Readings (Click the links to see the readings)

Isaiah 29.11-24 | Psalm 27.11-14 | Matthew 9.27-31 |

The Second Coming
by W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
(written in 1919)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Prayer

God of Alpha and Omega,
your promises come to us bringing hope.
Grant us the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding to listen to your word,
the Spirit of counsel and of power to do your will,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord to be your messengers of peace.

Gijs Frieling. Healing of a Blind Man (1999)

"Then he touched their eyes and said,
'According to your faith let it be done to you.'" Matthew 9:27