My Family Prayer Book

 2026-10-25 Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Opening prayer In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Loving Father, as we gather to reflect on the words of Jesus, open our hearts and minds to your truth. Teach us to love you with our whole heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. May our listening and conversation help us understand how these two commandments belong together and guide every part of our lives. Send your Holy Spirit to be with us and help us recognize your love in one another. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. Prayer for healing : Heavenly Father, we surrender our beloved sister Sue Pierce who is in need of healing to your loving care and miraculous healing. May the life-giving powers of your touch flow into every cell of her bodies and into the very depth of her soul, cleansing, purifying, and restoring her to wholeness and full life. Grant her the strength, courage, and patience to endure her suff...

   2026-10-18 Twenty-ninth Sunday in ordinary time Isaiah 45:1, 4-6 Isaiah prophesied through the reigns of Hezekiah through Manasseh, so about 740 to 700 BC, whereas Cyrus became King of Persia around 559 BC and conquered Babylon around 539 BC and and issued the decree allowing the Jews to return home in 538 BC. Therefore there is a gap of 160 years or more before the prophesy and the event. Modern scholars now believe Isaiah chapters 40-55, including 45:1, were written during the Babylonian exile, around 540 BC, when Cyrus was already on the rise. If one goes with this view, then the author lived only a few years before Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon. Psalm 96 Psalm 96 is one of five psalms in Book Four (90-106) of the Psalter classified as pure exultation/enthronement psalms to Yahweh as the divine King.      By singing a new song that looks to the future     By confessing his greatness     By glorifying him (doxology).     By worsh...

  2026-10-11 Twenty Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time   Opening prayer In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Gracious Father, you invite every one of us to the banquet of your Kingdom, and you call us not because we are worthy, but because you are generous. As we gather around your Word today, open our ears to hear your invitation, and open our hearts to answer it with joy. Lord Jesus, in the Parable of the Wedding Banquet you show us a God who longs to fill his house with guests. Keep us from the excuses that draw us away from your table. Give us the humility to accept your call, and help us to put on the wedding garment of faith, repentance, and love. Holy Spirit, enlighten our minds and warm our hearts. Guide our conversation, that we may listen to one another with patience and charity, and discover what this parable asks of us in our own lives. Make us worthy guests at your table here on earth, until we share in the wedding feast of the Lamb...

 2026-10-04 Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time   Opening Prayer In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord God, Vine dresser of your people,   You planted your vineyard with love, you cleared the ground, set a wall around it, and were right to hope for good grapes. Open our hearts today as good soil to receive your Word. Give us ears to hear the song of your lost flock, and eyes to see how little we are doing for them. Show us where we are yielding wild grapes and spur us instead toward justice and righteousness. Save us from the pride of the tenants who kept for themselves what was your gifts given freely to us to do your will. Father, you sent  the prophets,  your only begotten Son and many holy men and women, whom we rejected and cast out, Remind us again and again that your only begotten Son our Lord and Redeemer has became the cornerstone. Let us not resist his call to show mercy and compassion, but welcome his lost sh...

 2026-09-20 Twenty-fifth Sunday of the year   Opening prayer Good and gracious Lord of the Vineyard, You call us at every hour of the day, and your generosity knows no measure of our merit. As we open our hearts to your word this day, free us from the envy that counts another's blessing as our loss, and from the pride that believes we have earned  your mercy, which you give freely.  Teach us that our ways are not your ways, and our thoughts are not your thoughts. Help us to rejoice when your goodness falls on others as it falls on us - just like the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Teach us to trust that the last will be first, and the first will be last, in your unending love. Open our ears now to hear what you would say to us, and open our hearts to receive it with gratitude, and not with calculation. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.   Prayer for healing : Heavenly Father, we surrender our loved one and friends who are in need of healing to y...

   2026-09-13 Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time   Introduction:  The theme of all the readings today is Forgiveness.  Bishop Barron in a 2005 discourse uses a powerful illustration from the Life of Saint Marina the Monk that is thought to have originated among Coptic monks of the Scetis desert near Alexandria, Egypt, sometime between the 5th and early 6th centuries — which is why the story is so strongly associated with Coptic (Egyptian) monastic tradition, and why Marina/Marinos is venerated in the Coptic Orthodox Church specifically as a patron for those falsely accused. Marina was a woman who, along with her father, disguised herself as a man and joined a monastery, living as the monk "Marinos." Years later, an innkeeper's daughter became pregnant and, to protect the real father, falsely accused Marinos of being responsible. Marinos never revealed the truth — since doing so would mean exposing that "he" was actually a woman — and fell to his knees, falsel...

 2026-09-06 Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time Opening Prayer O Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation! Heavenly Father, we come before Your presence with thanksgiving and lift up our hearts to You in song. For You are a great God, a King above all kings. September 1st marked the start of the Season of Creation (September 1 – October 4), an ecumenical season inviting Christians around the world to pray and care for God's creation, rooted in Pope Francis's Laudato Si'.  In Your hands are the deep places of the earth; the heights of the mountains are Yours also. The sea is Yours, for You made it, and Your hands formed the dry land. We thank You, Lord, for the beauty of Your creation, for the life You have given us, and for sustaining us each day by Your providence. Come O faithful, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker. For You are our God, and we are the people of Your pasture, the sheep of Your...