A Lord's Prayer for Justice

In the scheme of things, survival of the fittest is the rule.  In God's scheme, survival of the weakest is the rule.  God always stands on the side of the weak, and it is there -- among the weak -- that we find God.

OUR FATHER
Who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, and the abandoned with the love of a parent.
This is the great insight of the prophets and the holy ones.

WHO ART IN HEAVEN
Where everything will be reversed: where the first will be last and the last will be first

HALLOWED BE THY NAME
May we always acknowledge Your holiness, respecting that your ways are not our ways.

YOUR KINGDOM COME
Help us create a world where we will act justly, speak tenderly, and walk humbly with You and each other

YOUR WILL BE DONE
May we place our freedom in You so that the complete mutuality which characterizes Your life might flow through our hearts.

ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN
May the work of our hands reflect the infinite justice of Heaven

GIVE
Give life and love to us and help us to always see everything as a gift.  Help us to know that nothing comes to us by rights, and that we must give because we have received.

US
In the truly plural sense of "us," may we give not just to our own, but to everyone.  Including those who are very different than the narrow confines of "us."

THIS DAY
Not tomorrow but this day do we need Your grace to respond to the face of injustice and not put things off into some indefinite future.

OUR DAILY BREAD
So that each person might have enough food, clean water and clean air, adequate health care, sufficient access to education t sustain a healthy life, teach us to give from our sustenance and not just from our surplus.

AND FORGIVE US OUR TREPASSES
Forgive us our selective blindness toward our neighbor, our obsessive domination and racism.  Forgive us our capacity to consume the evening news and do nothing about it.

AS WE FORGIVE THOS WHO TREPASS AGAINST US
Give us the grace to forgive those who victimize us.  Help us to mellow our spirit, to not grow bitter with age, to forgive the imperfect spouse, parents, children, family and neighbors who injure us.

AND LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION
We fear being put to the test using this gospel scrutiny.  Do not judge us only by whether we have fed the hungry, given clothes to the naked, visited the sick, or tried to mend the systems that victimized the poor.  Give us, instead, more days to mend our ways, our hearts, and our systems.

BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Take away the blindness that prevents us from seeing who gets less in our social systems while we get more.

AMEN

Source unknown, adapted from a reprint by the Capuchin Province of St. Joseph. Jan 21 2000