All Sorts

The Prayer for All Sorts and Conditions of People is meant to be used as a general intercession covering several main topics after we have said the State prayers and the prayer for the Church at Morning and Evening Prayer.  The highlighted section is prefaced by asking the Lord to lead us into the way of truth.  Truth of course is absolute, or else it would not be truth.  Therefore it can never be a sort of open-ended set of personal principles, which we can add to or subtract from to suit our own personal whims or society’s latest fad.  God’s truth is expressed most graphically in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, but also verbally in the teaching and commands of both the Old and New Testaments.  This way of truth should produce three results.
 
Firstly the Faith should lead to a unity of spirit among all Christians – unity in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, unity in witness and evangelism, unity in the care of the weak and the unfortunate and unity within the life of the Catholic Church, that body of Christians who have resolutely held to the three Catholic Creeds since the earliest days of the Church and have consistently pursued God’s ministry of both Word and Sacrament.
 
Secondly the Faith should lead to a glad embrace of the bond of peace, that belt which holds us all together in Christ, the King of Peace.  These days we still hear far too much bickering about minute details of theology, fall-outs over personalities and the inability to bury the hatchet in relation to past hurts.  The Lord’s peace can only envelop us if we are serious about healing our divisions and subcultures by following His way and building His Kingdom.
 
Lastly the Faith should lead to righteousness of life, a concept increasingly under attack as the Church seeks to ingratiate itself with a raucously unbelieving and irresponsible secular society that surrounds it and would happily strangle it.  And yet we should not be backward in coming forward to defend God’s standards presented in the Ten Commandments and Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.

Their intention is entirely benevolent and they are eminently sensible.  The Lord sets his standards of human behaviour, not primarily to catch us out, as the Puritans seemed to tell us, but instead to give us a solid framework which can be relied upon to provide a healthy, happy and fulfilling human existence, the way our creator God meant it to be.
 
Jesus taught us that it is more blessed to give than to receive.  Yet modern life is centred upon self, upon getting lots of money, getting a good social media image, getting one’s dream job, getting early retirement. The old adage used to teach us that God comes first, others second, and me last. This has now been turned back to front. 
 
It is only right to present the young with what this tawdry philosophy will do for them.  No close family, nobody to care for them and every public service they depend upon hoping that someone will still be willing to help. No society can long survive when its citizens are looking only after themselves. 
 
Along with self-centredness comes lack of trust.  With fathers invariably missing, mothers taking partners purely in order to have a child and infants being entrusted to the care of others at such a tender age, is it any wonder that there is so little trust between people?  With relationships based on such shifting sands, is it any wonder that the media are so full of tales of unhappiness?  Alas, there will be much worse to come, unless the nation – and the Church - is willing to repent of its idiocies and disobediences and finally return to God, who is always ready and waiting to receive back those who have so readily turned their backs on Him and His wise commands.