Wednesday Night Emmaus Liturgy

Choose to walk with God

January 21, 2004

All:O God, the King eternal, whose light divides the day from the night and turns the shadow of death into the morning: Drive far from us all wrong desires, incline our hearts to keep your law, and guide our feet into the way of peace; that having done your will with cheerfulness during the day, we may, when night comes, rejoice to give your thanks; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Leader:I have a choice to make a difference

or miss an opportunity.

I have a choice to speak a loving word

or a word that hurts.

I have a choice to build a relationship or to destroy it.

I have a choice to be content or to complain.

I have a choice to show compassion or to judge.

I have a choice to love or to hate.

I have a choice to bless or to curse.

I have a choice to avoid temptation or to yield to it.

I have a choice to understand or to condemn.

I have a choice of life in the Cross or death.

Beverly Courrege

All:I have set before you life and death,

Blessing and cursing: therefore choose life,

that both thou and thy seed may live.

Deuteronomy 30:19

Member 1I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost…. I am helpless.

It isn’t my falt.

It takes forever to find a way out.

2.

Member 2.I walk down the same street.

There is a hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.

I fall in, again.

I can’t believe I’m in the same place.

But it isn’t my falt.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Member 3I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in….it’s a habit…but,

My eyes are open.

I know where I am.

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Member 4.I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

Member 5.I walk down another street.

All:I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comesto the Father except through me.

John 14:6

Member 6.Make no mistake: if He rose at allit was as His body;if the cells' dissolution did notreverse,the molecules reknit,the amino acids rekindle,the Church will fall.

Member 7. It was not as the flowers,
each soft spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the
mouths and fuddled eyes of
the eleven apostles;
it was His flesh: ours.

Member 8.The same hinged thumbs
and toes,
the same valved heart
that - pierced - died, withered,
paused and then regathered
out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Member 9.Let us not mock God with
metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping,
transcendence,
making of the event a parable,
a sign painted in the faded
credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

From 'Seven Stanzas at Easter' by John Updike.

All:I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness,

but will have the light of life.

John 8:12

All Join hands in a circle for intercessory prayers:

Closing Prayer:

ALL:Lord,
my God,
my one hope,
hear me,
that I be not unwilling, through weariness,
to seek you,
but that I may always ardently seek your face.

Give me the strength to seek,
since you have made me in order to find you,
and have given me the hope of finding you more and more.

My strength and my weakness are known to you:
preserve the one
and heal the other.

My knowledge and my ignorance are known to you:
where you have opened to me,
receive me as I enter;
where you have closed to me,
open to me as I knock.

May I remember you,
understand you,
love you.

Increase these things in me
until you have wholly renewed me.

St Augustine

LEADER:The divine Spirit dwells in us.

ALL:Thanks be to God.