Today’s offering from Sing Praise is a short canticle or acclamation, “Now with the strength of your Word” by Fintan O’Carroll and Christopher Walker. It’s essentially the same as both “Father we praise you as Lord” on which I commented on 14 February, and “Now he is living, the Christ” (17 April), with the same ‘Celtic’ fourfold Alleluia as a refrain, but different words for the cantor’s verse. In this instance it is “Now with the strength of your Word, send us to be your disciples, to bring all the world to the joy of your Kingdom”.
The words are a reminder that the purpose of the Christian life is to share in Christ’s redemption of the world. How we do that is another question: while some have the gift of an evangelist or a charismatic personality, most of us struggle to find opportunities to share the good news in our daily life. But perhaps it isn’t just a matter of ‘telling people about Jesus’; the phrase ‘bring all the world to the joy of your kingdom’ reminds us that Jesus said he came not that we should conform to some uniform idea of perfection but that each in our own way should ‘live life in all its fulness’ while loving God and our neighbours. To bring others into that joyful life may mean just saying something that brings a smile to their face, or doing some act of kindness that relieves them of their burden for a short while.