Day 655 Friday, December 31, 2021

All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures. You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.

A Prayer For Our Earth

By Pope Francis

All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures. You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.

Pour out upon us the power of your love,

that we may protect life and beauty.

Fill us with peace, that we may live

as brothers and sisters, harming no one.

O God of the poor,

help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this Earth,

so precious in your eyes.

Bring healing to our lives,

that we may protect the world and not prey on it, that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.

Touch the hearts

of those who look only for gain

at the expense of the poor and the Earth.

Teach us to discover the worth of each thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation, to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature as we journey towards your infinite light.

We thank you for being with us each day.

Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle

for justice, love and peace.

Pope Francis published this prayer in Laudato Si’, We hope that this prayer guides you in your actions each day.

Reflection:

The Gospel reminds me of an African praise-name for God that likens the Divine to a “large and deep pot.” Another African proverb says “a mother’s heart is as deep as a well.”

Imagine the heart of God, the heart of a mother, like a large and deep pot! That is precisely what today’s Gospel tells us about Mary in so many words: “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” Have you ever wondered what things Mary kept in her heart? I think I have an idea:

Mary kept the mystery of the incarnation in her heart, pondering and relishing it with reverence and awe.

As I reflect on the Gospel, the image of a mother’s heart, like God’s heart, as a large and deep pot, or a deep well, strikes me as a profound invitation to meditation and contemplation.

This rich symbol reveals a spiritual depth and rootedness; it signals an amazing capacity to birth and to contain God, which is what Mary does.

Such a gift of rootedness and depth is precisely the opposite of so much shallowness and superficiality that characterizes our world and our relationships in this day and age.

Reflection by Sr. Anne Arabome, SSS reflects: