A litany of all the Saints

A Litany of All the Saints

Holy ones present at our beginnings:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah,
makers of the covenant, forebears of our race:

Stand Here Beside Us!
John and Charles Wesley, preachers in the streets;
all whose power of speaking gave life to the written word:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Louis, king of France; Margaret, queen of Scotland;
Gandhi the mahatma, reproach to the churches;
Dag Hammarskjold the bureaucrat;

all who made governance an act of faith:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Mary Magdalen, anointer of the Lord's feet; Luke the physician;
Francis who kissed the leper; Florence Nightingale;
Albert Schweitzer; all who brought to the sick and suffering the hands of healing:

Stand Here Beside Us!

Holy ones who made the proclaiming of God's love a work of art:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Johann Sebastian Bach; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart;
all who sang the Creator's praises in the language of the soul:

Stand Here Beside Us!

Holy ones haunted by the justice and mercy of God:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Joachim of Fiora, prophet of the new age;
Johnny Appleseed, mad planter of Eden;
Sojourner Truth, pilgrim of justice;
all whose love for God was beyond containment:

Stand Here Beside Us!

Martin Luther King, shot in Memphis:Oscar,  Romero, shot in San Salvador: Janani Luwum, shot in Kampala:

Holy ones of every time and place:

Stand Here Beside Us!
From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
Jesus our liberator, creator of all:

Stand Here Beside Us!
Jesus our liberator, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end: wisdom, for creativity, for energy and for liberation to new life.

(Prayers are shared or prayed silently)

for all this and for ourselves,

We pray in faith, O God. AMEN

(Source unknown)