Parish Mass for Sunday 19th October - Dedication Festival

Collect

Almighty God, to whose glory we celebrate the dedication of this house of

prayer: we praise you for the many blessings you have given to those who

worship you here: and we pray that all who seek you in this place may find

you, and, being filled with the Holy Spirit, may become a living temple

acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive

and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for

ever.

Amen

Reading

Ephesians 2: 19-22

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.

Gospel

John 2: 13-22

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Post Communion Prayer

Father in heaven, whose Church on earth is a sign of your heavenly

peace, an image of the new and eternal Jerusalem: grant to us in the days

of our pilgrimage that, fed with the living bread of heaven, and united in

the body of your Son, we may be the temple of your presence, the place

of your glory on earth, and a sign of your peace in the world; through

Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen