A Prayer for this Significant Week

As you may know, this week holds special significance for three major world religions: It’s Holy Week, in which the Christian tradition commemorates Jesus’ death and celebrates his resurrection three days later.  Good Friday also marks the start of the Jewish festival of Passover, and the “third Abrahamic faith, Isalm, is also in the midst of Ramadan, making an unusual treble of the three great monotheistic religions celebrating major festivals on the same day,” notes one London journalist.

Whatever your belief system, similarities can be found in festivals that mark each tradition: We lean into tenants of freedom, love, and liberation. We pray, reflect and gather together. And we eat, with wild abandon.

What other commonalities mark the three Abrahamic traditions? 

Just as many of us are privileged to fill our shopping baskets with the foods our families prefer, we also think of our neighbors who do not have the privilege to load up on chocolate eggs, unleavened bread or the traditional foods of an Iftar meal for the end of a long day of fasting. 

This, of course, is not limited to the Kensington neighborhood alone, but reaches every point on the map. We cannot forget our neighbors in Ukraine and Afghanistan, in Central America and Haiti, whose migrant pathways do not always end in a meal at the end of the day. 

But as we often say, we are not without hope. 

And so, we cling to a prayer for all of us – a prayer of freedom, love and liberation. 

To the One who is Life:

Although we call you by many names,

we see that in all of these faces and spaces,

You are freedom.

You are love.

You are liberation.

For our neighbors three doors down

and to those who are three thousand miles across the world,

we ask that you grant peace to those who are plagued by war.

We beg for love to reign,

both individually and collectively.

And we plead for liberation,

that the chains of oppression would cease.

Bringer of Life, this is who you are.

Guide us in the way.

Amen.

What prayer do you pray today?