Have mercy on us and save us from all our sins. Heal us, restore us, renew us as children of the Father, as Your brothers and sisters, created in Your image and destined for eternal life. In Your mercy, pour out Your Holy Spirit upon us so that we might live in newness of life. Let our lives be illuminated by the Spirit, that we might see all things in the light of the Father’s love and mercy—which means to see all things as they really are.
Have mercy on the whole world! Grant that every human person will come to know you and be transformed by your love. Grant that we might live in mercy for one another, and recognize Your presence in our brothers and sisters.
Please, Lord, bring true peace to the places where war rages, and protect the poor and the weak from the many forms of violence that crush human lives and stop human hearts from beating. Have mercy on all those who are suffering, and open our eyes and our hearts to solidarity and compassion with them.
Have mercy on our world, and save us from the titanic powers we have unleashed in this new epoch—powers that have become our masters, that distort and uproot everything instead of being governed by wisdom unto the service of sustaining and building up a more beautiful, more human world.
Save us from forgetfulness of the human person, from forgetfulness of the true value of human work in all its forms, and all the ways that the person invests his or herself in the construction of human environments and institutions. Save our world from forgetting the value of essential continuity in the midst of change, and the need to foster patiently the organic growth of human institutions into a civil society that reflects the light of the Gospel and opens up to the transforming presence of You, Jesus, the Lord of all creation and the fulfillment of all that is truly human.
Help us to remember the Divine glory manifested in Your victory over sin and death, and its superabundant richness that fills and overflows all our hopes and aspirations; the newness of Your merciful love that has already begun to transfigure our lives and reveal their true meaning.
Save us from forgetting your victory, and shrinking into the narrow tunnels of our own whims and anxieties and ambitions. Do not allow us to become slaves to the idols of money, quick external success, and vain prestige. Save us from all clamorous criteria that pretend to measure the value of our lives and our work today, but will pass away tomorrow—from all the recklessness of constant arbitrary change, from our obsession with conformity to the latest trends, from the ruthless dynamic of constant social revolution that leads to the disappearance of vital human persons and communities and the devastation of the earth that has been entrusted to our stewardship.
Save us from the condition of radical loneliness and alienation, bereft of the love and trust of human connection—human communion—unaware of our own dignity, and forced into a dehumanizing conformity to whatever suffocating ideology is imposed by those in power.
Save us from all evil, and embrace us in the abyss of your most compassionate Heart.
Have mercy on us, and on the whole world.
