Eucharistic Prayers for Inclusive Communities
Volume I Themes and Special Occasions
Edited by: Sheila Durkin Dierks and
Bridget Mary Meehan
Small faith communities are gatherings of spiritual pilgrims from different backgrounds who reflect this profound shift in perception toward Eucharist. As they gather for the sacred meal, they celebrate a vision of faith, share joys and tears, acknowledge a cosmic citizenship as people of God, and model the equal ministry of women and men. They believe, as Paul did, that in the body of Christ there is no Jew, Greek, slave, citizen, male or female. (Gal.3:20). All are welcome at the eucharistic celebrations, not only families, but single parents and children, the divorced and remarried, gays and lesbians, married priests and all those who find themselves on the fringes of the institutional church for whatever reason. From our own experience of such community we offer these prayers which we hope will be helpful in the eucharistic sharing of other small faith communities worshipping in the Catholic tradition. ----Bridget Mary Meehan
The most amazing God-trait is imagination. The beginning of Genesis is an explosive experience of this imaginative power. God imagines light in all its sweet forms: lightening bug and sunrise, shooting star and plankton glow. God dreams up waters and their amazing diversity: river and spring, snowflake, fog and downpour, geyser and ice pack. God imagines the bowl of the sky, the constellations, the kumquat trees, the eagle and parrot, the crocodile and avocado, the orangutan and the cockroach. God imagines them and they graciously come into being. And with every such explosion, God sees and recognizes and appreciates the goodness that had not before existed. The ending of Genesis 1 leaves us with the happy impression that God is grateful.
That ingenuity continues as God unfolds the path of Jesus in response to our own need to find our way home. Jesus lives this same path in offering his existence that is rule shattering, life giving and people loving. In a most amazing and creative moment He sees the bread and wine become one with His own flesh and life blood. In that moment in the Passover feast, Jesus imagines that we would be courageous and compassionate enough to join in this great journey of sacramental originality. We have the verve and vision to leap between and into the realities of bread and wine, and body and blood and all that this elision could imply. The giving thanks that is Eucharist could not exist without our imagination, without our perceiving that there is something ever new for which we need to be grateful.---Sheila Durkin Dierks
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How to Order this Book
Eucharistic Prayers for Inclusive Communities Volume I Themes and Special Occasions
Editors: Sheila Durkin Dierks and Bridget Mary Meehan
88 pgs, $19.00, soft cover, spiral bound, ISBN:9780976667896