Prayer for Reformation Day

by Kornelis Miskotte (1894-1976)

O Lord, you gave one Shepherd to your scattered sheep to bring them, by the sacrifice of his life, to you and to one another. Be pleased to bring them together into one fold, through the power of your Holy Spirit. We ask your forgiveness for the divided state of the one catholic church. We ask your forgiveness for our ingratitude for the liberation and enrichment which you brought us through the Reformation. You gave to your church the assurance of salvation and set the conscience free from the burden of human failure. But we confess to you our narrowness of heart, double-mindedness, small faith, our failures in self-denial and love.

Make us thankful anew. For you do not cease to call us, even now, to have one heart, for the sake of the breadth and length and depth of your love in Christ which, with all the saints, we can comprehend only in part.

Lord, lead all that belong to you to live the faith of their own baptism, and bring them out of narrowness into the openness of your truth, so that they may seek what unites and abandon what divides; so that they may truthfully make their own the prayer of their Lord and Savior: that they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in him and he in you, that they also may be one in you and in your Son through the Holy Spirit, so that the world may believe that you have sent Christ. Amen.

From Prayers from the Reformed Tradition: In the Company of a Great Cloud of Witnesses, compiled and edited by Diane Karay Tripp, page 285. 2001 Witherspoon Press. Used by permission of Congregational Ministries Publishing, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, KY 40202.

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