Divine Mercy Sunday: Turned Toward the Voice: Prayer of the Faithful

Born to Recognise – Week 1: The Ear

Quick Reference

Date: Sunday, April 12, 2026   •   Season: Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)   •   Year A

Readings: Acts 2:42–47  •  Psalm 118  •  1 Peter 1:3–9  •  John 20:19–31

Response: Reader: Lord, hear us.   All: Lord, graciously hear us.

Theme: Hearing – the sense that opens before sight, the posture of the covenant, the capacity breathed into us for receiving what we could not otherwise hold.

Celebrant’s Introduction

The risen Christ came through locked doors and breathed on his disciples. He did not wait for them to find the right words, the right readiness, the right level of faith. He came. He breathed. And before anything else, he said: peace.

Today we bring before God all those whose vocation is to listen – and all those still waiting to be heard. We bring the ears of the Church, the ears of the world, the ears of every person in this room. And we ask that the same breath which filled the locked room might open in us, again, the capacity to receive.

Intercessions

For the Church:

That she remains an attentive ear – turned toward God in prayer, and turned toward those who do not gather, who have not been heard, who are still waiting outside the room for someone to notice their absence and speak their name.

Reader: Lord, hear us.   All: Lord, graciously hear us.

For those who hold power over others:

For every person in a position of governance or leadership – in nations, in institutions, in communities – that they may resist the temptation of the one who speaks and never listens; that they develop the harder discipline of hearing the voice of God and the voice of those placed under their care, especially the voices that do not reach the rooms where decisions are made.

Reader: Lord, hear us.   All: Lord, graciously hear us.

For all whose work is listening:

For everyone whose daily labour is to receive another person’s reality – those who answer calls from strangers in distress, those who sit with grief and confusion in therapy rooms and counselling offices, those who hold the weight of what others cannot yet carry alone – that the Word of God strengthens them against the erosion of compassion fatigue, and that they find their own listening renewed, again and again, at the same source from which it came.

Reader: Lord, hear us.   All: Lord, graciously hear us.

For every confessor:

Especially as they emerge from the intense listening of the Easter season – the long hours, the accumulated weight of what has been entrusted to them – that they find genuine renewal; that the grace they have administered to others flows back to restore them; and that they rediscover in the confessional not a burden but a locked room, entered again and again, where the risen Christ continues to breathe.

Reader: Lord, hear us.   All: Lord, graciously hear us.

For all who came to confession in this Easter season:

That the words of absolution spoken over them may continue to land – not only as a moment passed but as a living word still moving through them; that they hear, again today, what was said: that they are released, that they are known, that what was named in that room does not hold them.

Reader: Lord, hear us.   All: Lord, graciously hear us.

For our families:

That we become more genuinely present to one another – not merely waiting for our turn to speak, but willing to be changed by what we hear; that our homes become places where each person knows they will be listened to without being managed, without being fixed, without being hurried past their own truth.

Reader: Lord, hear us.   All: Lord, graciously hear us.

For each one of us:

That we make room – in this day, in this week, in the small hidden spaces of our ordinary hours – to hear the breath of God moving toward us. Not the dramatic arrival, not the fire and the wind of Pentecost yet, but the gentle stirring that comes before; the Ruah over the waters; the not-yet that the attuned ear already recognises as the beginning of everything.

Reader: Lord, hear us.   All: Lord, graciously hear us.

Celebrant’s Conclusion

God of the locked room and the open wound, you came to your people through every door they had sealed against you. Receive these prayers – spoken and unspoken, the ones we found words for and the ones still waiting in us for a language. Open in us what we have closed. Breathe into us what we have not yet been able to receive. And keep us turned, always, in the direction of your voice.

Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Practical Notes

On tone: These petitions are longer and more contemplative than typical Sunday intercessions. They are written to be heard, not read along with – which is consistent with the Sunday’s theme. The reader should speak slowly, with genuine pauses within each petition, allowing the images to land. A reader who rushes will lose the thread.

On the petition for confessors: This petition is unusual and intentional. Confessors are rarely named as those who need prayer; naming them here, specifically in their tiredness after Easter, may land unexpectedly and gratefully for any priests in the assembly. It models the attentiveness the rest of the petitions ask for.

On the petition for those who confessed: This petition assumes that some in the assembly came to confession recently. In communities where Easter confession is common, it will resonate widely. It gives those people a moment of being seen and prayed for – not for their sin, but for the grace they received, that it may continue to move in them.

On adaptability: The petition for leaders may be sensitively worded for communities navigating specific political tensions. The phrase ‘resist the temptation of the one who speaks and never listens’ is deliberately non-partisan – it names a posture rather than a person. It may be abbreviated if needed without losing its essential petition.

On seasonal continuity: This Prayer of the Faithful stands as Week 1 of the Born to Recognise series. Each subsequent Sunday will carry its own sense through the intercessions, building toward Pentecost. The final petition – the breath of God moving toward us, the not-yet, the ruach before the Word – may become a recurring closing movement throughout the season, varied slightly each week.

More

Check further resources:

We hear before we see – introduction to This Sunday Spirit including an overview of free resources.

The Story Beneath the Story – historical and literary context for all four readings. Includes the seven-sense mapping of the Thomas narrative and the theological arc from the tree of knowledge to the community of forgiveness.

Open My Ear – A three-part embodied experience attending to the quality of our own auditory anticipation and finding the one who listens within us.