04/10/2024
Beginning 30 days ago, our Muslim community of sisters and brothers, began their annual tradition of Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month, which concluded this morning with the great feast of Eid-al-Fitr.
Ramadan is marked by fasting, reflection, charity, and prayer. Muslims around the world, including many of our students here at FMG, engaged and participated in fasting from food and drink between dawn and sunset. They also began and ended their day in prayer, ensuring their responsibility and call to reflect on their relationship with God and the many blessings they have received, including providing relief and companionship to the most vulnerable among us, the poor and lonely.
As a universal Catholic Church, let us join this day in prayer and gratitude, wishing all our Muslim students a "Happy Eid Al-Fitr.” We celebrate with them in the recognition of this very sacred time of praise and thanksgiving.
Please join me in morning prayer.
Let us pray,
Loving God,
We give thanks for every faith tradition, named and unnamed, for the variety and richness of their spiritualities, for their united quest for truth, for their common dedication to the pursuit of peace, reconciliation, and healing of the spirit.
This morning, we especially give thanks for our Muslim sisters and brothers, who today begin the great feast of Eid. Unite us always as one community of joy, hope, love, and peace. Inspire us to live more genuinely and authentically, in our celebration of diversity, where we daily profess and affirm unity of all peoples, pursuing peace, and stronger relationships among philosophies, practices, and traditions, in order to create a more just world.
Allow us daily to live in peace, truth, and joy, together, as one human family, working towards a deeper and more profound relationship with you, our Creator and God.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Adapted from All in Good Faith: A Resource Book for Multi-faith Prayer, Jean Potter and Marcus Braybrook, eds., a worship service of the World Congress of Faith Conference 1993, The World Congress of Faiths, Oxford:1997, pp. 111, 112. Rewritten by JW Windland, Encounter World Religions Centre, www.worldreligions.ca