Morning Prayer: Wednesday 17 December 2014

December 17, 2014

Morning Prayer: Wednesday after Third Sunday of Advent

Anticipation

O Lord, open our lips:

and our mouth shall proclaim your praise.

Glory to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit;*

as it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be for ever.
Amen.

PSALMODY

Antiphon: Show your servants your works* and your splendour to their children.
(Ps. 90.16)

Opening

VENITE

1 O come let us sing out to the Lord,*
let us shout in triumph to the rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before his face with thanksgiving*
and cry out to him joyfully in psalms.
3 For the Lord is a great God,*
and a great king above all gods.
4 In his hands are the depths of the earth,*
and the peaks of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea is his and he made it;*
his hands moulded dry land.
6 Come let us worship and bow down,*
and kneel before the Lord our maker.
7 For he himself is our God;*
we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
8 Today if only you would hear his voice:*
‘Do not harden your hearts as Israel did in the wilderness;
9 when your fathers tested me;*
put me to proof though they had seen my works.
10 Of whom I swore in my wrath:*
“They shall not enter my rest.”’

Glory to the Father… (may be said by all)

or from Psalm 90

1 Lord, you have been our refuge*
from one generation to another.

2 Before the mountains were brought forth,
or the land and the earth were born,*
from age to age you are God.

3 Satisfy us by your loving-kindness in the morning;*
so shall we rejoice and be glad all the days of our life.

4 Make us glad by the measure of the days that you afflicted us*
and the years in which we suffered adversity.

Glory to the Father…

or a suitable hymn.

Psalm 44

1 We have heard with our ears, O God,
our forefathers have told us,*
the deeds you did in their days, in the days of old.

2 How with your hand you drove the peoples out
and planted our forefathers in the land;*
how you destroyed nations and made your people flourish.
3 For they did not take the land by their sword,
nor did their arm win the victory for them;*
but your right hand, your arm, and the light of your countenance,
because you favoured them.

4 You are my King and my God;*
you command victories for Jacob.

5 Through you we pushed back our adversaries;*
through your name we trampled on those who
rose up against us.

6 For I do not rely on my bow,*
and my sword does not give me the victory.

7 Surely, you gave us victory over our adversaries*
and put those who hate us to shame.

8 Every day we gloried in God,*
and we will praise your name for ever.

9 Nevertheless, you have rejected and humbled us*
and do not go forth with our armies.

10 You have made us fall back before our adversary,*
and our enemies have plundered us.

11 You have made us like sheep to be eaten*
and have scattered us among the nations.

12 You are selling your people for a trifle*
and are making no profit on the sale of them.

13 You have made us the scorn of our neighbours,*
a mockery and derision to those around us.

14 You have made us a byword among the nations,*
a laughing-stock among the peoples.

15 My humiliation is daily before me,*
and shame has covered my face ;

16 Because of the taunts of the mockers and blasphemers,*
because of the enemy and avenger.

17 All this has come upon us;
yet we have not forgotten you,*
nor have we betrayed your covenant.

18 Our heart never turned back,*
nor did our footsteps stray from your path;

19 Though you thrust us down into a place of misery,*
and covered us over with deep darkness.

20 If we have forgotten the name of our God,*
or stretched out our hands to some strange god,

21 Will not God find it out?*
for he knows the secrets of the heart.

22 Indeed, for your sake we are killed all the day long;*
we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

23 Awake, O Lord! why are you sleeping?*
Arise! do not reject us for ever.

24 Why have you hidden your face*
and forgotten our affliction and oppression?

25 We sink down into the dust;*
our body cleaves to the ground.

26 Rise up, and help us,*
and save us, for the sake of your steadfast love.

 Almighty God, your whole creation declares your glory. May we perceive you in all your works and live in the light of your righteousness, through him who is the light of the world, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Conclusion (Isaiah 2.2-5)

1 In days to come, the mountain where the Lord dwells*
will be lifted high above all the mountains
and raised above the hills.
2 All the nations will flock to it;*
countless peoples will come to it.
3 And they will say, Come let us go to the mountain of the Lord,*
to the temple of the God of Jacob,
4. who will teach us his ways,*
and we will walk in his paths;
5. who will sit in judgement over the nations;*
be arbiter among many peoples.
6. They will beat their swords into ploughshares,*
and their spears into sickles;
7. nation shall not lift up sword against nation,*
nor ever again prepare for war.
8. O people of Jacob come,*
let us walk in the light of the Lord.

Glory to the Father…

Antiphon: Show your servants your works,
and your splendour to their children.

READING(S)

Isaiah 9:8-17

The Lord sent a word against Jacob,
and it fell on Israel;
and all the people knew it—
Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria—
but in pride and arrogance of heart they said:
‘The bricks have fallen,
but we will build with dressed stones;
the sycomores have been cut down,
but we will put cedars in their place.’
So the Lord raised adversaries against them,
and stirred up their enemies,
the Arameans in the east and the Philistines in the west,
and they devoured Israel with open mouth.
For all this, his anger has not turned away;
his hand is stretched out still.

The people did not turn to him who struck them,
or seek the Lord of hosts.
So the Lord cut off from Israel head and tail,
palm branch and reed in one day—
elders and dignitaries are the head,
and prophets who teach lies are the tail;
for those who led this people led them astray,
and those who were led by them were left in confusion.
That is why the Lord did not have pity on their young people,
or compassion on their orphans and widows;
for everyone was godless and an evildoer,
and every mouth spoke folly.
For all this, his anger has not turned away;
his hand is stretched out still.

2 Peter 2:1-10a

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Even so, many will follow their licentious ways, and because of these teachers the way of truth will be maligned. And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgement; and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgement —especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.

Bold and wilful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones,

Silence

Response (Ps. 96.10)

Tell it out among the nations: ‘The Lord is King!’
Tell it out among the nations: ‘The Lord is King!’
He will judge the peoples with equity.
‘The Lord is King.’
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
Tell it out among the nations: ‘The Lord is King!’

BENEDICTUS

Benedictus Antiphons: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,*
because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted. (Isaiah 61.1)

1 Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel,*
for he has come to his people and set them free.
2 He has raised up for us a mighty saviour,*
born of the house of his servant David.
3 Through his holy prophets he promised of old*
that he would save us from our enemies,
from the hands of all that hate us.
4 He promised to show mercy to our forebears,*
and to remember his holy covenant.
5 This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham:*
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
6 free to worship him without fear,*
holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.
7 You my child shall be called the prophet of the Most High,*
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
8 to give his people knowledge of salvation*
by the forgiveness of all their sins.
9 In the tender compassion of our God*
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
10 to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,*
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Glory to the Father… (may be said by all)

Benedictus Antiphons: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,*
because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted. (Isaiah 61.1)

PRAYERS

Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Do not bring us to to the time of trial,
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours,
now and for ever.
Amen.

Collect of the Day

God of power and mercy, you call us once again to celebrate the coming of your Son. Remove those things which hinder love of you, that when he comes he may find us waiting in awe and wonder for him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

(A suitable hymn)

God most holy, we give you thanks for bringing us out of the shadow of night into the light of morning; and we ask you for the joy of spending this day in your service, so that when evening comes, we may once more give you thanks, through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.
Amen.

Let us bless the Lord:
Thanks be to God!

The Lord bless us and preserve us from all evil;
and bring us to life eternal.
Amen.