Taizé for January: Peace, A Dream Made Real

Welcome to Precious Blood Renewal Center in Liberty, Missouri, for this January Taize Prayer Service. Thank you, the many people who are joining us by computer, tablet, and other devices as we pray and sing together at the beginning of the new calendar year 2021.

Some of us have left 2020 with gratitude and we have entered into 2021 with hopeful anticipation.

There are still struggles, but many of us begin this new year on a note of hope. A vaccine against the coronavirus is becoming available. A new administration is about to be inaugurated for our country. We begin this new year on a note of hope.

January 1 has been declared as a Day of Prayer for World Peace by recent popes, so we include that intention in today’s prayer. There is tension in our country, tension in our world; so, we pray together for peace.

On the world peace day in 2013, Pope Benedict XVI wrote:

Peace is not a dream or something utopian; it is possible.

Our gaze needs to go deeper, beneath superficial appearances and phenomena, to discern a positive reality which exists in human hearts, since every man and woman has been created in the image of God and is called to grow and contribute to the building of a new world.

With all that in mind, we ask God’s blessing upon ourselves and our world.

Let Us Pray

Remember us, O God.

From age to age be our comforter.
You have given us the wonder of time,
blessings in days and nights, seasons and years.

We mark ends and we make beginnings, and in all,
we praise you God for the grace
and mercy that fill our days

Bless your children at the turning of the year
and fill the months ahead with the bright hope
that is ours in the coming of Christ

You are our God, living and reigning, forever and ever.

+Amen

Image above is “Peaceable Kingdom” by Edward Hicks, 1780-1849, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

We’d Like to Hear From You!

We’d like to know what you think about this article. Send us a comment using the form below. Do you have a suggestion? Is there something you want to learn more about? Send us a note.