Walking Forward with Our Indigenous Brothers and Sisters May 3, 2017

Au nom du Père et du Fils et du Saint-Espirit Amen+

You’re Not Alone Hold on it will be awhile, until you find yourself in this place. It won’t take long for you to see you got to go deeper to be set free.

Chorus ~ If you want to… Try and walk this life alone, you’re going to find yourself far from home. Take my word and you’re going to know that life gets better when you’re not alone.

You walk the road but you walk alone, forget the ones you’ve always known. More alive than broken hearts, to see it clearly got to go back to the start. Chorus

Chorus ~ If you want to… Try and walk this life alone, you’re going to find yourself far from home. Take my word and you’re going to know that life gets better when you’re not alone.

There’s many lives we’re led to believe, so many more we don’t see. We try so hard to push away, but the ties that bind us are here to stay.

Try and walk this life alone, you’re going to find yourself far from home. Take my word and you’re going to know that life gets better when you’re not alone. (twice, second time jump to) Life gets better… Life gets better…Life gets better when you’re not alone.

God of truth and reconciliation, You have taught us to ask for forgiveness when we have hurt others. Help us to work toward reconciliation with our indigenous brothers and sisters for the way the government has treated them since the beginning of Canada.

“As [a Catholic school community], we believe in a long stream of faith originating in vast and mysterious waters of the Spirit. For those who believe in Christ, these gracious waters have always beckoned, promising and sustaining a hope for transformation and a better world. As believers, we are convinced that our Church is a community created by water and the Spirit.

As Christians, we know that our history has been muddied at time by human weakness and by what we call sinfulness. We also admit and regret that we have not always fully recognized the [Indigenous] Peoples as our brothers and sisters, as another people of water and the Spirit.

Nevertheless, we believe that we are summoned together to help make justice flow like a mighty river. Our faith in the transforming power of water and the Spirit gives us hope -- for ourselves and others.” Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops brief to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

Read the message on the slide.

O Great Spirit, you have created me as I am. I accept myself as I am now, as I have been in the past, and as I will be in the future. I ask that today I will be true to the way you made me. Help me to walk respectfully on my Mother the Earth so no plants will be crushed. Help me to walk into people’s lives in the same way today so none of them will be bruised. Amen+ Read prayer which has been adapted from the Three Step Prayer by Jose Hobday.