This booklet contains a revision of the mass which I have written as a result of the questionnaire, community meetings and homilies dealing with the topic of bringing our liturgy and our theology into alignment with each other. In doing this, I have tried to combine elegance and tradition, and to prune bad theology and bad psychology. I wanted to create a liturgy that celebrates 13 billion years of God's love affair with the entire universe, and not simply a sectarian, anthropocentric ritual that focuses only on human frailty. The Eucharistic Prayer of the Cosmos, which is the core of the liturgy, seeks to portray this in poetic metaphors.
— Seán Ó'Laoire, Tír na nÓg, December 26, 2008
P = Priest/Presider · C = Community/Congregation · A = All
Section 1 — Introductory Rites
Initial Blessing
P Let us begin our celebration in the name of a God whom we experience as Father and Mother and whom we experience as Word and as Spirit.
C Amen
P God is within us and God is among us.
C Amen. Indeed, it is so.
Prayer for Alignment
P As we bring ourselves into alignment with God let us be aware of the ways in which we live in the shadow-land of unmindfulness. Here we pause to reflect silently on the ways in which we are unaligned as individuals and as communities.
A I acknowledge to you, my sisters and my brothers that I have been unaware of the God-in-all-beings. I have been unmindful in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have neglected to do. So, I ask Mother Mary all the angels and saints and you, my sisters and my brothers to help reawaken me.
P May we realign ourselves with the God-in-all-beings, may we forgive each other's transgressions and may we commit to the journey into enlightenment.
C Amen
Prayer for Compassion
P May we be compassionate to ourselves.
C Amen.
P May we be compassionate to all humans.
C Amen.
P May we be compassionate to all beings.
C Amen.
Hymn of Praise
Typically we will sing some version of the Gloria here.
Focusing Prayer
P Let us pray: God, our Father and our Mother, keep before us the wisdom and love you have revealed in Christ Jesus. Help us to be like him, in word and deed, for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
C Amen
Section 2 — Liturgy of the Word
Readings
We will use readings from: The Judeo-Christian scriptures, The Apocryphal writings, Other scriptural traditions, Other inspirational writings. At the end the reader will say, "This is a reading inspired by God." and we will respond, "Thanks be to God." We will, typically, have three readings, separated by hymns or chants. Such a chant is the one that Seán sings in Gaelic before he reads the gospel:
A Íosa glan mo chroí-se gu glayglon gok law
is a Íosa cuir m'intinn faoi léir-smacht do ghrá
Déan mo smaointe go fíor-ghlan agus briathra mo bhéil
is a thiarna, a Dhé dhílis, stiúraigh coíche mo shaol
(Jesus cleanse my heart sparklingly clean each day / And Jesus put my intellect under the full control of your love / Make my thoughts truly clean, and the words of my mouth / And Lord, faithful God, always direct my life.)
Homily
After the final reading there will be a homily. Following the homily, there will be a brief period of silence.
General Intercessions
A prayer-leader will invite the community to pray aloud for our needs. At the end of each petition, the prayer-leader will say, "For this we pray to our God." and the community will respond, "Loving God, hear our prayer." The prayer-leader or presider will end these prayers by saying, "God, our Father and our Mother we offer you these and all our needs in confidence through Jesus the Christ." and the community responds, "Amen."
Section 3 — The Offertory Rite
Procession with Gifts
Two or three members of the community will process with the elements of the Eucharist: bread, wine, grape-juice and water, which they will present to the presider. This will normally be accompanied by an offertory hymn.
Preparation of the Gifts
P Blessed are you, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.
C Blessed be God forever.
The presider pours some water into the wine and into the grape-juice, saying:
P By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.
P Blessed are you, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this cup to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink.
C Blessed be God forever.
P Loving God, We realize that everything is of you; and so we offer you these gifts as a symbol of ourselves that we may move into the fullness of enlightenment.
Then, while washing his hands:
P God, Help me to awaken from the shadow-land and to come into the light of mindfulness.
P Pray my brothers and sisters, that this ritual may awaken us to our true nature.
C May we fully recognize God as transcendent Other / as immanent creation / as community / and as the image within us.
P God, our Mother and our Father, may the bread and the cup we offer bring your people the unity and the peace they signify. We ask this in the name of Jesus the Christ.
C Amen.
Section 4 — The Eucharistic Prayer
Preface
P God is within us and God is among us.
C Amen. Indeed it is so.
P Let us lift up our hearts.
C We lift them into the mystery.
P Let us be thankful for all the ways in which we feel God's presence.
C It is good to be grateful.
P Father all-powerful and Mother ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks. All things are of your making, all times and seasons obey your laws. You created us in your own image, making us responsible for the planet and its wonders. As stewards of creation we recognize and honor you in all of your other creatures. And so, with angels and archangels, with saints and sages of all traditions, and with all sentient beings, we cry out in gratitude.
[Community sings some version of the Holy, Holy.]
Eucharistic Prayer of the Cosmos
P God, the Cosmic Dancer, we honor you. You who choreograph the solar flares, the orbits of the planets and the wild careening of comets and meteors. You who can name every ancient rock in the Asteroid Belt, you who can tango with typhoons and twisters and tornadoes, we honor you.
C We honor you
P God, the Ultimate Artist, we honor you. You who paint sunrises and sunsets, the plumage of birds and the camouflage of insects. You, who with your finest brushes, watercolor the wings of butterflies and the costumes of flowers, we honor you.
C We honor you
P God, the Sculptor, we honor you. You who chisel out rocks and mountain ranges, and cup your hands to form sand dunes, we honor you.
C We honor you
P God, the Writer, we honor you. You who leave traces of your penmanship everywhere; holographically concealing your entire Magnum Opus in every line of the text. You whose mystical meaning is often misunderstood by the scriptures of the world, scriptures in which Unity Consciousness is fragmented into sectarian separation. You who secreted, in the winking of a distant star, the Rosetta Stone which would allow us to translate every experience into a Christ-consciousness moment of 'Eureka', we honor you.
C We honor you
P God, the Musician, we honor you. You who make flutes of the willows by the lakeside and of the reeds on the river bank; you whose bass-baritone reverberates in the thunder and whose soprano trills in the morning music of the blackbird; you who drum ecstatically with your raindrops on the sun-parched plains; and you who hold all of these sounds in the silence of a star-studded night sky, we honor you.
C We honor you
P God, the Mathematician, we honor you. You who love to play with binary codes with base four and six and eight; with rational numbers and with irrational numbers, with real numbers and with imaginary numbers; you who from nothing created the One and from the One, created the partnership of the Two; and from the Two created the Many; and, then, from the Many collapsed all, mystically, back to the One, which vanishes into the womb of No-thing-ness awaiting rebirth, we honor you.
C We honor you
P God, the Physicist, we honor you. Quantum-leaping from the impossible to the possible; from the improbable to the probable; and from the potential to the actual, we honor you.
C We honor you
P God, the Biologist, we honor you. You who whirl ecstatically around your own image in the double helix of life-making, we honor you.
C We honor you
P God, the Architect, we honor you. You who silently whisper the secrets of home-building in the hearts of weaver-birds and ants; in the hearts of spiders and mice; in the sacred geometry of the temple-makers and in the wombs of mammal mothers, we honor you.
C We honor you
P God, the Awakener, we honor you. You who patiently call forth more-and-more-complete images of Yourself, until a species is born that remembers fully. You who send avatars into every age to nudge religion towards spirituality and to move us from mere belief-in-gods to experiences of the God-within and the God-among-us. You who are the Sender of Siddharta and the Commissioner of the Christ; you who continue to send countless others to awaken us from illusion. You who are the Gentle Mother watching while the great crises of our times are understood for what they really are: great opportunities for seeing beyond the separation into the Oneness of Isness, our origin, our mission and our home, we honor you.
C We honor you
P Are you a creator God?
C You are.
P Do you design things intelligently?
C You do.
P Is it by evolution?
C It is.
P And so, since infinity is contained in a single grain of sand, we choose bread and we choose the blood of the vine, symbols offered us by the avatar, the God-man Jesus. And, with altered vision, we see back into his lifetime as a carpenter-mystic to the mystical core of his message, and beyond that into the purpose of his coming.
P Even at the greatest crisis-time of that incarnation, on the night before he was cruelly killed, even then, he could reach into the core of his own being, and, using the food of his last meal with his friends, say:
A Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body; the body which I accepted at my incarnation, the body that I needed for my mission, the body which is the visible sign of the Word-made-flesh. And you, also, have done the same. Remember that.
P Then, reaching for the cup, he told them:
A Take this, too, all of you who would aspire to Christ consciousness. For this is the cup of my blood; it binds us together since we all share the blood of being human. Truly, we are blood brothers and sisters. So, it is a covenant between us. It is the final covenant. A covenant to dissolve the illusions of separation; a covenant that opens your eyes to the realization that we are not separate from God; that we are not separate from each other; and that we are not separate from nature. This remembering will take away the sin of living in a state of separation. Whenever you celebrate this ritual, remember that.
P Let us proclaim the Mystery of Faith.
[Here we will sing an appropriate consecration proclamation to bring to awareness the Christ Consciousness come among us.]
P God, You are the Ocean bathing in the waters of your own awareness; we are the fish agreeing that we can feel the wetness but demanding proof that the ocean exists. Help us to awaken.
C Help us to awaken.
P God, You are the lamb gamboling ecstatically in the meadow of your own mindfulness; we are the sheep peering jadedly through a prison-pen of our own making. Help us to awaken.
C Help us to awaken.
P God, You are the forest, a miracle of ecological cooperation. You are the oak tree in the forest, a miracle of individual might. You are a single leaf on the oak tree, a miracle of intricate skin-stretching. You are a cell within that leaf, a reminder of how life was four billion years ago. You are an atom within that cell, a reminder of how life was 13 billion years ago. You are the energy within that atom, juggling a multitude of microcosms, each one a hologram of the universe of Hubble. Help us to awaken.
C Help us to awaken.
P God, You are the Hound of Heaven following us down the years and down the days. You are the tiger prowling patiently in the garden of your delights, and we the prey who fearfully hide from the deadly embrace of being consumed by the mystery. Help us to awaken.
C Help us to awaken.
P And so we acknowledge all of our relations. We acknowledge the Stone People, the first children of the rock we call Earth. We acknowledge the Plant People, whose intelligence invented photosynthesis and Earth-life. We acknowledge the Wingéd People, soaring in the vault of the sky, singing and searching. We acknowledge the Finnéd People, silently visiting the depths of the water world. We acknowledge the four-legged People, who found the forests and the plains, the wilderness and the desert, and learned to be at peace in all those places. We acknowledge the six-legged and the eight-legged, the most ubiquitous of us all, investigating and inhabiting Gaia like nobody before or since. We acknowledge the 100-legged and the 1,000-legged, the lowly ones, taking forever to go nowhere because nowhere is where the present moment always is. Help us to awaken.
C Help us to awaken.
P And we acknowledge the two-legged ones, the human family which you joined through incarnation. We are one family, but we are the twin energies of our race, the feminine and the masculine, which are the two facets of your immanence. We are the intrepid seekers who started in Africa and then discovered Asia and Europe, America and Australia, the Arctic and the Antarctic. And everywhere we traveled, we found your footprints. We are Black and Yellow, we are Brown and White and Red. We are the hues on the palette of your art-working. We have learned to speak 7,000 languages, each one of which can sing of your wonders. Help us to awaken.
C Help us to awaken.
P We have followed the signs of your safari on Gaia, getting occasional glimpses of you in our theologies, and having full-on encounters with you in our mystical moments. We are Buddhists and Bahai, we are Christians and Confucianists, we are Jews and Jains, we are Muslims and Zoroastrians, we are Shintos and Shamanists, we are Sufis and Sikhs, we are Taoists and Hindus. We are Seekers, sometimes sleepy seekers and sometimes awakened ones. Help us to awaken.
C Help us to awaken.
P We do not ask for signs anymore for we are surrounded by miracles. Rather, we ask only that we come fully awake. We ask that we become mindful of our true nature which is Buddha-nature; that we become aware of our core essence, which is Christ-consciousness. Help us to awaken.
C Help us to awaken.
P Through this realization, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we offer you honor and glory, forever and ever.
C Amen
Section 5 — The Communion Rite
The Lord's Prayer
P Remembering that God is both our Father and Mother we pray:
A Our Father and our Mother, who art in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
P Deliver us, oh God, from every evil and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from darkness and protect us from all needless anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of Christ consciousness.
C For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever — Amen.
P Jesus the Christ, you said to your apostles: I leave you peace, my peace I give you. Look not on our lack of mindfulness, but on the faith of your people, and grant us the peace and unity of your kingdom, where you live and reign forever and ever.
C Amen.
P May we always experience the peace of God.
C And may we live in such a way that others can experience it too.
The Breaking of the Bread
P Lamb of God, you bring your love into our fear-filled world.
C Teach us to love.
P Lamb of God, you shine your light into the darkness of our times.
C Help us turn to the light.
P Lamb of God, you offer life to a world that believes in death.
C Re-awaken us to life.
The priest/presider breaks off a section of the bread and drops it into the chalice, saying:
P May this mingling of the body and blood of Jesus the Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.
Sharing Communion
P Christ Jesus, with faith in your love and mercy we eat your body and drink your blood. May we do this consciously, with awareness that brings health to our minds, to our souls and to our bodies.
P This is the lamb of God, this is Jesus the Christ who has come to take away the darkness of the world. Happy are we who are called to his supper.
C Christ Jesus, may I be mindful as I receive you. Touch my soul and I shall be healed.
P May the body and blood of Jesus the Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.
C Amen
P For any visitors that are with us today — it is the custom in our community to invite everybody to receive communion with us, in recognition of the fact that we are all equally beloved of God. It is food for our souls. Everybody is now invited to come forward and receive communion under the symbols of the consecrated bread and wine (or grape-juice.)
Section 6 — Concluding Rite
Announcements
This is an opportunity to, very briefly, make the congregation aware of activities that build our community and our world.
Prayer
P Let us pray: God, our Father and our Mother, by this sacrament you make us one with Christ. By becoming more like him on earth, may we come to share his glory in heaven, where he lives and reigns forever and ever.
C Amen
Dismissal
P God is within us and God is among us.
C Amen. Indeed, it is so.
P Let us end our celebration in the name of a God whom we experience as Father and Mother and whom we experience as Word and as Spirit.
C Amen
P The mass is ended, let us go to bring peace to our world.
C Thanks be to God
Addendum — Kyrie
Kyrie Eleison · Christe Eleison · Kyrie Eleison
(Lord, have mercy · Christ, have mercy · Lord, have mercy)
Peruvian Gloria
P Glory to God, Glory to God, Glory to our Father.
C Glory to God, Glory to God, Glory to our Father.
P To God be glory forever.
C To God be glory forever. Alleluia, amen.
[Repeated for: Glory to our Mother · Glory to Christ Jesus · Glory to the Spirit]
Hebrew Blessing over the Bread
Baruch atah adonai · Eloheinu, melekh ha 'olam · Hamotzie lechem, min ha-aretz. Amen.
(Blessed are you, Lord · our God, king of the universe · who causes bread to come forth from the land.)
Hebrew Blessing over the Cup
Baruch atah adonai · Eloheinu, melekh ha 'olam · Bore p'ri haGafen. Amen.
(Blessed are you, Lord · our God, king of the universe · who creates the fruit of the vine.)
Sanctus — Latin
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus · Dominus, Deus sabaoth · Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua · Hosanna in excelsis · Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini · Hosanna in excelsis
(Holy, holy, holy · Lord, God of hosts · heaven and Earth are full of your glory · hosanna in the highest · Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord)
Mtakatifu Bwana Mungu — Kiswahili
Mtakatifu Bwana Mungu, Ee Hosanna juu (x3)
(Holy, Lord God, Yes Hosanna on high)
Verse One: Utukuzwe Bwana Mungu, Ee / Mungu Mumbu wetu, Ee / Mbingu na dunia zimejaa utukufu wako, Ee ee mbinguni
(May you be blessed Lord God / God our creator / Heaven and earth are full of your glory)
Verse Two: Utukuzwe Bwana Mungu, Ee / Mungu Mkombozi wetu, Ee / Uliangamiza mauti, ukaleta uzima wetu, Ee, ee mbinguni
(God our redeemer / You conquered death and you brought us life)
Verse Three: Utukuzwe Bwana Mungu, Ee / Mungu Mfariji wetu, Ee / Ulimtuma roho kwetu tuwe sote mwili mmoja, Ee, ee mbinguni
(God our comforter / You sent us the Spirit so that we might be one body)
Agnus Dei
Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi miserere nobis. (x2)
Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem.
(Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of world have mercy on us. · …grant us peace.)
Alternate Eucharistic Prayer
P Father, Mother, you are holy indeed, and all creation rightly gives you praise. All life, all holiness comes from you through your Son, Jesus Christ, by the working of the Holy Spirit. From age to age you gather a people to yourself, so that from East to West a perfect offering may be made to the glory of your name.
P And so we bring you these gifts. We ask you to make them holy by the power of the Spirit, that they may become the body and blood of your Son and our brother Jesus Christ, at whose invitation we celebrate this Eucharist.
P On the night he was betrayed, he took bread and gave you thanks and praise. He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples and said:
A Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you.
P When supper was ended he took the cup. Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples and said:
A Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.
P Let us proclaim the mystery of our faith.
C When we eat this bread and drink from this cup we proclaim your life, your death and your resurrection, until you come in glory.
P Father, Mother, calling to mind the teaching of Jesus, his glorious resurrection and ascension into heaven, and ready to greet him when he comes again, we offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice.
P Look with favor on your people's offering. The love of Jesus has reconciled us to you. Grant that we, who are nourished by his body and blood, may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ.
P God, our Mother and our Father, may this sacrifice advance the peace and enlightenment of all the world. Strengthen in faith and love your pilgrim people on Earth; we ask you to bless all spiritual travelers, those who seek you through: Judaism or Christianity, Islam or Sufism, Bahai or Zoroastrianism, Jainism or Sikhism, Buddhism or Hinduism, Confucianism or Taoism, Shintoism or Shamanism, Art or Science, or any of the great wisdom traditions of our planet.
P Father, Mother, hear the prayers of this family which you have gathered here before you. In mercy and love unite all your children, wherever they may be. Welcome into your kingdom our departed brothers and sisters, and all who have left this world. We hope to enjoy forever the vision of your glory, through Jesus the Christ, from whom all good things come.
A Through him, with him and in him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, almighty God, forever and ever — Amen.
