New (free) resource: Prayers of the Faithful

The Liturgy of the Word concludes with the Creed and the Prayers of the Faithful. Having heard God's word proclaimed in the readings and broken open in the homily, we profess our faith and intercede for those in need. In short, we ask God to do again today what he has done throughout all of history. In a particular way, it gives us a chance to look more specifically at the needs of our world through the lens of the day's Scripture.

It has been my experience (both as writer and pray-er of petitions) that this is a difficult task. We often go to the default of "For our Holy Father, our Bishops, and all Bishops..." regardless of the Scripture, feast or season. We need to ask ourselves, "what do we need to pray for in light of today's Mass?" Of course, we follow the prescriptions of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (nos. 69-71) which directs us to pray...

...For the needs of the Church;
...For public authorities and the salvation of the whole world;
...For those burdened by any kind of difficulty;
...For the local community.

Liturgy Training Publications [LTP] has a new resource to assist with this task called, Prayer of the Faithful: Intercessions for Your Faith Community. For each Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation there is an invitation to prayer, intercessions, and closing prayer. This downloadable product is issued in two-month segments so that the prayers can respond to today's issues (and LTP assures that updates will be released in the case of sudden, significant world or national events that need our prayer). As is the case with most LTP titles, this is published both in English and Spanish.

And this is all free!

While you may prefer to discern your own prayers, this certainly provides fodder for your soul as you compose the intercessions for Sunday Mass.