Taize for June: Healing from Gun Violence

I invite all of you from various places into our chapel here at Precious Blood Renewal Center.

Thank you for joining us in prayer today, during a time in Kansas City, in the United States and around the world when there has been so much gun violence, causing death, heartache, and fear.

Our prayer service today is threefold:

• we gather together today to lament the reality of gun violence in our world, our nation, and our community;
• we gather to pray for healing and transformation;
• and we gather to commission our community to act, to bring about a time when gun violence and bloodshed is a thing of the past.

St. Paul wrote that when one part of the Body of Christ suffers, we all suffer. Whether a single life is lost or a mass shooting has taken place we suffer together, bearing the weight of one another’s holy anger and desolation. You are invited to bring all your emotions into this service. Be assured that these emotions are holy and human.

Let us prayer:

God our Father,
strengthen us with the courage and conviction
to speak out in defense of each life that is most precious to you.

Christ our Brother,
fill our hearts with your compassion
as we strive to walk with each other in our grief.

Holy Spirit enkindle within us your spirit of grace and fortitude
as we go forth from this place carrying sorrow and seeking hope.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Thank you for joining us from various places around the country for this prayer. As long as tragedies of violence persist in our society, we must commit to this intentional form of gathering. One of our strongest counters against violence is our determination to not allow such tragedies to be normalized in our lives. As we go forth, continue to remember those lost to us in these tragedies. Our faith calls us to carry our dead with us in our hearts, and we pray that they find comfort in God’s gentle embrace.

Please join us again on the first Thursday of July. We will have a hybrid Taize Service, which means that we invite you to join either in person or virtually, Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. central time, July 1. We will gather in person the large gathering space of our Renewal Center here in Liberty.

You can find more Taize prayer services here.

Photo 207009935 / Gun © Mikhail Markovskiy | Dreamstime.com.  Music used with permission under ONE LICENSE, License #A-725830. All rights reserved.

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