All Hallows Evening Prayer for Wednesday Evening (January 13, 2021)
Evening Prayer
The Service of Light
Jesus Christ is the light of the world.
A light no darkness can extinguish.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Carl P. Daw Jr.’s metrical version of the Phos hilaron, “O Light Whose Splendor Thrills and Gladdens.”
O Light whose splendor thrills and gladdens
with radiance brighter than the sun,
pure gleam of God's unending glory,
O Jesus, blest Anointed One;
as twilight hovers near at sunset,
and lamps are lit, and children nod,
in evening hymns we lift our voices
to Father, Spirit, Son: one God.
In all life's brilliant, timeless moments,
let faithful voices sing your praise,
O Son of God, our Life-bestower,
whose glory lightens endless days.
Thanksgiving
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
We praise you, O Lord our God, Ruler of the universe!
Your word brings on the dusk of evening,
your wisdom creates both night and day.
You determine the cycles of time,
arrange the succession of the seasons,
and establish the stars in their heavenly courses.
Lord of the starry hosts is your name.
Living and eternal God,
rule over us always.
Blessed be the Lord,
whose word makes evening fall.
Amen.
Psalm 141 is sung and incense may be burned.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Tony Alonso’s responsorial setting of Psalm 141, “Like Burning Incense, O Lord.”
Like burning incense, O Lord,
let my rise to you.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
let my prayer rise to you.
1 I call out to you,
Come quickly to my aid.
My song cries out to you,
O listen to me now.
I raise my hands in off’ring to you.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
2 Let me speak your truth;
watch over all I say.
Keep my thoughts on you;
let goodness rule my heart.
Keep me far from those who do harm.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
3 Never let me dine
with those who seek to harm.
Keep your holy ones
always at my side.
Plant your wisdom deep in my soul.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
4 I look to you for help;
I seek your loving eyes.
Guard my life for you;
Spare me from all wrong.
Keep all evil far from my heart.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
5 Glory be to God
and to God’s only Son,
glory to the Spirit,
three in one,
now and for ever. Amen.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Silence is kept.
Let the incense of our repentant prayer ascend before you, O Lord, and let your loving kindness descend upon us, that with purified minds we may sing your praises with the Church on earth and the whole heavenly host, and may glorify you forever and ever. Amen.
The Psalms
Open this link in a new tab to hear Christopher Walker’s setting of Psalm 27, “The Lord Is My Light, My Help, My Salvation.”
The Lord is my light, my help, my salvation.
Why should I fear? With God I fear no one.
God protects me all my life.
With the Lord what should I dread?
The Lord is my light, the Lord is my help,
The Lord is my salvation.
There is one thing I ask, of God that I long for:
All of my days with God to be dwelling.
Gazing with awe at the beauty of God,
And in wonder look on God's house.
The Lord is my light, the Lord is my help,
The Lord is my salvation.
I know I will live to see the Lord's goodness;
Now, in this life, I'm sure I will see it.
Trust in the Lord, be strong and be brave;
Wait in hope for God, our salvation.
The Lord is my light, the Lord is my help,
The Lord is my salvation
Silence is kept.
Faithful God, the shelter of all who hope in you, may those who seek your face be set free from fear and distress, and come to see your goodness in the land of the living; through Jesus Christ, our Light and our Salvation. Amen.
The Proclamation of the Word
The Reading
John 4: 39-42 The Samaritans Believe
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
Silence is kept.
May your word live in us
and bear much fruit to your glory.
The Homily
The events recorded in today’s reading from the Gospel of John follow Jesus’ conversation with the woman of Samaria at the well of Jacob outside the Samaritan city of Sychar. When we read John’s Gospel, we are apt to focus on the conversation and not give much attention to this passage. But like every passage in John’s Gospel, it is important. Otherwise, the Holy Spirit would not have included it in the gospel. While John wrote the gospel, the Holy Spirit oversaw what he wrote.
According to the Bible itself, Scripture is God-breathed, inspired by the Holy Spirit. The inspiration of the Bible is not like the inspiration of ordinary human writings although an element of the latter may be present. God may have not dictated the words of the Bible to its writers like the Angel Gabriel is supposed to have dictated the words of the Quran to the prophet Muhammed. God, however, did play an active role in its writing. For this reason, Christians can say that God is the ultimate author of the Bible, that the Bible is the Word of God, and that it contains everything which we need to know for our salvation. It does not need to be supplemented by tradition or special revelation. Indeed, the Bible is the test against which the claims of tradition and special revelation must be tried.
Our inability to grasp the importance of a passage does not mean that the passage is unimportant. While all passages of the Bible are not equally important, they are nonetheless important. Some passages play a subsidiary role. They provide details that help us understand other passages.
Passages of Scripture cannot be interpreted in isolation from each other. A longstanding principle of Bible interpretation is that we should not “expound one passage of Scripture in such a way that is disagrees with another.”
We should also not read into a passage of Scripture a meaning that cannot be clearly read out of it. The Bible is not a half-written page on which we write our own thoughts without regard to what is already written there.
Regrettably we are apt to give more weight to what we imagine is written in a passage of Scripture than to what is actually written in that passage. As a result our imaginations and not God’s Word is our primary standard of faith and practice.
What then is important about the passage in today’s reading? If we look at the passages that precede and follow this passage we find some clues. We are still at a disadvantage since, unlike John’s original audience we live in a different culture from the one in which they lived. Before we consider the clues that the surrounding passages offer, we need to fill in the cultural context—what John assumed his original audience knew and which we do not know.
In the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry Jewish men normally did not speak to women in public except perhaps to a relative or to a prostitute. This explains the surprise of Jesus’ disciples when they found him in conservation with a woman. John’s original readers would have not considered the disciples’ reaction as unusual or inappropriate. In the ancient Mediterranean world men generally did not speak with women outside the home.
Jews also did not speak to Samaritans. In 721 BCE the Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom of Israel and captured its capital, the city of Samaria. The Assyrians transplanted most of the population to their other territories as was their policy when they conquered a territory. They left some poorer Israelites to work the soil. They also transported people from their other territories to the conquered territory. These two groups intermarried. The people transported to the northern kingdom of Israel from the Assyrian’s other territories adopted the religion of the Israelites.
The Samaritans descended from these two groups of people. They built a temple on Mount Gerizim, which they believed was the original holy place of Israel from the time that Joshua conquered Canaan. They believed that their ancestors had preserved the true religion of the ancient Israelites from the time before the southern kingdom of Judaea was taken into captivity in Babylon. Their worship was based upon the Samaritan Pentateuch, a text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, written in the Samaritan alphabet and used by them as scripture.
The Samaritans also believed that the Jews’ religion had undergone a number of changes while they were captives in Babylon and as a consequence the Jews did not practice the pure religion of their forefathers.
The Jews regarded the Samaritans as a mongrel race and despised them. They burned the temple at Mount Gerizim, alleging the Samaritans had sprinkled human ashes in the temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem and desecrated the temple.
What would have surprised the John’s original audience was that the person who bore the good news of the Messiah’s coming was a woman who had had five husbands and was not married to her latest partner and that many Samaritans believed because of her testimony. The Samaritans then went to Jesus, a Jew, who accepted their hospitality and stayed with them for two days. Unbelievable! When the Samaritans heard Jesus for themselves, many more of them believed. Incredible! John has already told us at the beginning of his gospel that Jesus, when he came to his own, the Jews, they did not receive him. But here are those whom the Jews hated receiving him. “To all who received him, who believed in his name,” John has also told us, “he gave power to become children of God,” John’s original audience must have been flabbergasted!!
What are the lessons that we can learn from this passage? The first lesson is that we do not have to be perfect for God to use us as a bearer of the good news. In this passage God uses the testimony of a woman who had had five husbands and who was not married to her latest partner to bring the Samaritans of her city to faith. We do not now her full story. We do not know why she had had five husbands or why she had not married her latest partner. All we know is that she was a Samaritan and that she was drawing water from Jacob’s well at the time that Jesus stopped at the well to rest. Maybe Jesus knew that he would find her there. John does not tell us.
If God can use the testimony of the Samaritan woman at the well to lead others to faith, he can also use our testimony. We do not need the gift of evangelism to be witnesses to Jesus. All we need to do is live our lives to the God’s glory. Glorifying God with our lives means showing and sharing the love of Jesus.
The second lesson is that Jesus did not shy away from talking to the woman because she was in two categories of people with whom no respectable Jew, particularly a rabbi, would have a conversation in public. He did not shy away from accepting the hospitality of the Samaritans who came to him and talking with them for two days. He set an example for his disciples, an example for us.
We cannot confine our witness to members of our own tribe, to people like ourselves. We must share the good news with all people regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, class, education, political views, religious background, or any other distinction that sets them apart from ourselves. God chooses those whom he elects to life and keeps the knowledge of his choice from us.
I am not going to delve into the different theologies of election. I am, however, going to offer this one caution. We should not be too quick to assume that we know who are the elect. We should remember the son of the parable who, when his father asked him to go to work in the vineyard, at first refused, only to later change his mind and obey his father. We should not hold back from proclaiming the gospel to “all creatures,” to all people.
Silence is kept.
The Gospel Canticle
Open this link in a new tab to hear Carl P. Daw Jr.’s metrical version of the Magnificat.
Refrain:
My soul proclaims with wonder
the greatness of the Lord;
rejoicing in God's goodness,
my spirit is restored.
For God has looked with favor,
on one the world thought frail;
and blessings through the ages will echo
the angel's first "All hail." [Refrain]
God's mercy shields the faithful
and gives them safe retreat
to arms that turns to scatter
the proud in their conceit. [Refrain]
The mighty have been vanquished;
the lowly lifted up.
The hungry find abundance;
the rich, an empty cup. [Refrain]
To Abraham's descendants
the Lord will steadfast prove,
for God has made with Israel
a covenant of love. [Refrain]
Intercessions
Let us complete our evening prayer to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For peace from on high and our salvation, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the welfare of all churches and for the unity of the human family, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For (name), our bishop, and (name), our pastor, and for all ministers of the Gospel, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For our nation, its government, and for all who serve and protect us, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For this city (town, university, monastery…). For every city and community, and for all those living in them, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the good earth which God has given us and for the wisdom and will to conserve it, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the safety of travelers, the recovery of the sick, the care of the destitute and the release of prisoners, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For an angel of peace to guide and protect us, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For a peaceful evening and a night free from sin, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For a Christian end to our lives and for all who have fallen asleep in Christ, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
In the communion of the Holy Spirit (and of all the saints), let us commend ourselves and one another to the living God through Christ our Lord.
To you, O Lord.
Free Prayer
In silent or spontaneous prayer all bring before God the concerns of the day.
The Collect
Be present, merciful God,
and protect us through the hours of this night:
that we, who are wearied by the changes
and chances of this fleeting world,
may rest on your eternal changelessness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer is said.
And now, as our Saviour has taught us,
we are bold to say,
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory
for ever and ever.
Amen.
Dismissal
Open this link to hear Tony Alonso’s "God Sends Us Forth."
1 God sends us forth to love and serve,
make know God’s name, and live God’s word,
reflect God’s love and mirror God’s grace
till all have seen the Savior’s face.
2 Nourished by Christ with word and bread,
burning with love and Spirit-led,
sent to embrace a world in need
to make God known in word and deed.
3 Called to the ones the world ignores—
hungry and thirsty, weak and poor—
let us bear Christ, who heals all pain
and comfort those with guilt or shame.
4 So, with the cross to lead the way,
let us go forth in peace today
till every end of earth has known
the saving love of God alone.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Let us praise the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and
and lamps are lit, and children nod,
in evening hymns we lift our voices
to Father, Spirit, Son: one God.
In all life's brilliant, timeless moments,
let faithful voices sing your praise,
O Son of God, our Life-bestower,
whose glory lightens endless days.
Thanksgiving
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
We praise you, O Lord our God, Ruler of the universe!
Your word brings on the dusk of evening,
your wisdom creates both night and day.
You determine the cycles of time,
arrange the succession of the seasons,
and establish the stars in their heavenly courses.
Lord of the starry hosts is your name.
Living and eternal God,
rule over us always.
Blessed be the Lord,
whose word makes evening fall.
Amen.
Psalm 141 is sung and incense may be burned.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Tony Alonso’s responsorial setting of Psalm 141, “Like Burning Incense, O Lord.”
Like burning incense, O Lord,
let my rise to you.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
let my prayer rise to you.
1 I call out to you,
Come quickly to my aid.
My song cries out to you,
O listen to me now.
I raise my hands in off’ring to you.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
2 Let me speak your truth;
watch over all I say.
Keep my thoughts on you;
let goodness rule my heart.
Keep me far from those who do harm.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
3 Never let me dine
with those who seek to harm.
Keep your holy ones
always at my side.
Plant your wisdom deep in my soul.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
4 I look to you for help;
I seek your loving eyes.
Guard my life for you;
Spare me from all wrong.
Keep all evil far from my heart.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
5 Glory be to God
and to God’s only Son,
glory to the Spirit,
three in one,
now and for ever. Amen.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Silence is kept.
Let the incense of our repentant prayer ascend before you, O Lord, and let your loving kindness descend upon us, that with purified minds we may sing your praises with the Church on earth and the whole heavenly host, and may glorify you forever and ever. Amen.
The Psalms
Open this link in a new tab to hear Christopher Walker’s setting of Psalm 27, “The Lord Is My Light, My Help, My Salvation.”
The Lord is my light, my help, my salvation.
Why should I fear? With God I fear no one.
God protects me all my life.
With the Lord what should I dread?
The Lord is my light, the Lord is my help,
The Lord is my salvation.
There is one thing I ask, of God that I long for:
All of my days with God to be dwelling.
Gazing with awe at the beauty of God,
And in wonder look on God's house.
The Lord is my light, the Lord is my help,
The Lord is my salvation.
I know I will live to see the Lord's goodness;
Now, in this life, I'm sure I will see it.
Trust in the Lord, be strong and be brave;
Wait in hope for God, our salvation.
The Lord is my light, the Lord is my help,
The Lord is my salvation
Silence is kept.
Faithful God, the shelter of all who hope in you, may those who seek your face be set free from fear and distress, and come to see your goodness in the land of the living; through Jesus Christ, our Light and our Salvation. Amen.
The Proclamation of the Word
The Reading
John 4: 39-42 The Samaritans Believe
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
Silence is kept.
May your word live in us
and bear much fruit to your glory.
The Homily
The Testimony of One Woman
The events recorded in today’s reading from the Gospel of John follow Jesus’ conversation with the woman of Samaria at the well of Jacob outside the Samaritan city of Sychar. When we read John’s Gospel, we are apt to focus on the conversation and not give much attention to this passage. But like every passage in John’s Gospel, it is important. Otherwise, the Holy Spirit would not have included it in the gospel. While John wrote the gospel, the Holy Spirit oversaw what he wrote.
According to the Bible itself, Scripture is God-breathed, inspired by the Holy Spirit. The inspiration of the Bible is not like the inspiration of ordinary human writings although an element of the latter may be present. God may have not dictated the words of the Bible to its writers like the Angel Gabriel is supposed to have dictated the words of the Quran to the prophet Muhammed. God, however, did play an active role in its writing. For this reason, Christians can say that God is the ultimate author of the Bible, that the Bible is the Word of God, and that it contains everything which we need to know for our salvation. It does not need to be supplemented by tradition or special revelation. Indeed, the Bible is the test against which the claims of tradition and special revelation must be tried.
Our inability to grasp the importance of a passage does not mean that the passage is unimportant. While all passages of the Bible are not equally important, they are nonetheless important. Some passages play a subsidiary role. They provide details that help us understand other passages.
Passages of Scripture cannot be interpreted in isolation from each other. A longstanding principle of Bible interpretation is that we should not “expound one passage of Scripture in such a way that is disagrees with another.”
We should also not read into a passage of Scripture a meaning that cannot be clearly read out of it. The Bible is not a half-written page on which we write our own thoughts without regard to what is already written there.
Regrettably we are apt to give more weight to what we imagine is written in a passage of Scripture than to what is actually written in that passage. As a result our imaginations and not God’s Word is our primary standard of faith and practice.
What then is important about the passage in today’s reading? If we look at the passages that precede and follow this passage we find some clues. We are still at a disadvantage since, unlike John’s original audience we live in a different culture from the one in which they lived. Before we consider the clues that the surrounding passages offer, we need to fill in the cultural context—what John assumed his original audience knew and which we do not know.
In the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry Jewish men normally did not speak to women in public except perhaps to a relative or to a prostitute. This explains the surprise of Jesus’ disciples when they found him in conservation with a woman. John’s original readers would have not considered the disciples’ reaction as unusual or inappropriate. In the ancient Mediterranean world men generally did not speak with women outside the home.
Jews also did not speak to Samaritans. In 721 BCE the Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom of Israel and captured its capital, the city of Samaria. The Assyrians transplanted most of the population to their other territories as was their policy when they conquered a territory. They left some poorer Israelites to work the soil. They also transported people from their other territories to the conquered territory. These two groups intermarried. The people transported to the northern kingdom of Israel from the Assyrian’s other territories adopted the religion of the Israelites.
The Samaritans descended from these two groups of people. They built a temple on Mount Gerizim, which they believed was the original holy place of Israel from the time that Joshua conquered Canaan. They believed that their ancestors had preserved the true religion of the ancient Israelites from the time before the southern kingdom of Judaea was taken into captivity in Babylon. Their worship was based upon the Samaritan Pentateuch, a text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, written in the Samaritan alphabet and used by them as scripture.
The Samaritans also believed that the Jews’ religion had undergone a number of changes while they were captives in Babylon and as a consequence the Jews did not practice the pure religion of their forefathers.
The Jews regarded the Samaritans as a mongrel race and despised them. They burned the temple at Mount Gerizim, alleging the Samaritans had sprinkled human ashes in the temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem and desecrated the temple.
What would have surprised the John’s original audience was that the person who bore the good news of the Messiah’s coming was a woman who had had five husbands and was not married to her latest partner and that many Samaritans believed because of her testimony. The Samaritans then went to Jesus, a Jew, who accepted their hospitality and stayed with them for two days. Unbelievable! When the Samaritans heard Jesus for themselves, many more of them believed. Incredible! John has already told us at the beginning of his gospel that Jesus, when he came to his own, the Jews, they did not receive him. But here are those whom the Jews hated receiving him. “To all who received him, who believed in his name,” John has also told us, “he gave power to become children of God,” John’s original audience must have been flabbergasted!!
What are the lessons that we can learn from this passage? The first lesson is that we do not have to be perfect for God to use us as a bearer of the good news. In this passage God uses the testimony of a woman who had had five husbands and who was not married to her latest partner to bring the Samaritans of her city to faith. We do not now her full story. We do not know why she had had five husbands or why she had not married her latest partner. All we know is that she was a Samaritan and that she was drawing water from Jacob’s well at the time that Jesus stopped at the well to rest. Maybe Jesus knew that he would find her there. John does not tell us.
If God can use the testimony of the Samaritan woman at the well to lead others to faith, he can also use our testimony. We do not need the gift of evangelism to be witnesses to Jesus. All we need to do is live our lives to the God’s glory. Glorifying God with our lives means showing and sharing the love of Jesus.
The second lesson is that Jesus did not shy away from talking to the woman because she was in two categories of people with whom no respectable Jew, particularly a rabbi, would have a conversation in public. He did not shy away from accepting the hospitality of the Samaritans who came to him and talking with them for two days. He set an example for his disciples, an example for us.
We cannot confine our witness to members of our own tribe, to people like ourselves. We must share the good news with all people regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, class, education, political views, religious background, or any other distinction that sets them apart from ourselves. God chooses those whom he elects to life and keeps the knowledge of his choice from us.
I am not going to delve into the different theologies of election. I am, however, going to offer this one caution. We should not be too quick to assume that we know who are the elect. We should remember the son of the parable who, when his father asked him to go to work in the vineyard, at first refused, only to later change his mind and obey his father. We should not hold back from proclaiming the gospel to “all creatures,” to all people.
Silence is kept.
The Gospel Canticle
Open this link in a new tab to hear Carl P. Daw Jr.’s metrical version of the Magnificat.
Refrain:
My soul proclaims with wonder
the greatness of the Lord;
rejoicing in God's goodness,
my spirit is restored.
For God has looked with favor,
on one the world thought frail;
and blessings through the ages will echo
the angel's first "All hail." [Refrain]
God's mercy shields the faithful
and gives them safe retreat
to arms that turns to scatter
the proud in their conceit. [Refrain]
The mighty have been vanquished;
the lowly lifted up.
The hungry find abundance;
the rich, an empty cup. [Refrain]
To Abraham's descendants
the Lord will steadfast prove,
for God has made with Israel
a covenant of love. [Refrain]
Intercessions
Let us complete our evening prayer to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For peace from on high and our salvation, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the welfare of all churches and for the unity of the human family, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For (name), our bishop, and (name), our pastor, and for all ministers of the Gospel, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For our nation, its government, and for all who serve and protect us, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For this city (town, university, monastery…). For every city and community, and for all those living in them, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the good earth which God has given us and for the wisdom and will to conserve it, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the safety of travelers, the recovery of the sick, the care of the destitute and the release of prisoners, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For an angel of peace to guide and protect us, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For a peaceful evening and a night free from sin, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For a Christian end to our lives and for all who have fallen asleep in Christ, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
In the communion of the Holy Spirit (and of all the saints), let us commend ourselves and one another to the living God through Christ our Lord.
To you, O Lord.
Free Prayer
In silent or spontaneous prayer all bring before God the concerns of the day.
The Collect
Be present, merciful God,
and protect us through the hours of this night:
that we, who are wearied by the changes
and chances of this fleeting world,
may rest on your eternal changelessness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer is said.
And now, as our Saviour has taught us,
we are bold to say,
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory
for ever and ever.
Amen.
Dismissal
Open this link to hear Tony Alonso’s "God Sends Us Forth."
1 God sends us forth to love and serve,
make know God’s name, and live God’s word,
reflect God’s love and mirror God’s grace
till all have seen the Savior’s face.
2 Nourished by Christ with word and bread,
burning with love and Spirit-led,
sent to embrace a world in need
to make God known in word and deed.
3 Called to the ones the world ignores—
hungry and thirsty, weak and poor—
let us bear Christ, who heals all pain
and comfort those with guilt or shame.
4 So, with the cross to lead the way,
let us go forth in peace today
till every end of earth has known
the saving love of God alone.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Let us praise the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and
the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore. Amen
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