Friday Morning Prayer for 2006-03-10

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Good Morning, Mr Kwok, Teachers and Students!
You may all know that we have already begun the season of Lent. LENT. Lent is the forty days before Easter. Every morning each class receives a donation box. We all make a donation of Lent.
Lent is a period in which Christians prepare themselves to celebrate Easter, which is at the end of these forty days. Lent is the past participle for the word TO LEND. But here, LENT has a different meaning. The original meaning of the word LENT comes from an old English word, Lente, meaning Spring. In Latin, Lent is simply “The Forty Days”, which is Quadregesima, quite a long word. In Chinese, we simply call it the Period of Four Ten-days（四旬期）.
So what do we do during Lent? Every morning, we pass around a donation box to collect money. Most Catholic schools would do the same thing. Some churches would even give each Catholic their own personal donation box. We give money to the needy as a way of being merciful. MERCY. Mercy means kindness so being merciful is being kind. When we help others, we are being merciful.
We do works of mercy and show kindness because we want to be like God who is merciful and kind. That’s why in the song on page 17, we call God – the God of mercy. The word mercy is very useful. If you have forgotten to bring your homework and when your teacher wants to punish you, you can ask for MERCY. That means you want the teacher to forgive you. Is your teacher going to forgive you for all your big and little mistakes? Well, I wish you luck on that one. However, God always forgives us because He is God of mercy.
So let us sing the song on page 17, we will first sing verse one and then, we will pray the Our Father together, asking God for His mercy. Let’s pray that all of us would become more and more merciful towards each other in this season of Lent.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
God of mercy and compassion….
Our Father in heaven, Holy be your Name, Your kingdom come,
Your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Do not bring us to the test but deliver us from evil. Amen.
St Joseph, pray for us. St Francis, pray for us.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Brother William OFM