Quick Reference

Season: Easter – Week 3, Year A

Gospel: Luke 24:13–35 (The Emmaus Road)

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

Theme: The pilgrim Church – alignment, direction, the table, the road home

Celebrant’s Introduction

We are a pilgrim people. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we walk – sometimes in the right direction, sometimes away from the very city we belong to. But the Risen Lord walks with us on every road, opening what was closed in us, turning what had grown cold.

With hearts that are learning to burn again, let us bring our needs and the needs of our world before God.

Intercessions

For the Church

For the Church throughout the world – that she remains a community of pilgrims: always on the move, always willing to be redirected, never so settled that she mistakes the landscape for the destination. May she walk in the direction the Risen Lord is calling her toward, and find the courage to turn around when she has wandered.

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

For Leaders and Those Who Serve

For all who lead – in nations, communities, and churches – that they govern not from the desire to be seen, but from the capacity to listen. May they have the humility to ask the questions they do not yet know how to answer, and the wisdom to recognise truth when it meets them on an unexpected road.

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

For Our Faith Community

For the community gathered here – that we grow, slowly and honestly, in the capacity to perceive one another with our hearts. That we become people who notice what the eyes pass over: the tiredness beneath the smile, the grief carried quietly, the burning that someone has been trying to explain and has given up explaining. May we be, for each other, companions on the road.

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

For Our Families

For our families – that we learn again the gift of the table. That the breaking of bread becomes more than a meal: a moment to break open our days, to lay the highs and lows of the journey alongside each other, to wait together with something like joy for the hour of gathering. May our tables be places where people are recognised.

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

For All Who Are Far from Home

For all who are on the road – those who travel for work, those displaced by conflict or poverty, those living far from the people who know them. May they find, in the strangers who walk alongside them, something of the presence that turned two grieving disciples into witnesses. May they find home, even away from home.

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

For Those Who Have Lost Their Way

For all who feel they have nowhere to return to – those whose Jerusalem has been taken from them, or who have walked so far from it that they no longer believe they belong there. May they hear the Risen Lord calling them back – not to what was, but to what is now being made possible. May the road home feel shorter than they think.

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

For Ourselves

For each of us – that we find the openness to entrust to Jesus not just our burdens, but our way of understanding. That our prayer becomes a space where what we thought we knew is gently questioned, where the stranger on the road is allowed to speak, and where we occasionally arrive at the table to find our eyes opening on something we had stopped expecting.

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

For Those Whose Eyes Have Not Yet Opened

For all who rely only on what can be seen and measured and proven – that the burning in their hearts grows too honest to ignore. That the moment comes, as it comes for all of us, when something breaks open in ordinary life – in bread, in a voice, in the particular quality of an evening – and what they have been walking beside all this time becomes suddenly, unmistakably known.

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

For Those Who Have Died

For all who have completed their road and arrived at the table we cannot yet see – especially those we carry with us today. May they be held in the light of the Risen Christ, recognised and known as they always were, in the place where all roads end in welcome.

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

Celebrant’s Conclusion

God of every road and every table – you meet us where we are, even when we are walking the wrong way. Receive these prayers we bring in our exhaustion and our hope. Turn us gently in the direction of life, and keep our hearts burning until we recognise you – in each other, in the breaking of bread, in the world you have not abandoned.

We ask this through Christ our Lord, who is risen and walks among us.

Amen.

Practical Notes

Tone

These intercessions are written to be spoken, not read. The language is plain and close – it should sound like someone who has been on the road themselves, not like someone addressing a crowd. Avoid a tone of proclamation; aim for something more like honest naming.

Selecting and Adapting

There are nine intercessions here – more than most communities will use. A natural set of seven would be: the Church, the faith community, families, those far from home, those who have lost their way, ourselves, and the departed. The intercession for those who rely on sight alone works particularly well if the Sunday Experience has been used earlier in the liturgy, as it completes the arc.

The Response

The response rhythm is gentle and should not be hurried. A brief natural pause after each intercession, before the reader cues the response, allows the petition to land.

Seasonal Continuity

These intercessions carry the Easter arc forward from Thomas Sunday (the community of the wounded and the doubting) into the third week’s movement: the pilgrim people, learning to recognise. If the community has been following the season, the cumulative effect is significant.

Go Deeper:

The Road That Turns Around: introduction to the Spirit and resources for This Sunday.

Set Before Me: What does it really mean to keep the Lord in sight? A deep dive into This Sunday‘s readings.

The Road and the Bread: Walk the Emmaus road through your body, not your mind – a sensory guided experience of the Gospel.