Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A *Alternate* First Reading and Responsorial Psalm

I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labors and sufferings of the world.

Over there, on the horizon, the sun has touched with light the outermost fringe of the eastern sky.
Once again, beneath this moving sheet of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles, and once again begins its fearful travail.
I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labor.
Into my chalice, I shall pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth’s fruits.

My paten and my chalice are the depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from every corner of the earth and converge upon the Spirit. Grant me the remembrance and the mystic presence of all those whom light is now awakening to the new day.

I thank you, my God, for having in a thousand different ways led my eyes to discover the immense simplicity of things. I have been brought to the point where I can no longer see anything, nor any longer breathe, outside that milieu in which all is made one.

The words of Pierre Teilhard De Chardin.

Response (sung):

Make me an instrument of Thy peace
As I let go, as I release
Make me an instrument, humble and free
As I awaken the living light in me                 
Ooooh…………as I awaken the living light in me.   (Music from Kurt Van Sickle)

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so longs my soul for You, O Beloved.
My soul thirsts for the Beloved, for the living Water.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
My hope is in the Beloved, my strength and joy,
O my soul, open the door to Love!                                          (Psalms for Praying by Nan C. Merrill)

R:
Make me an instrument of Thy peace
As I let go, as I release
Make me an instrument, humble and free
As I awaken the living light in me                 
Ooooh…………as I awaken the living light in me.

Lord, lock me up in the deepest depths of Your heart;
And then, holding me there,
Burn me, purify me, set me on fire, sublimate me,
Till I become utterly what You would have me be,
Through the utter annihilation of my ego.                             (Mass on the World by Teilhard de Chardin)

R:
Make me an instrument of Thy peace
As I let go, as I release
Make me an instrument, humble and free
As I awaken the living light in me
Ooooh…………as I awaken the living light in me.