Friday Prayer for Peace

This is Clemens, praying before Our Lady of the Wall

at the Separation Barrier in Bethlehem

Every Friday, the sisters of the Cenacle Aotearoa pray for peace in the Middle East and throughout the world. They urge everyone to similarly set aside a time on Friday to pray with them and advocate, with Mary our Mother, for peace in the world.

Early in 2015, after a Cenacle family gathering where Justin Taylor SM spoke of “Mary the reconciling one”, the sisters decided, against the pitiless, daily images and reports in the news of life for people living with war, that they would pray every Friday for relief in the world and especially in the Middle East from war.

Sr Anne Powell noted, “Our Cenacle biblical origins are in the Book of Acts of the Apostles 1:12-14. Here, the disciples (the 'faith relatives') of Jesus are gathered in Jerusalem, in the Upper Room, together with the 'blood relatives' of Jesus. Mary is the one whose role is to enable conversations between these two different groups. She is the woman who has the capacity to mediate and reconcile what was divided as to which group or combination of people would hold the leadership in the evolving Christian community. She is the one filled with the Spirit.

Given the violence in the Middle East and our world, we hear a call to us as Cenacle Family, to pray in a specific way for reconciliation and peace with justice.”

Recently, Anne was in discussion with Br Peter Bray of Bethlehem University, who told her that he and a small group, quite independently of the Cenacle initiative, also meet each Friday at the Separation Wall in Bethlehem to pray the rosary – she was delighted to tell him that all the way over here in New Zealand, the same work is done with the same purpose.

With this in mind, we invite you to pray with the Cenacle each Friday for that intention.

Here are the prayers that are prayed every week:

Jewish Prayer for Peace

Come let us go up the mountain of

the Lord, that we may walk the

paths of the Most High.

And we shall beat our swords into ploughshares,

and our spears into pruning hooks.

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation - neither shall they learn war any more.

And none shall be afraid,

for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts has spoken.

Muslim Prayer for Peace

In the name of God,

the beneficent, the merciful.

Praise be to the Lord of the

Universe who has created us and made us into tribes and nations,

that we may know each other, not that we may despise each other.

If the enemy incline towards peace,

do thou also incline towards peace, and trust God,

for the Lord is the one that hears and knows all things.

Most Gracious are those who walk on

the Earth in humility, and when we

address them, we say "PEACE."

Pope Francis' Prayer for Peace

Let us ask Mary to help us to respond to violence,

to conflict and to war, with the power of dialogue, reconciliation and love.

She is our mother: may she help us to find peace;

all of us are her children!

Help us, Mary, to overcome this most difficult moment

and to dedicate ourselves each day to building

in every situation an authentic culture of

encounter and peace.

Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for us!