We Will Not Begin Without Them – 4th Lent Year A – Prayer of the Faithful

Quick Reference

Practical Notes

The response is deliberately spare. It echoes Genesis 1 and John 1 without explaining itself — the congregation will feel the resonance even if they cannot name it. Introduce it clearly before the first intercession: “Our response today is: Lord, let there be light — Jesus, you are the light.”

Tone: These intercessions name real pain. Read them without rushing past the difficulty. The people you are praying for may be sitting in the room.

Adaptability: Intercessions 4 and 5 can be combined if time is short. The intercession for the Church (3) can be made more specific to your community’s current reality.

Seasonal note: This is Laetare Sunday — traditionally a moment of joy within the Lenten journey. Trust that these intercessions are not heavy; they are hopeful. The light is not coming. It is already here, looking for the ones who were thrown out.

The Prayer of the Faithful

Celebrant Introduction

We have heard today of a boy left with the sheep, and a man born blind left in a doorway, and a God who goes looking for the ones everyone else walked past.

We bring before that God the ones still waiting to be found.

Intercessions

For the Church — that she may learn to see as God sees: not at the presentation, not at the height or the credentials, but into the heart. May she resist the temptation to build certainty where encounter is being asked of her. Lord, let there be light. / Jesus, you are the light.

For those who lead — for governments, for institutions, for those with power over others’ lives: that they may use that power to illuminate rather than to manage, to include rather than to classify, to ask who is here? before asking what is wrong with them? Lord, let there be light. / Jesus, you are the light.

For those who feel left out, omitted, passed over — the ones not summoned to the banquet, the ones whose name was not called, the ones who have learned to sit outside and wait for the world to finish without them.

For everyone who has ever been the child left with the sheep while the others were presented — overlooked not by accident, but by someone’s quiet decision that they didn’t quite belong.

May they hear today that God stops the ceremony, turns to the one who wasn’t invited, and says: go and get them. We will not begin without them. Lord, let there be light. / Jesus, you are the light.

For children growing up in the shadow of unworthiness — children who have absorbed the message, spoken or unspoken, that they are too much, not enough, the wrong kind, the embarrassing one, the difficult one, the one who doesn’t quite fit. May they encounter a God who says this one before they have done a single thing to earn it. Lord, let there be light. / Jesus, you are the light.

For parents struggling to accept and love their children for who they are — for the Jesse in all of us, who sometimes cannot see our own children clearly because of our own fear, our own shame, our own unfinished story. Give them eyes that go out to the field. Give them the grace to summon the one they left behind. Lord, let there be light. / Jesus, you are the light.

For communities that keep excluding — for every institution, family, parish, or group that has learned to use belonging as a weapon, that wields the threat of expulsion to enforce conformity, that says you were born totally in sin and calls it pastoral care. Lord, dismantle what blinds us. Lord, let there be light. / Jesus, you are the light.

For those living with illness, disability, and mental health struggles — for those whose diagnosis has become the only thing others see, who are spoken about rather than spoken to, who have had to fight simply to be present as a person rather than a condition, a case, a problem to be solved. May they know themselves seen — fully, truly, by name. Lord, let there be light. / Jesus, you are the light.

For those who are physically blind, and all who live with the invisibility that disability brings — and for all of us who have learned to navigate a world not built with us in mind, who have found our own pools of Siloam, our own way of washing and returning. You see what the world overlooks. Lord, let there be light. / Jesus, you are the light.

For those closed up in chosen not-seeing — for those of us who have built our certainty so carefully that we cannot afford to let the miracle in, because it would undo what we have decided we know. For the Pharisees in us. For the moments we said we see — and were wrong. Have mercy on our defended places. Lord, let there be light. / Jesus, you are the light.

For the departed — for all who lived in shadow and are now in light, especially those who never heard in this life that they were chosen, beloved, seen. May they know it now, fully, in the presence of the one who went looking for them. Lord, let there be light. / Jesus, you are the light.

Celebrant Conclusion

God of the first light and the last, you see into the heart of things — past the presentation, past the diagnosis, past the certainty, past the shame.

You pressed mud on eyes that had never seen and asked only that they go and wash. You spread a table in the sight of those who said: not worthy.

Gather these prayers into your hands. Find the ones still waiting in the doorway. And let there be light — in this room, in these lives, in every shadow we have not yet named.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

More

Dive deeper into the Spirit of This Sunday

Now You Are Light: A map of where we are in the liturgical context and an overview of the resources for This Sunday.

The New Genesis: The Biblical Background post going deep into the scholarship behind what the readings are really doing

You Are the One They Went to Call: A 5–7 minute embodied penitential rite — usable also as a post-communion reflection or proclamation of faith