Words of comfort

With the best will in the world it is easy to gloss over, or be distracted or unprepared for, some of the prayers at Mass that carry rich meaning but often no unnoticed. I’m thinking of the entrance antiphon, the Collect, responsorial psalm and others.

In this time of great trial for people throughout the world, God is speaking to us, and we to him, in these prayers. We start Mass today by pleading to God to save us and defend our cause.

In the Collect, we, appropriately, pray: “O God, who have prepared fitting helps for us in our weakness, we pray that we may receive their healing effects with joy.”

In the Gospel acclamation, we praise God and are reminded that we do not live on bread alone but from the word of God.

And in the prayer after Communion, we pray that, as we pass from old to new, we may be renewed in holiness.

At this time in the history of the world, we are all in need of God’s defence, healing and renewal as we pass from what we are familiar with into the great unknown of the new that only God knows. It is comforting, if we have the ears to hear, that the Lord, as the psalmist tells us, is “near to broken hearts” and ready to rescue us from our trials.