Gathered in Love

Leader
Loving God, we remember our common call to conversion.

All
Harden not our hearts and bring us to a true conversion of life that your justice may be a light for our paths.

READING
First Essential Element of the Common Good (taken from the Catechism of the Catholic Church)

First the common good presupposes respect for the person as such. In the name of the common good, public authorities are bound to respect the fundamental and inalienable rights of the human person. Society should permit each of its members to fulfill his vocation. In particular, the common good resides in the conditions for the exercise of the natural freedoms indispensable for the development of the human vocation, such as "the right to act according to a sound norm or conscience and to safeguard...privacy, and rightful freedom also in matters of religion."

VOICES FOR THE COMMON GOOD
A lit candle is carried in and placed on the prayer table as each voice is read:

Voice 1
Dorothy Day
Change starts not in the future but in the present; not in Washington or on Wall Street but where I stand. It begins not in the isolated dramatic gesture or the petition signed but in the ordinary actions of life: how I live minute to minute, what I notice, what I respond to, the care and attention with which I listen, the way in which I respond. What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words, and deeds is like that.
Forest, Jim. "What I Learned about Justice from Dorothy Day." Salt of the Earth. July/August 1995.

Voice 2
Richard Gula
A personalistic morality with theological foundations in the image of God asks: Have we accepted our gifts, and how well do we use them to contribute to positive, life-giving relationships and to the development of the human environment? In other words, the moral implications of the Trinitarian vision of the human person as the image of God have to do with the quality of our relationships and with how our actions build up or destroy the network of relationships which make up human life.
Gula, Richard. Reason Informed by Faith

Voice 3
Acts 4:32-36
And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them. And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all. For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feel and they would be distributed to each as any had need. Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was called Barnabas by the apostles (which translated means Son of Encouragement).

Voice 4
Martin Niemoeller
In Germany, the Nazis come for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a communist. They they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the labor unionists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a labor unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I was a Protestant so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me ... by that time there was no one to speak up for anyone.
Comments from the Editor, Health and Healing, Winter 1997.