-restraint. I minister among people who strive every day to put the violence of past abuse behind them. I see the incredible effects of emotional, sexual and spiritual abuse on adults. Our prayer must become a source of healing for people. Our prayer must be centered on God who calls us beyond the human battles of hatred, neglect, abuse and poverty. People rely on our communities to invite us into peace, in the real conversion that will lead us all to the paschal mystery, of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection.

On Ash Wednesday, we mark our bodies with the sign of salvation. The dust on our foreheads reminds us all that our human life will give way to the Kingdom of God. I minister among people who already believe their lives are ash.  Many people in our parishes feel that they do not matter to the rest of us. I want to offer peace, not violence to a person lying in an intensive care unit of the local hospital. I want priests to bring words of consolation in prayer even as we face the cross and depths of human conversion. Our children in all of our parishes should know that even the stripping away of sin and doubt in our lives already comes from God’s love for us, not our violence against evil and our weapons against self-restraint.

We begin the Lenten journey in the peace of Christ. Even the ashes of death give way to the peace of the Kingdom of God. Christ invites people who have been beaten and bloodied by life to enter into suffering in order to discover compassion and grace. This is the Lenten moment of nonviolence I long for in every heart that prays on Ash Wednesday.

Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, October 2012
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I strolled around our neighborhood recently around midnight. Our streets wake up in the darkness of night. People are drawn to the lights of the new marquee on the nightclub next door to the parish. The sounds of music from gay bars and strip clubs ring out from the dark doors of the buildings. Flickering lights proclaim the cocktail prices and glowing advertisements capture the attention of young adults to drink more beer. Small white Christmas lights bring light to some of the trees lining the street. The bright lights shining on our building also light up the doorway where some homeless people are sleeping. City lights point to sex, drugs and rock-n-roll.

Another light that shines in the night brings people to a different place. I stand in the nighttime Mass of Christmas proclaiming the collect as a warm light leading us to the place of Christ. This prayer seems brighter than the marquee and shines more clearly than the invitations for booze, prostitutes and numbing music. I experience this collect as a beacon of hope, a warm light that draws us closer to the presence of God in whom we all long. My voice becomes a source of compassion, my expressions a light that invites people just as they are to this place of prayer and service. The collect of Christmas Mass at night is a quiet light flickering in the competing lights of the seductive city. Under the shelter of our parish building, people who have the courage to enter our red doors for prayer will only see this light. This light shines from the inside out, from the texts of our prayer to the places of our hearts.

I pray this prayer realizing that somehow it creates a dividing line from so many other things I experience during the Christmas season. No matter the compulsive flickering of neon or the seductive lights in dark barrooms, the light that is expressed when the Mass begins is meant for the attention of all people who ache for healing, forgiveness and companionship. This prayer is meant for us to feel the warmth of the real Light, the person of Christ Jesus. In the depths of all of our prayers at Eucharist, there is a light of dignity, respect and prayer that needs to be drawn out from the text on the page. I pray this collect knowing how harsh and lonely Christmas can be for so many people. The Light embedded in this prayer is not an ancient light of the past, but the grace of God’s activity in our lives today. The Eucharist needs to warm the coldness of loneliness and darkness of doubt on Christmas Eve.

I especially invite priests into this reflection of the Christmas collect. For so many priests, the Christmas Mass can be chaotic and frantic after all the preparations of the Advent season. People’s sufferings expand during the holidays, pain seems deeper and isolation even more depressing. Mass can become something to endure for the pastor, obscuring this invitation to point a warm light on the person of Christ in our midst. The priest needs to stand solidly on the ground of the sanctuary and realize how much people need God to heal them. I invite the pastor to slow down, calm down and discover first the Light of Christ in the depths of his own loneliness. This takes more reflection that just picking up the Roman Missal minutes before Mass. This experience takes time, thoughtfulness and intention. There is grace buried in the heart of each sentence of the prayers of the Mass. People long to be lead into the place of love, compassion and hope. There is a great light that shines forth in the person praying these texts on behalf of all the people who stand in the dim light of their lives. We all wait for the mystery of this light on earth.

The action of Epiphany remains in our day. Jesus Christ continues to be revealed in our lives on earth. The journey to the place of love is for every believer. This collect of Epiphany also needs to be proclaimed by priests who understand the dark night. The priest is invited to reflect on his own experience of being lost, unlovable and on the quest for new life and purpose. The Light is seen clearly in the darkness.

Our worshipping assemblies no longer rely on a star to lead us to the light. We do have prayer texts within the Mass to guide us to places of hope. We do have people who have been touched by God’s mercy who become beacons of hope for many other people sitting in our congregations. We do have young people who put their careers on hold to work among God’s poor. We do have people who search for the Light deep within them selves and find new hope. I now walk amid the lights of the city being sent from the Eucharist believing even more in the light that guides us all.

Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, August 2012
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My jaw is often tight and sore. For years, I have sought help to ease the joints in my face. My bite has been realigned and now my teeth fit precariously together. When I speak for long periods of time, I feel the strain in my mouth, shoulders and head. Preaching is always a reminder of the Spirit’s presence in the human and tender apparatus of my body.

Some years ago ministering in a suburban parish, I shared with a parishioner how difficult it was to preach at that point in my life. The stress of projecting my voice and the movements of my mouth produced much pain on Monday mornings after preaching five times on the weekend. He remembered my preaching dilemma and wrote a note upon his leaving that parish to move to a different city. He said, “Thank you for your preaching. You speak to us with a glass jaw that is fragile and graced. Does this mean that we all need to listen to the Gospel and to your preaching with glass hearts?”

His question remains with me as I reflect upon liturgical preaching among God’s glass-hearted people. Connecting the real message of the Spirit and the reality of life is a fragile endeavor in any parish community, a life long art form of making both the Gospel and life transparent and real.

For the past ten years, I have preached among a different community of fragile hearts. These hearers of the gospel are people who face the daily battles of survival on the streets and struggles with sobriety, of making ends meet and medicating mental illness. Other people come to our small chapel from the suburbs because they are aware their children are being raised with privilege and entitlement, and they are uncomfortable with the degree to which it is possible to avoid facing the reality of other people’s suffering. Some social workers and caretakers come to weekday Mass on their lunch hour to regain solace from their work among the marginalized. These believers nestled on the dark pews in our chapel teach me that life and scripture must remain transparent and connected. The Word is still being made flesh in the lives of people surviving poverty, heartache and loss.

I stand on the stained wood of our sanctuary holding tightly to the Gospel book. I sink soul deep into the message that rises from the pages of the scriptures. I hear the echoes of my voice through the speakers of the sound system above me. My finger slowly glides on the page to keep my place because sometimes my throat closes up with emotion and my eyes water with the desire to be an instrument of grace among people standing on the concrete floor of the assembly. I learn here to root my soul in the message of Jesus because I cannot change people’s experiences or find a deeper, lasting way to heal people besides the Spirit working in the sound of my voice.

I can only describe this moment of proclaiming the Gospel as profoundly lonely. These words that rise in the assembly like incense reveal to our people whether or not I have come to believe in God or remain in my own human ego. There is a moment of insight every time I proclaim the Gospel, a split second decision to continue Jesus’ love in the world or short circuit that love with my own fragile conviction that my education and life is what people need.

The Gospel is proclaimed from my tight jaw. However, this is a profound reminder that I am not in control of the grace, challenge or consolation of how the Word makes a home among people. I feel in my emotionally naked body the first place where the Word is real, in my own aching heart and gradually loosened tongue and jaw.

I walk with intention down the two steps of the wooden floor to the concrete floor of the assembly to offer a homily. I gaze into the eyes of the people with the grace of the Gospel proclaimed and the fact that I have come to know many of the stories of poverty. This intersection is where I long to speak, where I ache for human life to receive the miracles of divine love.

Last Ash Wednesday I welcomed people at our noon Mass into the safe shelter of our chapel. As I spoke with people and circled the aisles with greetings, I felt a profound pain in my body. There were three young men who do not know each other who each have attempted suicide several times. Each man has his own stories, each feels suffering so profoundly that attempting suicide is the only way to get attention and ease the pain.

This is the place of suffering, the way to Christ Crucified. This is the common ground for every assembly and every preacher, the place where we have the opportunity to present God as the Divine Healer. Our faith is a rich consolation. Our words must not be trite or flimsy or sarcastic. Our preaching must not degrade the liturgy. Our words may not alone heal.  We desperately need to preach and practice what we believe.

I preach from my own glass heart knowing I am also powerless over outcomes and voiceless over people who will never receive God’s care or consolation. However, I still speak anyway. I still offer what I know best, the mission of the divine longing to enter the hearts of the poor. My words can be a rich source of blessing or put people down. My words can shame or lift up. My words combined with ministry will either reveal that God cares about people or that the church may be only worried about doctrine, surviving scandal or people who have money.

So many people are so emotionally broken that they will never be able to realize God’s love. These are the stories that often stop me on the concrete floor and challenge my jaw to move beyond the pain. These stories reveal to me how to speak to people in need and how to get out of the way of grace.

Hilda sits patiently in the last pew waiting for Sunday Mass to begin. She huddles under a heavy raincoat and the burden of her past abuse. She sits in the chapel to escape the noise of the streets and the uncertainty of her aging body. She longs to hear a message that will set her free. She feels overwhelmed from the inner demons that tell her she is no good, that her life has been a waste of time and that her abuse was actually her own fault. Hilda aches for the Word of God.

Hilda tells me that she wishes she could nail the grace down to the concrete floor that she feels when I preach the healing Word. She feels a moment of safety from the waves of self-doubt and insecurity that flood her soul. Hilda comes to Mass to hear something different than her parents taught her as a child, to hear someone say that God could take her life seriously. God is still invested among people who long to realize in this life that love is possible. Hilda tells me that she will never really feel love on this side of the grave. I wish I could tack down grace on the concrete floor for her and so many others.

Jess teaches at a college about an hour away from downtown Portland. He is tormented by many forms of mental illness and has a hard time telling his real story to people at his school in fear that he could lose his job. Last Christmas, I spent an afternoon with him just listening to his search for healing. He told me that when he hears me preach that healing happens inside his mind and heart for even just a split second. He told me this is more comfort than he feels with his psychiatrist, or with the many medications that he has been taking. Jess tells me that he wishes all preachers could understand that grace is real from the Word and that the liturgy means so much to people who suffer mental illness. He wants to get his word out that God is still working in our prayer. Jess exposes his vulnerable, glass heart to me every few months and I listen with all of mine.

I stand on the concrete in the center aisle opening my tight jaw and speaking words of faith. This is my vocation to live fully in this moment. I trust God’s activity within the liturgy when I rely on the Spirit to give me words and insights. In this liturgical act, I come face to face with the energy and power of the Word that longs to live within people’s fragile and fearful hearts.

I am converted to a deeper understanding of my life and God’s presence in the world when I realize that life is what it is. I cannot preach my way into providing housing for people or adequate health care for the elderly man who comes to us with cancer. I can be as present as I am able to God and the needs of any community with a jaw and an imagination that l stretch into even deeper love.

There are also prevailing issues that I face as a preacher among people.  I preach in the Church that is drenched in alcohol. Every aspect of our Universal Church, leaders and clergy, is affected by the numbing of alcohol. I open up the gifted Word among people who struggle with issues of codependency and tragic outcomes of parental and sibling relationships. These relationships that are the result of generational alcoholism remain difficult to heal. So many people do not feel worthy of any attention by God. They cannot bring themselves to the power of God who faces them with goodness and kindness. Many of our parishioners and weekly guests in our hospitality center are active alcoholics or struggling to survive recent sobriety. Alcohol keeps the heart hidden and opaque, rigid and lost in selfishness. I must face my own generational issues of alcohol and its effects in my own life and in the ways I interpret people’s experiences with alcohol and God’s mercy. I find my own codependency on many days in my tight jaw.

As I walk along the grey floor of the chapel, I ache for people to realize God’s love. This is the real heartbreak for any preacher. So many people will leave and go from our assemblies never realizing that love is the answer. God’s love is present even with in a sick child with cancer or a marriage broken with infidelities. God is here in glass hearts and tight jaws striving to make a home in the narrow places of humanity. I finish the homily and realize I need to let go of my words and any realization that they have flown into the fragile and insecure places of broken hearts. I stand in my convictions and I remain a believer that life has meaning in the sacred texts of the gospel. I sit down in the presider’s chair after preaching spent and yet revitalized in faith.

I will not give up on preaching and liturgy and working for justice. This is a daily tension that I witness by so many people who are working for change, creating new systems of justice and struggling to create a new world. Many people either are devoted to prayer or committed to work for justice. Few people are able to make and keep balanced a connection between the two.

After my years in the arena of poverty, I am convinced that systems will only change when all people finally experience the love God has for them. Nothing in the world can change without grace, mercy and love. We must create a Church that is of the poor, not just a Church that serves the poor. I listen to battle-weary, seasoned justice workers who have given up on prayer and I listen to young, naïve seminarians articulating that faith is all about the sanctuary. The connection of faith and service is the mission of the Church and I will keep preaching from the ground of suffering as long as my jaw holds out.

Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, August 2012
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I pray this collect believing that in the end everything will work out. I long to be found among the beloved of God. I wait for our chaotic world to be restored in peace. I realize this may sound naïve to so many people who face homelessness tonight or who struggle to make it through a cold winter with no money for fuel or food. I have come to a deeper trust in God even though I cannot see through my fogged-up windows on November days. I pray this collect on behalf of people who cannot see beyond tonight or who cannot trust anyone beyond their circumstances in life.  November prayer is often harsh, gritty and uncertain for many people. This is why we venerate God’s grace for the saints and wait for their intercession for our needs and our futures.

These sacred liturgies of November challenge every believer to reflect on death. I pray the collect on the first day of November being reminded of friends, parishioners and family who have died during this past year. I also wait for healing for people who cannot bear the burdens of sickness, bodily pain and emotional stress much longer. On All Saints Day, I am consoled by heavenly believers who now feast with Christ, who model love for the rest of us who wait on earth.

We begin this month in every worshipping community reflecting on death and remembering the saints of our faith. These role models teach us that unity with Christ after death begins by how we live our lives on this earth in our time. People of the past who were given the courage to let go of pride, anger, jealousy, false power and hatred reveal the love of Christ even today. Their lives were changed by a deep love of God and a love for people in need. Each saint lived and prayed from a radical and profound relationship with God. They also reached out in love and purpose to others in the world.

This collect expresses our prayer of praise for all God has given people in the past. We are humbled believers who long for such grace and gift in our own lives. We all face tough times, obstacles to faith and infidelity toward God. We all may think within our own lives that grace is not enough, or that our prayer will not bring what we truly desire. The holy men and women of the past moved through suffering and doubt toward a more genuine relationship with God. This becomes the grace we venerate in the Eucharist and long for in each of our lives today.

Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, no matter our parish community, we stand on the same ground as the saints did on earth. This is not only the physical ground of the earth, but also the same place of need and expectation from God. We all need God. We all long for something more in our lives. We all face sin, division and heartache that need healing, understanding and peace. This is the solid ground of prayer and reliance on God. This is the place where future saints are formed and nurtured. This is the love of God that every worshipping community longs for in every person.

I stand on the same earthly ground where saints are formed believing that everything on this soil will be transformed into Christ’s love. This is where the Kingdom is birthed, here in our midst. I pray the last collect of the liturgical year with a deep desire for all people to be united, to be one in love. The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King means that even the deep secrets of humanity will be brought to the light of Christ. All hardships will lead to hope, all people of the margins will be brought to the center, all violence will become peace, all hatred will be transformed into pure desire for God.

We all pray these collects of November straddling heaven and earth. In the bitter cold of November our prayers combine with the prayers of those who will never know the solace of Christ. Our prayers will mingle among motherless children and the lonely elderly. Our prayers will cry out from our own bitterness and tell about wars that still divide us. In the depths of all that is incomplete, we still stand on the sacred ground where holy people once stood and who still model for us a sacred response to life.

We all have choices to make in praying these collects of November. I ache to find my way home to the place where love dwells. I believe that this earth still creates saints who show us the way to offering praise to God. These liturgies remind us all that the Kingdom of heaven begins here on this earth. It is here where the love of Christ the King heals the longing for everyone who desires heaven.

Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, June 2012
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I hear from many people who believe they are responsible for fixing the pain that resides in their hearts. I listen to many women in particular who feel it is up to them to heal the pain of past abuse all by themselves. They cannot allow God or anyone else to enter such tender spaces of the heart. I converse with people who blame themselves for being abused in the past that results in blaming themselves for every negative aspect of their lives in the present. Discovering God’s love is far from their awareness or desire. Their instinct is to constantly feel bad about life and all their relationships.

My experience reveals many people do not feel good about themselves nor do they believe that God could love them. My heart aches for people who cling to such pain. Discovering God’s love or even the notion that God could be anything more than condemnation and judgment is very common in people who face issues of poverty and emotional illnesses.

This opening prayer for the Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time is an invitation to discover a desire for God within us all. This desire is so distant and abstract to so many people because all they know from the Church and from their relationships are put-downs and harshness. This prayer to desire a reverence for God’s name is a place of profound prayer and a place that is very foreign to many people.

This prayer also asks God to nurture what is good within us and to keep safe what is good and holy in our lives. This text deserves prayerful attention by liturgy planners and preachers. A well-planned and honest homily on discovering God’s love and name within our hearts is greatly appreciated even by people who resist this love. This prayer could also become a rich source of catechesis for liturgical prayer as well as private prayer. This collect is not a throwaway text but needs to continue to be translated into real life especially to people who have trouble accepting God’s care for them.

Every worshipping community needs to put flesh on how love is lived in the world. The one aspect of faith that I see missing in so many worshipping communities is the real love of God. Our overly intellectual approach to the Church and to God results in living out rules and obligations but seldom results in healing lives and hearts. No person can give what he or she does not have. So our communities cannot be called into faith, hope and charity without first discovering a deep, passionate love of God for their own lives.

The collect for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time asks God for the courage to live out this love in the real world. Faith, hope and love become the rich and real aspects of discovering a genuine relationship with God. Living out charity as well as justice becomes nothing but ego and self-importance if it does not first have the foundation of God’s fidelity and love. I witness this nearly every day in our hospitality center. Many volunteers want to serve people in poverty in order to feel better about their own lives. So many people want to serve people surviving issues of mental illness and homelessness but want nothing to do with the faith dimensions of the Church. Some people want to serve and ignore prayer while others pray and ignore service. Theses prayers help bridge this gap if they are prayed and discussed with honesty and integrity.

I pray this prayer realizing that we all merit what has been given to us in Christ Jesus. We do not have to serve our way into salvation. God’s love and salvation for us is a true and free gift. We all value that gift in varying ways in our lives even when we cannot fully express our desire for God. The gift of the Paschal Mystery is the source of genuine love for all who think they must earn their salvation and God’s love for them. This love is manifest every time we gather for Eucharist and begin our prayer in faith, hope and love. We are all worthy of this love.

I pray daily for people who still think they must solve their own pain. My heart aches for people who believe that they are unworthy of God’s love. My quiet hours are spent in silent prayer for people who have never discovered God’s love because of the human pain that is held tightly in their hearts. This is the place in which our communities must pray together and speak the truth out loud. I wait for the day in which every heart discovers the love that will set us all free.

Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, April 2012
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Many people in our neighborhood suffer from social isolation. For many people suffering mental illness, loneliness distorts their reality even more than disease. For some people loneliness even kills. People living in the bug-infested single-room occupancy hotels often die alone. Prostitutes roam our urban corner looking for people who cannot live another night with their loneliness. Drug dealers are always nearby to numb the pain of our neighbors or to satisfy lonely youth attending a blaring concert in the nightclub across the street.

Our staff struggles to create community from such loneliness beginning with the liturgy itself. I pray this opening prayer on the Solemnity of the Trinity aware that most people do not feel welcomed into the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The iconic relationship of our God does not easily model how many people in severe poverty are to live. This takes time and relationships are fragile. Welcoming people into communion, into unity, is so counter to what most people experience on the streets. On the violent streets life is all about self-protection, not giving oneself over to another person or institution, or even to God.

Loneliness is often translated into reluctance to believe in God. I witness this reluctance in the sanctuary and the confessional. I pray with people’s reluctance in my alone time and in moments of prayer with groups of people. This reluctance comes to the surface because people do not feel worthy of God. Many people hold their reluctance as adults because God was forced on them as children or because they were shamed into going to church.

This collect outlines the reason for our gathering at the Eucharist. God has made known to the human race the truth and love of Jesus the Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit. In our baptism we acknowledge the true faith of the Paschal Mystery. We are invited into that sharing of life prompted by God who continues to create within us love, mercy and kindness. This collect is an invitation to begin Eucharist breaking through the loneliness so many people face. These words of prayer must somehow crack through the shame so many people in the pews face about being in relationship with God.

The collect of the Mass is a prism is which we bring people into viewing the nature of God in the continuing celebration of the Eucharist. The prayer also invites people into the covenant relationship with God that is made known among us in our various parishes, our neighborhoods and our world. The Trinity invites people to rest in the loving relationship of God, not because the relationship and God are perfect but because God is still here for the weary, the lonely and the shamed.

I pray the collect on the Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time reminded of the continuing mission of Christ. Jesus was born into a world in need. He gave up his heavenly presence with a new humility on earth. This action of Christ is not over. Christ did not only abase himself for a fallen world of the past, but Christ is still reaching down to bring life and love to us in every day and age. This is genuine joy for all people in all ages, the presence that somehow we need to translate into the depths of people’s lives. This is the Church of mercy and not judgment, of love and not condemnation, of hope and not loneliness.

These collects come to life in every parish when we reach out first of all to people who live in isolation and fear. This takes real courage. This outreach to people well beyond the sanctuary steps takes genuine faith modeled on Christ who humbled himself in the first place. We must reach out to the concrete sidewalks of the city and concrete floors of jails and prisons. We must be willing to abandon our complacency for the rich reward of being in relationship with people who cannot live with their loneliness another day. Every parish community must be willing to abandon their judgment of people and accept people into the pews who are different and who are hurting. This is the perfect model of Trinity life.

The translation of these collects in the new Roman Missal does not stop in our new books or familiar pews. The translation of the Trinity continues in our neighborhoods among people who feel they cannot survive their lives. People who have been shunned by our communities become the place where these ancient Latin texts meet the streets. The translation of these collects into genuine community is a reflection of our God made flesh, so we may live in eternal gladness.

Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, March 2012
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I long for a glimpse of mercy within our community. I pray this collect on the Second Sunday of Easter expecting miracles. I really do not know where else to turn except to the Eucharist in the midst of the turmoil we face in our neighborhood. Our parish stretches my understanding of God’s love so thin that on many days I cannot find it for myself. From the hookers on the streets at our red doors donning their springtime duds to the runaway teens that yell out across the street, we all ache for a full dose of mercy and full plate of hope that will sustain us. We all long to grasp and rightly understand the love that God has for us.

I prayed this opening prayer the first time twenty-nine years ago on my first day of priesthood. Even though the translation has changed, the message of the text is the core of our faith. We cannot forget from where we have come. Christ’s mercy is present in the baptismal font of forgiveness.  The Holy Spirit cleanses our past and gives us second birth. We all await a second chance to understand our lives.  The Blood of Christ sustains us in our loneliness and unites us in communion with God and every believer. Mercy is revealed in the dying and rising Christ and in us who ache for healing.

This text seems profoundly different from my first Mass as a priest. The difference is less in the translation than in my perspective through these years of ministry. Years ago, I thought I understood suffering but that was the naïveté of youth. Suffering of the heart is not an intellectual pursuit. I now realize there is no such thing as understanding the suffering of another person. The only thing I cling to is the faith that God is invested in such anguish. I now ache for the Spirit and an increase of grace. I wait for things to change and for people to discover that God really calls us all His own.

I experience mercy now not as a commodity or something to achieve, but as a relationship with God. God’s mercy and forgiveness is not a pre-packaged reward for being good or for being a perfect priest, but a relationship that sustains us all in the moments of profound pain and anguish. Mercy is not a pious slogan. Mercy is not a trophy for never having fallen in the race, but a relationship of compassionate love soothing the deep and profound wounds that may never heal on this earth.

I weep now from a deeper place than on the day I was ordained. The helplessness I feel in our community is revealed in the tears that I shed for people who may never experience a second chance in life or may never grasp or understand God or themselves. These tears have become a font of grace welling up in me during my years of ordained ministry. I wait for our unity in the Spirit and for the day that God washes guilt away, brings healing to the wounded and hope for the marginalized.

Every parish community prays the Pentecost collect waiting for divine grace. People of faith pray this prayer across boundaries of nations and institutions realizing only God can mend the divides of racism, hatred and fear. This Pentecost prayer will be prayed in poor, rural parishes as well as affluent, suburban communities. The grace we all seek is the fresh, vital and real perspective that God continues in the lives of our people. We will all find ourselves in this prayer longing for every good gift of the Holy Spirit. Everything we all need for the future is within us.

I pray this Pentecost prayer hoping to mend the bridge of the generational gap I now experience among the clergy. I witness so much fear among the young that my generation foiled this mission of priesthood. I want to tell them to wait for the tears of powerlessness and compassion because they will teach you everything. Twenty-nine years of Pentecost have softened my control and perspective over many issues within the Church. I rely on these sacred gifts to be revealed because divine grace is still at work. The divisions among us will only be healed by Pentecost grace among the broken and poor in Spirit.

The holy collects of the Easter season invite us into mercy and love. The feast will one day heal deep wounds and the worries I still carry. The collects will continue to introduce us all to the depths of the Eucharist that feeds people across divides and divisions. I will capture a glimpse of mercy in places I least expect. On the face of the earth we shall all know our longing for heaven.