Prayers for Aurora with Office of the Dead

Everything else on the blog today was prepared before I heard the horrific news about the mass shooting in Aurora. I thought, "What has the world come to?"

And then I realized I have had to think that too many times in the past few years.

From Joseph Susanka comes the expression of our heavy hearts:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

So I turn to what I know and can do for those broken hearts and broken lives in Aurora. Prayer.

Via The Anchoress comes the prayer that helps soothe my heart a little and that I hope helps those afflicted:

Have mercy on them O Lord, and make them welcome into your company; in your kindness console hearts broken; bind up the wounds inflicted upon our bodies, minds and spirits, for you are the Source of all healing and all love.

On the cross, you showed mercy; let your example become alive to us in these days of heavy grief, that our pain may not be fed and grown on the poison of suspicion, exploitation, and vengeance — to which our hearts too quickly turn, and by which we are further weakened — but that it may, rather, be bathed in your light of revelation and truth, and soothed by the touch of your all-embracing, all-conciliating peace.

In Christ’s name, we pray.