Lent Prayers

Prayers for Lent observed beginning on Ash Wednesday and ends after six weeks before the celebration of Easter. 

Prayers

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Invite Us Deeper

Almighty and ever living God,
you invite us deeper into your world, your people, your Lent.
May this time be one of outward focus;
seeking you in those we often ignore.
Help us live a Lent focused on freedom, generosity, and encounter.
Give us hearts hungry to serve you
and those who need what we have to give.

- Author Unknown

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Let Us Fast

While fasting with the body,
brothers and sisters,
let us also fast in spirit.
Let us lose every bond of iniquity;
let us undo the knots of every contact made by violence;
let us tear up all unjust agreements;
let us give bread to the hungry
and welcome to our house
the poor who have no roof to cover them,
that we may receive mercy from Christ our God.

- Byzantine Vespers

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A Lenten PrayerPalms in the form of crosses

Look with favor, Lord,
on your household.
Grant that,
though our flesh be humbled
by abstinence from food,
our souls, hungering after you,
may be resplendent in your sight.

- Pope Pius V

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Come, My Light

Come, my Light,
and illumine my darkness.
Come, my Life,
and revive me from death.
Come, my Physician,
and heal my wounds.
Come, Flame of divine love,
and burn up the thorns of my sins,
kindling my heart
with the flame of thy love.

- Dimitrii of Rostov

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From the Beginning of Time

Jesus,
you have known us from the beginning of time,
you have known us in the depths of our dreams and in the darkness of our shame,
you know us as your beloved.

Help us to own that core identity more and more in this season of repentance and mercy.
Give us the rock-solid assurance of your unwavering faith in us
as we seek the same in you.

Amen.

- Author Unknown

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The Fast Life

Fast from judging others;
Feast on Christ dwelling in them.
Fast from fear of illness;
Feast on the healing power of God.
Fast from words that pollute;
Feast on speech that purifies.
Fast from discontent;
Feast on gratitude.
Fast from anger;
Feast on patience.
Fast from pessimism;
Feast on hope.
Fast from negatives;
Feast on encouragement.
Fast from bitterness;
Feast on forgiveness.
Fast from self-concern;
Feast on compassion.
Fast from suspicion;
Feast on truth.
Fast from gossip;
Feast on purposeful silence.
Fast from problems that overwhelm;
Feast on prayer that sustains.
Fast from anxiety;
Feast on faith.

- Author Unknown

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That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection

Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on. 

But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
 
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone! 

Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark 

Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone 

Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark 

Is any of him at all so stark 

But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection, 

A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection. 

Across my foundering deck shone 

A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash 

Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash: 

In a flash, at a trumpet crash, 

I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and 

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, 

Is immortal diamond. 



- Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

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