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1 Women s Prayer Service for Vocations 5 Opening Song: Select a song of Call familiar to the community, eg. You Are Mine by David Haas, GIA Publications, Inc. Opening Prayer: In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Heavenly Father, you created each of us in your image and likeness and call us to love like you. As women, you created us to bear within our bodies your capacity for creation both physically in the conception and bearing of children and spiritually in giving life to all whom we meet. You gave us our perfect model of your love in Mary, Our Blessed Mother and we pray that we may more fully emulate her example. It is love that leads to holiness and happiness. Holiness always involves a complete self-gift living one s life for you - and happiness is living the fulfillment of your plan for our lives. As we listen to your Word, please help us to better hear, understand and commit to your call in our lives and the lives of others. If your call is to love in the vocation of marriage and especially if our husbands are deacons help us to be more loving wives and mothers nourishing our spouses and children and also nourishing all others we meet in their response to your call. If your call is to give ourselves to love in the community as a religious sister, help us to more fully embrace all whom we meet. If your call is to live our lives as a single, please help us to lead chaste lives that give you glory and may we find the love we need in the friendships we nourish and enjoy. Please help us to nourish the call of others in our community whether to the priesthood, diaconate, religious life, marriage or single life. Please help each of us to live our call for the fullness of life. This we pray through Christ Our Lord. Amen. Page 22

2 Presider: Our First Reading is one of the most beautiful Bible stories of a woman responding to God s call to love in the most self-less way. Ruth gave herself to the care of her mother-in-law and God abundantly blessed her to be an ancestress of David and therefore of Jesus. First Reading: Ru uth 1: 6 19 She and her daughters-in-law then prepared to go back from the plateau of Moab because word had reached her theree that the LORD had seen to his people s needs and given them food. She and her two daughters-in-law to the land of left the place where they had been living. On the road back Judah, Naomi said to her daughters-in-law, Go back, each of you to your mother s house. May the LORD show you the same kindness as you have shown to the deceased and to me. May the LORD guide each of you to find a husband and a home in which you will be at rest. She kissed them good- your bye, but they wept aloud, crying, No! We will go back with you, to people. Naomi replied, Go back, my daughters. Why come with me? Have I other sons in my womb who could become your husbands? Go, my daughters, for I am too old to marry again. Even if I had any such hope, or if tonight I had a husband and were to bear sons, would you wait for them and deprive yourselves of husbands until those sons grew up? No, my daughters, my lot is too bitter for you, because the LORD has extendedd his hand against me. Again they wept aloud; then Orpah kissed her mother- in-law good-bye, but Ruth clung to her. See now, she said, your sister-in-layour sister-in-law! But Ruth said, Do not press me to go back and abandon has gone back to her people and her god. Go back after you! Wherever you go I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God, my God. Where you die I will die, and there be buried. May the LORD do thus to me, and more, if even death separates me from you! Naomi then ceased to urge her, for she saw she was determined to go with her. Page 23

3 So they went on together until they reached Bethlehem. On their arrival there, the whole town was excited about them, and the women asked: Can this be Naomi? Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 95 may be sung. eg. If Today You Hear God s Voice by David Haas, GIA Publications, Inc. Presider: Our Lord gave each us his Holy Spirit to be his presencee within us. And it is evident that we are listening to and responding to his Holy Spirit by the fruits of our behavior and lives. Second Reading: : Galatians 5: In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ [Jesus] have crucified their flesh with its passionss and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit. Presider: Each of us is called to be attentive and responsive to perfect model, so we look to her example. God s call and Mary is our Gospel : Luke 1: In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. But Mary said to the angel, How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?? And the angel said to her in reply, The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God. Mary said, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word. Then the angel departed from her. Page 24

4 Presider: It never ceases to amaze the profound n-breaking of God into our lives and the humility and immediacy with which Mary surrendered to God s call/god s plan for her life. She was called to marriage and motherhood in the most unique way as a virgin. It was the power of the Holy Spirit that allowed all this to happen to inspire each of us to call upon the Holy Spirit to fill us to overflowing with spiritual gifts as well so that the fruits of the Holy Spirit will shine in every moment, every relationship, every task of every day. Our deepest and most profound universal call is thatt our lives bear fruit in the vocations of either marriage; or as a single or consecrated religious. We have with us today witnesses to explain how they are fulfilling God s call in their lives and how women have played a significant role initially and on-going. Witnesses: (As time and availability permits it would be good to have a witness from each vocation but at a minimum a married couple who can also include a few statements regardingg their single state priorr to marriage and either a priest, deacon or religious who also can include a few comments on his/her single state prior to ordination/vows.) Prayers of the Faithful: Presider: Let us bring our prayers of petition to our heavenly Father. For the gift of Mary, Our Blessed Mother to show us the way as women in Christ that we may inspired to follow her example and assist others to say Yes to God s call. For this we pray ar us, Oh Lord. All: Hea For the gift of our womanhood, that we may always live lives of chaste dignity and respect giving glory to God in the very being of ourselves and that we may always nurture other women to do the same. For this we pray For our Church all the people of God that we may listen with our hearts and lead holy lives of love in answer to God s call. For this we pray For our Holy Father - Pope Francis, all our bishops, priests, deacons, and religious that their lives of consecrated love of God may as Christ s example lead each and all of us to lives of self- less love and service to one another. For this we pray be Page 25

5 For married couples and especially those of us who are wives - who have answered God s call to unite as one flesh that spouses love of one another may always witness to their selfless gift to God - their openness to bear the fruit of children as well as their lives of self-lesss love in service to others. For this we pray For parents especially those of us who are mothers and grandmothers - that all may truly cherish and nurture the children God has gifted them to bring into being and raise for God s purposes/mission. For this we pray For priests that their selfless lives of love as Christ loved may always bring God s grace to our Church and our world. For this we pray For deacons and their families especially those of us that are married to deacons, that they may always be supported in their call to serve Gods people. For this we pray For religious men and women - who give their lives in loving God, praying for the world and serving Christ in all those in need. For this we pray For single men and women who also give their lives in love and service to God, but without the companionship of spouse or formal community, that they may be graced with true friendships. For this we pray For each of us that we may recognize the vocation that God has or is calling us to and that we more fully commit to living out that vocation in selfless gift to God; that we may be aware of and nurture the call of others our spouses, our children and one another in our community to more selflessly answer God s call to live out their own vocation. For this we pray Presider: Thank you to the witnesses and those who have providedd this prayerr opportunity. Encourage each and all to be more truly open and receptive to the call of the Holy Spirit. That each and all become encouragers of the call of God in other s lives. Page 26

6 Closing Prayer: All Saint John Paul II World Youth Day 2000 It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness thatt will not let you settlee for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesuss who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal. Copyright Libreria Editrice Vaticana Closing Song: Select a song of Call familiar to the community, eg. Here I Am, Lord by Dan Schutte, OCP Publications. Pray for Vocations Page 27