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Thursday 19 March 2009

A Bleg on the General Intercessions at NLM

Or as they often seem to me, the Particular Intercessions.
And I don't just mean the last one
As a rule, the series of intentions is to be

For the needs of the Church;
For public authorities and the salvation of the whole world;
For those burdened by any kind of difficulty;
For the local community.
Nevertheless, in a particular celebration, such as Confirmation, Marriage, or a Funeral, the series of intentions may reflect more closely the particular occasion.
No, no, we get specific with the Almighty right off the bat. Sometimes, I believe we not only tell Him our problems and concerns, but we tell Him what He ought to be doing about them.

Over at NLM there is a bleg and string of replies about the nutzoid practice of opening the Prayer of the Faithful to the floor.

I mean, maybe if they followed Robert's Rules of Order of declined to pray unless the newly-minted intercession could get a second....

I was at a lunch-time Mass in The Big City once, and, had I not been on a schedule I might have actually been amused by the hysterical harangue one woman chose to give as she took advantage of what was, seemingly, the accepted practice of the cathedral community.
She went on for a good 10 minutes, flecks of spittle flying, as she castigated her alderman, her neighbors, the news media, her daughter.... I can't remember if we ever declared solidarity with her intentions by answering "Lord, hear our prayer."

A goodly chunk of our Liturgy Committee time last night, (God so loved the world, that He sent... NOT a committee,) was devoted to the artfully composed intercessions for various Holy Week Masses.
It is not my bailiwick, so I stay out of it, (other than to ask that I please be given them in the languages in which they will be delivered ahead of time so that the cantor, choir and I can be prepared to sing the response the committee has chosen,) but I wonder why the urge to reinvent the wheel?

1.The Church,
2.Secular structures, all of humanity
3.Those in difficulty
4.The local community
5. Anything extra you want to add


I think one year at one Triduum Mass, (NOT Good Friday, when many are prescribed,) we had eight, each read in more than one language.

Fun. It was like a guessing game for the cantor, reading body language, waiting for someone else to take a breath so she could jump in... Fun, big fun.

The ones we will do this year have an elegant simplicity, and a blessed brevity.

Well done! (Would that the sanitizing of the Extraordinary Ministers hands... um, before communion? and the traffic pattern required to accomplish said, had been dealt with as neatly. That was the longest discussion of the night.)

No mention of the d-l-s of EMs and expedience...

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