Our Lady of Grace Conference

Meeting of Thursday 21/07/2016 

Since our last meeting our Vincentians have undertaken a total of 12 visits to people in the local community, providing support and companionship to the housebound.  Members have also taken people to appointments, provided transport, helped with shopping and paid bills.

Opening prayers included a reading taken from the SVP Spiritual Reading manual “Welcome at any time”.   The members then discussed visits made, holiday grants and the minutes and other documents received from Manchester Central Council.

The meeting ended with prayers for peace in our time after the tragic events in Nice, Turkey, Syria and other parts of the world.

Adapting the prayer for world peace by Sister Joan Chittister of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie we pray:

Great God, give us the strength it takes to listen rather than to judge,

to trust rather than to fear, to try again and again to make peace even when peace eludes us.

We ask, O God, for the grace to be our best selves.
We ask for the vision to be builders of the human community rather than its destroyers.
We ask for the humility as a people to understand the fears and hopes of other peoples.

We ask for the love it takes to bequeath to the children of the world to come more than the failures of our own making.
We ask for the heart it takes to care for all the peoples of the world as well as for ourselves.

Give us the depth of soul, O God, to constrain our might, to resist the temptations of power to refuse to attack the attackable, to understand that vengeance begets violence,
and to bring peace--not war--wherever we go.

For You, O God, have been merciful to us.
For You, O God, have been patient with us.
For You, O God, have been gracious to us.

And so may we be merciful and patient and gracious and trusting with these others whom you also love.
This we ask through Jesus, the one without vengeance in his heart.
This we ask forever and ever. Amen