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Liturgy of Lament for the Broken Body of Christ

In 2022, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse, known as Stephen, approached Sr. Christine Schenk, CSJ, then Executive Director of Future Church. He had prepared a service of healing for victims of clergy sexual abuse and was seeking her assistance to find a church where such a service could be held. The service included scripture, songs and hymns written specifically for the service, and a suggestion for a laying on of hands.

This download includes the outline/order of worship, a sample preaching guide, sample worship aid, and a diagram of the worship space with indications of where the various ministers were located for various parts of the service in order to help you envision your own.

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A 2016 adaptation of this prayer can be found here.

Dorothy Day

Thanks to this woman known as ‘the conscience of American Catholicism’ many Catholics now know the power of nonviolent resistance and direct action in opposing injustice. What is less well known is that her conversion happened as a result of the birth of her child: “No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I often felt after the birth of my child. With this came the need to worship, to adore. I came to know God.”

Essay by Stephen Krupa, SJ;  Prayer by Christine Schenk, CSJ

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Clare of Assisi

Clare Offreduccuo (1193 -1253) was born into a wealthy aristocratic family in Assisi. An attractive noblewoman she was expected to improve the fortune of her family by marrying into one of even greater influence. Clare instead “gave the world a bill of divorce.” At age 18 she set forth on a radical path that most women of her position dared not choose.

Essay and Prayer by Sr. Francis Therese Woznicki SSJ-TOSF

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Catherine of Siena

Catherine of Siena, a medieval saint and Doctor of the Church, was first and foremost an authentic human being who responded to the needs of the church and the world around her. A lay third order Dominican, she lived in her own home amid an atmosphere of exuberant lay spiritual­ity; of emotional preaching by the newly founded mendi­cants, the Franciscans and Dominicans; at a time when love and service of the neighbor were newly emerging as Christian values. Her Letters, her re­corded Prayers, and her major testament, The Dialogue, reveal a woman motivated by a passionate relationship with God, pursuing ever deepening self­knowledge.

Essay Catherine M. Mesade; Prayer by Laurel Jurecki

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Angela Merici

Angela Merici lived in Renaissance Italy, a turbulent time of civil wars and widespread corruption in so­cial, political and religious institutions. The role of women was subordinate; their choice was either marriage or the cloister, controlled by “a husband or a wall.” Angela sought neither. She envisioned a new, independent expres­sion of religious commit­ment for women. Her Com­pany of Saint Ursula granted women the freedom to live consecrated lives while liv­ing in the world, bound only by the love of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Essay and prayer by Dorothy Janusko Valerian

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Therese of Lisieux

Therese of Lisieux called herself a “little flower.” Her flowery language and her child-like images have sometimes invited misunderstanding. She was an enormously strong woman and a profound interpreter of the contemplative life. Without the aid of male spiritual directors or copious male­authored theologies, trusting in her own experi­ence, she found her wholeness in Jesus and in her single-hearted abandon to Love, revealed the one thing necessary to know, God’s unconditional love for us. Paradoxically, she has managed “all the vo­cations.” Though she relinquished the vocation of the priest out of humility, she sounds as though she had the power to become one. She never left home, but is the patron saint of the missions, a doctor of the church, an apostle who travels the world, a prophet who speaks God’s word, a war­rior who fought against the unpardonable sin, and a saint whose death was as painful as any martyr­dom she imagined. If the “spirit groans within us,” it sang within her.

Essay by Mary Jo Weaver and Prayer by Laurel Jurecki

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Thea Bowman

From the beginning of her teaching career until the end of her public minisny, mu­sic was the substance of Thea Bowman’s wit­ness to the world. Although her formal re­search for her doctoral degree dealt with Ren­aissance literature and philosophy, her endur­ing contribution to scholarship within the Ro­man Catholic Church and within the fields of Africana Studies, is her reliance on the wisdom and redemptive power of Black Sacred Song to teach, inspire, correct, challenge and transform all who would seek to “walk together” on the journey from here to heaven. At the time of her last great public perform­ance – at the 1989 summer meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops – she began her remarks by singing, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” That song was her prophetic challenge to the rhetorical question, “what does it mean to be Black and Catholic?”

Essay and Prayer by Joseph A. Brown, SJ

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The Beguines

The witness of the Beguines of Northeastern Europe is the wit­ness of a move­ment of women. In fact some scholars have called the growth of Beguine spirituality, which began in the 12th century and retains some vestiges to this day, “the first women’s movement.” Individual Beguines such as Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechtilde of Magdeburg and Marie D’Oignies gained promi­nence for their scholar­ship, spiritual leadership and ecstatic experiences of God. More striking perhaps is the fact that the Beguine movement provided a way for many European Chris­tian women, poor and wealthy alike, to re­spond to the signs of their times and to their own spiritual needs and calling. They did so in a way that both shaped and threatened the structures that governed women’s religious lives. It was a movement that reflected the growing need among lay people for lives of spiritual meaning and religious action, as well as self-determination. In its far-reaching in­fluence and its struggle can be seen the move­ment of God’s own Spirit.

Essay and Prayer by Barbara Ballenger

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