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Prayers for Healing
Renew Prayer for Healing
Loving God and Father,
in the light of so much suffering
we come before you as your hurting people
in need of healing.
Knowing we are
a Church of saints and sinners,
we acknowledge our own sinfulness
and ask forgiveness for the times we have injured or neglected
others.
Knowing we are
called to holiness,
we trust you to lead us on our journey to be a renewed Church,
for which you all things are possible.
Christ Jesus,
walk among us.
Embrace us with your healing. Grace us to seek
reconciliation.
Empower us to love as you love,
because healing, reconciliation and love
are beyond our human capacity alone.
Spirit of God,
seize our hearts.
Awaken us to gratitude and newness of life. Amen.
Renew
International
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A Prayer of Healing
God of endless love, ever caring, ever strong:
your only Son was delivered into the hands of the wicked
yet healed us by the blood of his cross.
May the gentle Jesus, join to his own suffering,
the pains of those abused by priests who have betrayed your
love,
and servants of your Church, whose sin has brought us shame.
May Christ hear the cries of those abused,
may he quell their restless fears with faith in your
protection,
their doubt, with confidence in your love,
and all rage with trust in your healing mercy
Grant all Shepherds of his Church the compassion to protect his
lambs,
the strength to guide his flock, and the wisdom to model their
lives
on Christ, the Good Shepherd.
God of justice and compassion, protect all children from abuse,
and deliver us from hate.
May we seek only justice and truth, and trust in your unending
mercy.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
United States
Conference of Bishops
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Prayer for Healing for Victims of Abuse
Praise to you, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
source of all consolation and hope.
By your Son's dying and rising He remains our light in every
darkness,
our strength in every weakness.
Be the refuge and guardian of all who suffer from abuse and
violence.
Comfort them and send healing for their wounds of body, soul and
spirit.
Rescue them from bitterness and shame
and refresh them with your
love.
Heal the brokenness in all victims of abuse
and revive the
spirits of all who lament this sin.
Help us to follow Jesus in drawing good from evil, life from
death.
Make us one with you in your love for justice
as we deepen our respect for the dignity of every human life.
Giver of peace, make us one in celebrating your praise,
both now and for ever.
Amen.
+ John F. Kinney, Bishop of Saint Cloud, MN
© 2002 Diocese of St. Cloud. All rights reserved.
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General Intercession for Good Friday
Let us pray for the victims of sexual abuse,
in particular for children who were abused by clergy;
that God may grant to those whose innocence was violated
the grace of healing and new life.
(Silent prayer)
Almighty and eternal God,
be the refuge and guardian
of all who suffer from abuse and violence.
Heal their wounds of body, soul and spirit;
rescue them from shame and guilt;
and refresh them with your love.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
• • •
A
Public Confession
The following is the text of a confession read on March 31, 2010
in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna by Cardinal Christoph
Schönborn and Catholic theologian Veronica Prüller-Jagenteuful.
The confession was proclaimed in the context of a liturgy of
lamentation and penance held in response to many cases of
physical and sexual abuse which were revealed in Austria and
elsewhere in recent weeks.
Triune God, you led our mothers and fathers out of slavery into
freedom and taught them the 10 commandments of a good life. You
became flesh in Jesus Christ and showed us that love is the
fundamental rule in all things. You are with us as Holy Spirit
to lead us.
And yet we become sinful before you and before one another.
Enormous sin has been revealed in these weeks. It is the sin of
the individual. It is the sin permeating structures, models of
acting, and models of thinking. It is the sin of not offering
help and not daring to speak up.
The responsibility for this concerns us as members of the church
in widely varying degrees. And yet, we are your people together
and we stand in common responsibility. And so we confess to you
and to one another our sin:
We confess that we have not followed God alone, but rather have
followed the gods of our need for lording over and superiority.
Some of us have, precisely in that sense, abused others, even
children.
We confess that we have obscured and betrayed the name of God
which means love.
Some of us have preached the love of God and yet have done evil
to our charges.
We confess that we have not kept holy and not sufficiently
valued the sacraments and other times and places of special
encounter with God.
Some of us have used these as opportunity for assault.
We confess that we have not maintained between adults and
children relationships of unconditional respect for the other.
Some of us have used and destroyed the trust of children.
We confess that we have not takes seriously the destruction of
life and happiness in life, that we have not understood the
destruction and we have trivialized it.
Some of us have become guilty of the inner murder of other
people.
We confess that we have not cherished bodiliness and have failed
in the task of rightly living out our sexuality.
Some of us have done sexual violence.
We confess that we have wanted to possess youth, beauty, and
vitality for ourselves.
Some of us have stolen childhood from boys and girls and robbed
them of the capability of living out successful relationships.
We confess that we did not wish to acknowledge the reality, that
we covered up and bore false witness.
Some of us have been able thereby to further delude ourselves
and others and continue the criminality.
We confess that we have wished to have control over others and
possess them.
Some of us have thereby usurped the bodies of the weakest ones.
We confess that we craved security, calm, power, and reputation.
For some of us the Church’s appearance of sinlessness was more
important than anything else.
We, the People of God, his Church, bear this sin with one
another.
We confess this sin to those many people whom we as Church and
some of us as particular individuals have sinned against.
We confess this sin to one another, for the Church has become
sinful in its members.
We confess our sin to God.
We are ready to take on our responsibility for the past and the
present, individually and communally. We are ready to renew our
models of thinking and acting according to the Spirit of Jesus
and to collaborate in the healing of wounds. We place ourselves
as Church before the judgment of Christ.
O
Christ, you said that you have taken our sin upon you. And yet
we implore you today: Leave some of it for us. Help us not to
brush it away too quickly, and make us ready to take it on: each
one for individual sin and all of us together for common sin.
And then give us hope in judgment: hope for new freedom coming
from truth, and for that forgiveness for which we have no claim.
Amen
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Created 05.07 • Last Update 06.27.11
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