We With our St. Luke Parish Mission starting next Sunday, our Scriptures for today’s Mass give us some very helpful background for understanding the words and phrases which comprise the mission prayer.

It was devised by our St. Luke Committee working on the project.

Hopefully you already have a copy of it at home.

But if you will take the missalette in front of you and turn to the very last page, you should see stapled there a copy of our Mission Prayer.

Please reach for that and perhaps share it with the person next to you.

It starts off with the acclamation: “all praise and honor to You, dear Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

That’s a far cry from the grumbling we heard the people doing against Moses and God in today’s 1st reading as Moses and God were trying to liberate them from slavery to the Egyptians.

So the prayer starts off on a positive note: praising God for all the blessings He’s given us, instead of lamenting and complaining about our challenges.

That’s something new for some of us.  Some folks get their feet caught in the bear traps of negativity and just can’t seem to focus on what good, providential blessings God is giving them.

The opening phrase also acknowledges God as a trinity of three persons, Not three functions.

God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Not just the functioning Creator, Savior, and Sanctifier.

That’s important, as we acknowledge the Mission theme of next week: “Come to Me.”  We’re coming to persons, not just functions.

The prayer goes on - if you’ll glance at the copy stapled to the last page of the missalette - to say that we come to You as a community.

That’s not a political statement.  That refers to the fact that together we are baptized into the one family of God.

And we come to worship, as people do naturally recognize and affirm that God is God and loves us more than we ever deserve, and so we thank Him with our worship.

The word “welcome” is next used in our Mission Prayer.

We welcome our loved ones, our friends and neighbors, business associates, all time and again as a gesture of hospitality.

Just so, we need to re-welcome God into our lives just as sincerely and as often as we do other people important to us.  But too often we get so busy that we just rush by one another without a charitable recognition of the other.

Next we express a remorse and sorrow for having not kept God #1 in our lives because pridefully we think we can do it all ourselves.  And deep down, we know we can’t.

And so this part of the prayer is a special act of humility before the good God who picks up the slack where our own human efforts leave off.

Then our prayer touches on the hope expressed in the second reading;:

That hope will not disappoint!

And so we hope this Parish Mission will somehow, by God’s grace, help us to overcome bias, prejudice, bigotry, and come to see every other human being as one and equal with each other in the family of God.

And that’s not just about us here in the parish family.

It starts here, but extends to all those with whom we live, and work, and associate each day of every week.

Just like the Samaritan woman at the well in today’s gospel, who found a new focus and purpose in life from her relatively brief contact with Jesus, we hope you will find that same new focus this Lent in our Parish Mission that starts a week from today.

Please make plans to be with us.

So, Thank you.